SQL Server Diaries

As a DBA, maintaining security of your SQL Server instances is one of the main duties to avoid unauthorised access to data. One of the methods used to gain access to data is to impersonate other users. Some of the weakness are due to end-user setting weak passwords. [Read More]

When creating logins on different environments, such as on development, test and production instances, where SQL Logins are used these are sometimes created using the same password on all environments. The credentials are usually transferred from the Developer’s machine to the DBA’s in a text file using the following syntax:... [Read More]

Organisations depend on data. Internationally, news agencies have reported innumerable times about data theft (one that hit the news recently lead to the closure of a newspaper), data loss, corruption caused by crafted bots using one of the various SQL Injection techniques, and many more. The amount of data generated... [Read More]

This week I had to issue a report of all the SQL Server versions and a list of databases hosted in each instance. The report was intended to plan the upgrade of a number of systems to the latest supported version of SQL Server. [Read More]

With the upcoming SQL Server 2012 version, Microsoft reduced the number of Editions to three and changed the licensing model. The main Editions that will be available are the Enterprise, Standard and the new Business Intelligence. Features of the Datacenter Edition have been included in the Enterprise Edition making this... [Read More]