Category Archives: DBA

Making SSMS Work for You

I love taking advantage of the customizable keyboard shortcuts in SSMS. You can put in stored procedures to be run when you press certain key combinations. For example, I have sp_helptext run when I press CTRL+5 and an expanded version … Continue reading

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Data Compression

If you’re not compressing your tables and indexes, read this: http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2009/08/sql-server-data-compression-its-a-party/. We were able to add a complete additional dev region with the disk savings. And backups are compressable too!

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Where Are All The People Who Want to be a DBA?

I have never met anyone who took me up on learning to be a dba. I really like the work myself, figure others would too, and have gone through some genuine lengths to provide opportunities. For example, I volunteered at … Continue reading

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Local Policy Settings

I have a bunch of sql servers and don’t know whether the required local policies are in place to take advantage of the available memory. I first thought checking who could do what could be found via WMI but nothing … Continue reading

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Changing The Port Used By SQL Server

We need to change the port sql server uses from the default to… something else. Towards that end I want to make aliases on all the end user computers and other sql servers so they can still connect without problems. … Continue reading

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database mail problem

What to do if database mail is not working. Mail was not being sent. First I queried SELECT * FROM msdb.dbo.sysmail_event_log and saw in the description field “The mail could not be sent to the recipients because of the mail … Continue reading

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sql traces

I was asked to trace department’s access to a certain sql server here. To create a trace that is run by sql server, open profiler and define your trace. Then, while it is not running, you can script it by … Continue reading

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Finding a job

One of my friends asked me how I found a job so fast after such a long vacation. Here is what I wrote to her: Does your resume shout out that you meet the job poster’s qualifications requirements? Here is my … Continue reading

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using sp_msforeachdb

I really like sp_msforeachdb. For example, here is the sql to my regular maintenance jobs: exec sp_MSforeachdb ‘DBCC CHECKDB(?) with NO_INFOMSGS, ALL_ERRORMSGS’ exec sp_msforeachdb ‘if db_id(”?”) <> db_id(”master”) and db_id(”?”) <> db_id(”tempdb”) begin use [?];exec sp_dbreindex_or_indexdefrag;end’ exec sp_msforeachdb ‘if db_id(”?”) … Continue reading

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Removing a startup stored procedure

In my combing through of the sql servers I found a startup stored procedure on one of the sql servers here. I didn’t recognize the tables it created or its name, so I asked around: no one else knew anything either. … Continue reading

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