Using SQL Monitor Groups in PowerShell

Not only are SQL Monitor Groups probably the neatest and most maintainable way of ensuring that all your SQL Servers have the best possible configuration of alerts, but they represent a powerful way of categorizing your SQL Server estate. In this article, I'll show how to use the SQL Monitor PowerShell API to export these groups, save their settings onto a configuration management system, or compare groups of settings to see the differences between them. Read more

Tagging SQL Server Changes in SQL Monitor

How to use RAISERROR() in T-SQL to send annotations to SQL Monitor, so you can observe the direct impact of application tasks, or server changes, on the SQL Server metrics. Read more

Build and fill a SQL Server Database using SQL Compare CLI and a Batch Script

Phil Factor provides a powerful DOS batch script which, when coupled with SQL Compare CLI, allows you to build databases from source, during development, and fill them with the specific datasets required for testing. Read more

Never Create Columns with ANSI_PADDING set to OFF

There is no good reason for having ANSI_PADDING set to OFF when you create tables in SQL Server. It was provided purely for legacy databases that had code that assumed the old CHAR behavior for dealing with padding, and its use has now been deprecated. Read more

Avoid using constants in an ORDER BY clause

Phil Factor explains why an ORDER BY clause should always specify the sort columns using their names, or aliases, rather than using an integer to specify the position of a column in the SELECT list. Read more

Meeting your CCPA needs with Data Classification and Masking

This article will explain how to import the data classification metadata for a SQL Server database into Data Masker, providing a masking plan that you can use to ensure the protection of all this data. By applying the data masking operation as part of an automated database provisioning process, you make it fast, repeatable and auditable. Read more

Why you Should Always Specify Whether a Column Accepts Nulls

Phil Factor explains the factors that determine whether a column will allow null values, if you don't specify it explicitly in the column definition. If you rely on the default behavior established by your connection settings, you could be in for some nasty surprises. Read more

Using SQL Prompt Code Snippets for Repetitive Tasks

Louis Davidson discovers the joy of using SQL Prompt code snippets to remove repetition from a variety of tasks, from inserting comment headers, to creating tables, to executing useful metadata queries. Read more

Database Build Breakers: Avoiding Constraint Violations during SQL Server Deployments

A common database build breaker is data that violates the conditions of any of the CHECK, UNIQUE or FOREIGN KEY constraints, and unique non-clustered indexes, designed to protect the consistency and integrity of your data. Phil Factor explain how to avoid this problem, using SQL Compare and some custom stored procedures to discover which rows will cause violations, and fixing them, before running the build. Read more

Quickly Find and Mask all Sensitive Data with Data Masker for SQL Server

Khie Biggs, a software developer on the Data Masker team at Redgate explains how a recent set of Data Masker improvements should make it significantly easier and faster to determine what data needs to be masked, implement a masking plan, and then to apply the masking operation, to protect sensitive and personal data in all the tables and columns of your SQL Server databases. Read more

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