Monitoring SQL Server with Splunk and SQL Monitor

Splunk is a search engine for collecting and analyzing all sorts of "machine data", including log data and metrics for SQL Server. SQL Monitor gives you the detailed diagnostic view of all your SQL Server instances, and databases. If you have Splunk to monitor your applications and server infrastructure, and SQL Monitor to help you understand the behavior of a complex database system such as SQL Server, then you have a powerful and capable monitoring tool set. Read more

Using Aliases in SQL Prompt

Phil Factor explores the role of table aliases, explaining when they are required, and their general purpose otherwise, the need for sensible naming of aliases, and how SQL Prompt handles them. Read more

Data Categorization for AdventureWorks using SQL Data Catalog

Josh Smith shows how to use SQL Data Catalog to perform a 'first cut' data classification for one your SQL Server databases, identifying all columns that are likely to hold personal or otherwise sensitive data. Read more

How to Complain Bitterly using SQL Data Generator

How to use reverse regex expressions in SQL Data Generator to fill a text column in SQL Server with fake, but very realistic complaints. Read more

Deploying Data and Schema Together with SQL Compare or SQL Change Automation

You want to use SQL Compare or SQL Change Automation (SCA) to create or update a database, and at the same time ensure that its data is as you expect. You want to avoid running any additional PowerShell scripting every time you do it, and you want to keep everything in source control, including the data. You just want to keep everything simple. Phil Factor demonstrates how it's done, by generating MERGE scripts from a stored procedure. Read more

From Source Control to Database using SQL Compare Command Line

Giorgi Abashidze explains how his team use SQL Compare Command line to automate database deployments for their customers, without having access to the real staging or production databases, merely by using our development database contained under TFS Source Control. Read more

Finding Correlated Rows Using EXISTS or COUNT

Should you always use EXISTS rather than COUNT when checking for the existence of any correlating rows that match your criteria? Does the former really offer "superior performance and readability". Louis Davidson investigates. Read more

Using Custom Deployment Scripts with SQL Compare or SQL Change Automation

Phil Factor describes how custom pre- and post-deployment scripts work, when doing state-based database deployments with SQL Compare or SQL Change Automation, and how you might use them to, for example, add a version number to the target database, specify its database settings, or stuff data into some tables. Read more

SQL Clone PowerShell Scripting: The Basics

Phil Factor demonstrates some simple examples of how to use SQL Clone's PowerShell library to pass objects between cmdlets, and simplify common tasks, such as creating and deploying clones from various images. He then documents the objects and cmdlets, and illustrates their inputs and outputs. Read more

Unwrapping, Unboxing and Installing SQL Clone

If you are evaluating a tool such as a text editor or spreadsheet, it is easy: you just install it, you run it, you decide whether you need it. Job done. However, a similar 'unboxing' or 'unwrapping' of SQL Clone, and installing across a network, is not so quick and easy. Phil Factor's solution is to install and run a complete installation of SQL Clone on a single box. This allows you to try everything out, creating images and deploying clones, while isolated from the network. It can then be extended across a network, subsequently, when it's been fully tested. Read more

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