SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) is now a separate installation, so it can be updated without any impact on the SQL Server engine. Updating the newer versions is as easy as you would expect but removing an older SSMS that was included as part of SQL Server requires a little bit of concentration.
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Using a synonym is a way to create a different ‘pointer’ to a database object. This can be used to provide an alternative name for an object, or even an alternative location, such as a different database.
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Binary Large Objects (BLOB) data can be a graphical image, a pdf document, a music file or any of a wide range of data types, which can generally be saved into a SQL Server database.
As part of a series of investigations I’m currently performing within SQL Server, I have looked at how BLOB data can be saved and retrieved.
Saving the data is reasonably simple. Retrieving it, less so….
The Microsoft documentation tells us that the SessionId column, within ASPStateTempSessions, consists of the Session ID plus the App ID. Although accurate, the method used for this does not make it obvious.
In a previous article article, I wrote about how to find out where the SQL Server error log is located. That particular article was in case your server instance did not start and you needed more information.
If your SQL Server instance is working, there is another way to find the location of the error logs – with a SQL query, which can then be used within PowerShell.
So, you have a multi-terabyte database and a SQL Server full backup. Just imagine that you do something that wrecks the data in one table (and of course, that has never happened), the only secure copy is within a backup file that will take several hours to restore and you don’t have the time or the space for such an act. Continue reading
I need to install a new PowerShell module onto a server that has no access to the Internet, so I am unable to use the Install-Module command.
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Background
Whilst reading up on the finer details of High Availability Groups (HA Groups) I have discovered that it can, under certain circumstances, use Snapshot Isolation Level and therefore, row versioning. This has implications with your monitoring and maintenance tasks.
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Because one of the nodes in our AG was having Windows updates applied, it was necessary to suspend data movements for all databases involved in the AG, on that server. Upon my return (after the maintenance was completed) I was unable to connect to the server, with a message that didn’t really match the circumstances – or so I believed.
Introduction
Continuing my series of XML articles I’m going to move from XML RAW to XML AUTO with a handful of examples that share features between the two. Continue reading
