Concatenation of Different SQL Server Data Types
Is there a way to concatenate different data types in TSQL that does not require me to convert everything to the same data type. In this tip we show how this can be done.
Chad Churchwell is a SQL Server professional specializing in High Availability, Disaster Recovery, and Replication. He has been in IT for 14 years, working with SQL Server for 10 years, and is currently a enior DBA Consultant with Pragmatic Works. He is active in the community speaking at several SQL Saturday events.
Concatenate SQL Server Column Values with CONCAT()
In this tip we look at different ways to concatenate SQL Server string data and how to deal with NULL values when concatenating strings.
Security for SQL Server User Defined Data Types
I have a group of developers that I support and they are reporting they cannot see columns within their tables. I have granted them db_datareader permissions which is a standard at my company for QA environments. Why can't they see their column definition
Issues replicating XML data types for databases in SQL Server 2000 compatibility mode
We have a legacy application that was not certified for SQL 2005, so we were running it on a SQL 2005 server using SQL 2000 compatibility mode. The in house development team is increasing functionality and created a table with XML data types. The problem
How to Identify and Fix Incorrect SQL Server Operator Settings
As DBA's we rely heavily on email notifications when things go wrong in our environment such as failed jobs or alerts. In practice this is usually done through Operators in the SQL Server Agent. As things change over time, some of this data is out of date
Configure SQL Server Security to Allow Only Browsing of SSIS Packages
I was recently approached by the DEV team and since they have no access in QA and Prod, they asked if they could be able to just see the package and folder structures through SSMS from their workstations. Since Integration Services connectivity is outside
Backup SQL Server Always On Availability Groups Databases
So I am using this new technology called Availability Groups that was introduced in SQL Server 2012. I have heard I can offload my backups to a secondary replica, but I am not sure how that works or how to configure those backups. Are there any limitatio
Email alerts when new databases are created in SQL Server
Often times as a SQL Server DBA we find databases that appear on our servers that are not part of our backup plan or maintenance plan. This could be a DEV server where developers have CREATE DATABASE (MSDN) permission or other applications where Admins ca
Querying SQL Server Agent Job History Data
Use these handy TSQL queries to query SQL Server Agent job history and to make better sense of the data and for better analysis of how jobs are runnin
SQL Server Contained Databases for Database Refreshes
Often times we are tasked with moving databases from the production environment to a lower level environment such as QA or DEV. One typical struggle is getting the logins correct and aligned with users within the database. Often after a restore you are l
Changing SQL Server’s Default Snapshot Folder for Replication
We set up replication initially by using the GUI and accepting all defaults and now due to growth we need to change our default replication snapshot folder location to another drive since the current location is a local disk and cannot be expanded to acco
Parameterized Row Filters in SQL Server Merge Replication
I have been tasked with taking a table of sales data and replicating it to multiple locations with each Sales Territory's data going to a different location. At first I thought I would have to create a filtered publication for each SalesTerrritoryKey and
Effect of Instant File Initialization within SQL Server
It is a best practice to pre-allocate databases and not to rely on autogrow to expand your database. Often times during a server migration, or setting up a new SQL instance, or during disaster recovery where downtime needs to be minimized you need to crea