Ben Johnston

Ben is a data architect from Iowa and has been working with SQL Server since version 6.5 in the late 90's. Ben focuses on performance tuning, warehouse implementations and optimizations, database security, and system integrations.

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04 April 2024
04 April 2024

Building a Culture of Data

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One of the major trends in enterprise computing, and really in enterprises themselves is an increased emphasis on data. My career has always revolved around data, but this is a new focus for many parts of the organization. Even business units that traditionally don’t care about data realize that access to more, and better, data … Read more
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01 March 2024
01 March 2024

Friendly Deletes in SQL Server

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One of the first things you learn when working with SQL Server, and other transactional based SQL systems, is that set based operations perform best. If you are querying data, a cursor pulling individual rows doesn’t perform as well as a single query. It doesn’t matter if that cursor is on the client side or … Read more
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01 February 2024
01 February 2024

Feature Flags in Data Projects

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My motivation for writing this summary was an interaction with a project owner that didn’t understand why we couldn’t use feature flags directly in Power BI to control the user interface. This was different from our other deployments, so it took a few rounds of explanations to convince them that our use case didn’t support … Read more
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15 October 2023
15 October 2023

SQL Server Security Primer

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SQL Server security structure, mechanisms and methods are very thoroughly documented in the Microsoft documentation, but it is quite daunting if you don’t already know about the functionality. I recently had a request to explain some security features of SQL Server so that internal audits could be completed. While thinking about the request and preparing … Read more
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03 October 2023
03 October 2023

SQL Server Row Level Security Deep Dive. Part 6 – RLS Attack Mitigations

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As seen in the previous section, there are several ways bad actors can attempt to bypass RLS. Attacks range from removing RLS, getting data from other systems or straight brute-force methods using side-channel attacks. Mechanisms exist for each potential attack that allow you to avoid the attack or monitor for the attack when avoidance isn’t … Read more
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17 September 2023
17 September 2023

SQL Server Row Level Security Deep Dive. Part 4 – Integration, Anti-patterns, and Alternatives

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One of the primary reasons to implement RLS is to facilitate reporting and ease the administrative burden. This section covers some considerations for using RLS with the primary Microsoft reporting engines and gives you an idea of things to look for in your reporting engine. Some anti patterns and alternatives to RLS are also examined. … Read more
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10 September 2023
10 September 2023

SQL Server Row Level Security Deep Dive. Part 3 – Performance and Troubleshooting

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Previous sections gave a brief introduction to RLS, including some common use cases. They also showed how to implement RLS using a few different methods. This section focuses on performance and potential issues you may encounter. There are two main areas where RLS can impact performance. The first is the user or authentication lookup. Some … Read more
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03 September 2023
03 September 2023

SQL Server Row Level Security Deep Dive. Part 2 – Setup and Examples

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The previous section in this series was an introduction to Row Level Security (RLS) and some use cases. This section focuses on basic setup of RLS, methods for implementing RLS and performance considerations with those implementations. The RLS access predicate is applied to every row returned to a client making performance a big factor in … Read more
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01 August 2023
01 August 2023

SQL Server Row Level Security Deep Dive. Part 1 – Introduction and Use Cases

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My initial goal of documenting and exploring SQL Server Row Level Security (RLS) was to show the basic functionality and focus on a few performance and administrative items. I also wanted to confirm my base assumption that it is very secure. This security makes it useful in many situations to segregate data by user groups, … Read more
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26 May 2023
26 May 2023

Unmasking SQL Server Dynamic Data Masking – Part 1 – Introduction

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This is the beginning of a series on SQL Server Dynamic Data Masking. Dynamic Data Masking is a concept familiar with all developers and users of sensitive data. It is implemented in SQL Server with simplicity and elegance, requiring minimal changes to front end applications, including reporting, and almost no changes to queries. The series … Read more
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