Traditional database integrity checks in SQL Server can be time-consuming and resource-intensive, especially for large databases, even when using super cool tools like Ola Hallengren’s maintenance solution.
To address this challenge, I developed a TSQL script for performing incremental integrity checks, which significantly optimizes the process and reduces its impact on the server.
Read More »Incremental Integrity Check for Large Databases
Recently we’ve encountered an interesting use case for a customer.
They had a table with partitioning that they needed to be archived (with the help of said partitioning), but the ALTER TABLE SWITCH commands were failing with a peculiar error:
Error 4907, ‘ALTER TABLE SWITCH’ statement failed. The table ‘MyDB.dbo.PrtTable1’ has 4 partitions while index ‘IX1’ has 6 partitions.
This prompted some insightful research into some of the validations done by SQL Server behind the scenes when executing an ALTER TABLE SWITCH command.
Read More »Understanding ‘ALTER TABLE SWITCH statement failed’ errors 4907, 4908, and 4912
Learn how I resolved an interesting use case of a database stuck in Single-User mode after restoring from a backup. Read my latest blog post to find out more!
Read More »Resolved: Database Stuck in Single-User Mode
In this post, I will introduce you to a special T-SQL script that you can use for detecting potential SQL injection attacks in your database, as well as application-level bugs that you didn’t necessarily know you had.
Read More »Detect Application Bugs and Vulnerabilities You Didn’t Even Know About
In today’s post, I’ll be providing a useful script to detect and troubleshoot when the query plan cache contains too many different plans for the same query hash, which could happen as a result of possible parameterization issues.
Read More »Too Many Plans for the Same Query Hash
SQL Injection is something I would expect any reader of my blog to be familiar with. Despite being one of the oldest database attack methods, it still persists for decades on the OWASP Top Ten list of critical security risks to web applications.
In fact, instead of dying out, it only seems to be getting more clever and even automated. With “hacker bots” scouring the web and automatically probing for injection vulnerabilities to exploit. I know, as I’ve once been a victim of such attacks in the past.
But today I’m not actually going to talk about that. Today, I’m going to ask the question: When is SQL Injection dangerous, even if it’s perfectly safe?
Read More »Could SQL Injection be dangerous even when perfectly safe?
A few years ago, I created a couple of T-SQL scripts that can be used for comparing instance-level and database-level properties between two HA/DR replicas. Originally, this supported comparing only two servers. But recently, following a fan request, I upgraded the script to support an unlimited number of servers that you can compare to each other.
So, I figured, if one person found this useful, there must be more out there that would need this, right?
Read More »Compare SQL Server Instance Properties
Turns out there’s a shortage of solutions online for easily managing partitioned tables in SQL Server. Well… I guess I’ll have to do it myself!
Who doesn’t like Filtered Indexes, am I right? They’re pretty great, honestly. If… of course… you’re able to actually create them and utilize them in your specific use cases. That… unfortunately, could often become a complicated, if near impossible, task. So, what if our use case is not trivial enough to allow for filtered indexes?
Read More »Filtered Indexes with TRY_CONVERT, ISNUMERIC, and other complex expressions
This is a T-SQL script that I’m cross-publishing with the official Madeira Data Solutions blog.
This script generates various permutations and variations of common and weak passwords and uses the PWDCOMPARE function to check whether there are any enabled SQL logins that have these passwords.
Read More »Detect Weak Passwords in SQL Server