Redgate Monitor

The State of SQL Server Monitoring 2018

Over 600 technology professionals who work in organizations that use SQL Server recently responded to our survey to discover the current state of SQL Server monitoring. We asked people across a range of sectors, in organizations of every size around the globe, about how they monitor SQL Server, the technologies they work with, and what Read more

Pseudonymizing your data with SQL Data Generator

Starting from a database view, as the basis for a typical sales reports, Phil factor shows how to generate a data-masked version of this report, which the Tax Men can safely pore over. Read more

Automatic Provisioning of Developer Databases with SQL Provision

Steve Jones shows a simple way to provision full size databases for developers, using production like data that has been masked automatically as part of the provisioning process. Read more

SQL Compare Snapshots: a lightweight database version control and rollback mechanism

During the proof-of-concept phase of development work, SQL Compare Snapshots offer an easy way to work out what broke, if a change causes some tests to fail, as well as a simple ‘roll back’ technique to return quickly to the last working copy. Read more

Avoid use of the MONEY and SMALLMONEY datatypes (BP022)

Use of the MONEY and SMALLMONEY datatypes can lead to unintentional loss of precision, due to rounding errors, during calculations. It is generally far better to use the DECIMAL, a.k.a. NUMERIC, type. Read more

A strategy for implementing database source control

Much has been written on the strategic benefits of having a database under source control though many articles are clear on “why” but conspicuously vague on “how”. Dave Poole tries to fill in some of the gaps. Read more

Custom Metrics for Detecting Problems with Ad-hoc Queries

Overuse of ad-hoc queries by applications is a common source of SQL Server performance problems. The symptoms include high CPU and memory pressure. Phil Factor offers a simple custom metric to monitor the percentage of ad-hoc queries being executed on a database, and shows how SQL Monitor can detect when the problem is happening, and show you the queries that are affecting the server. Read more

Effective Database Testing with SQL Test and SQL Cover

Julia Hayward describes the basics of how SQL Test’s code coverage can help uncover the darker, untested paths in your database code. Read more

Approaches to masking email addresses

Chris Unwin explains the basic approaches to anonymizing email addresses, and shows how Data Masker can generate realistic email addresses, based on faked names, and even retain the correct distribution of email providers. Read more

Using SQL Monitor to Detect Problems on Databases that use Snapshot-based Transaction Isolation

Use of the read committed snapshot isolation level is often an effective way to alleviate blocking problems in SQL Server, without needing to rewrite the application. However, it can sometimes lead to tempdb contention. This article offers a small-scale solution (not suitable for use on large tables) to detect cases when tempdb contention is related to use of RCSI. Read more

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