Category Archives: Uncategorized

Just when you thought the worst of 2020 was past

Posted on 17. December 2020 by admin

Today I got an e-mail from the PASS board indicating that the organization is dissolving.  It reads: Dear Bennett,   PASS could not have anticipated the impact COVID-19 would have on the world, and on our organization. We are all … Continue reading →

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Photography Hobby Stuff

Posted on 31. August 2018 by admin

A few weeks ago I bought a Pentax Spotmatic at thrift store. It ran around 15 bucks.  I bought it because it appeared to have a nearly pristine Super Takumar 50mm F1.4 lens.  Post-purchase and on closer inspection, I found … Continue reading →

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Azure Cert

Posted on 27. June 2017 by admin

Today I finished and passed the Microsoft/edX  DAT219x: Provisioning SQL Server and Azure SQL Databases certification course.  It covered provisioning and configuring Azure SQL databases, i.e., PAAS, as well as building SQL Server instances on both Azure Windows and Linux … Continue reading →

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SQL Server 2017 on Linux POC

Posted on 24. June 2017 by admin

Fun, new stuff today. I installed an instance of Ubuntu on my Oracle VirtualBox hypervisor and then installed SQL Server 2017 using the directions found here. Once installation was complete I used systemctl status mssql-server to validate that the services … Continue reading →

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AlwaysOn Availability Group Aware SQL Agent Job Step

Posted on 6. May 2017 by Bennett

The SQL Agent job step that I present here is intended to make a job execute only if the node currently owns a specified replica. The T-SQL for this job step leverages a function that was published in SQL Server … Continue reading →

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24 Hours of PASS Spring 2017

Posted on 4. May 2017 by admin

The Spring 2017 24HOP focused on data security, a subject near and dear to me. One of favorite presentations was Bob Pusateri’s Passive Security for Hostile Environments. He showed what measures you can take when you have a situation where … Continue reading →

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Controlling Large Deletions and Transaction Log Growth

Posted on 1. March 2017 by admin

Deleting from very large tables can cause uncontrolled transaction log growth.  The way around this is to perform an iterative TOP(n) delete where you limit the number of rows to be deleted in each batch.  I got this idea from … Continue reading →

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Columnstore Index Performance Improvements

Posted on 5. February 2014 by Bennett

We have dimensional data mart running on SQL Server 2012.  The larger fact tables vary between 7 and 17 billion rows.  No fancy data types, no LOB data types, and all the join keys are ints.  There were already well-tuned … Continue reading →

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Way too Many Virtual Log Files

Posted on 15. October 2011 by admin

Holy cow! Today I encountered a database with nearly 10,000 VLFs! I should have taken a screenshot. I used Kimberly Tripp’s guidance to get things under control

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Moving Master and Resource databases

Posted on 29. June 2009 by Bennett

You may encounter the error message “SQL SERVER is in SINGLE USER MODE and only one administrator can connect” when moving the Master and Resource databases when following the procedure in BOL.  It happens right after you bring up SQL … Continue reading →

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Converting an existing Perfmon .BLG file to CSV

Posted on 17. December 2008 by Bennett

You may run across the situation where you need to import an existing Perfmon (or System Monitor) binary log file into and Excel spreadsheet or SQL database.  The obvious first step is to convert it to CSV format.  It took … Continue reading →

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Moving

Posted on 3. April 2008 by admin

I originally blogged on Yahoo 360, but it is a lame duck, so I’m moving my postings over to WordPress.

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Retina WiFi Scanner

Posted on 13. February 2007 by Bennett

I audited my Wireless Access Point using the free Retina WiFi Scanner from eEye Digital Security. According to it, my WPA PSK key length was too short, so I increased it to around 25 characters. If you look at the … Continue reading →

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Earlier Postings

Posted on 11. February 2007 by admin

…stuff imported from an earlier journal 2/3/07  I stumbled across a number of useful SQL security tools at SQLSecurity.com: http://www.sqlsecurity.com/Tools/FreeTools/tabid/65/Default.aspx 1/23/07  I ran into a problem configuring SQL XML support in IIS 6.0. When I went to do a query … Continue reading →

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