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Category: Breaking News

News & Opinion

New SQL Server Management Studio 17.5: It’s Classified

February 15, 2018

SQL Server Management Studio 17.5 is out, and new in this release is a SQL Data Discovery & Classification feature. The idea is that it'll scan your database, identify columns containing potentially sensitive data, and help you become compliant with regulations like PCI, HIPAA, and GDPR.

Let's see how it works on the Stack Overflow public data dump.

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Production DBA

Breaking News: Using TDE on 2016? Doing Backups? Time to Patch.

September 21, 2017

Normally, when you use Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) to secure your database at rest, you can't get backup compression. Encrypted data basically looks like random data, and random data doesn't compress well.

SQL Server 2016 introduced the ability to compress your TDE databases. Yay!

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News & Opinion

Availability Groups: More Planned Downtime for Less Unplanned Downtime

December 7, 2016

I often hear companies say, "We can never ever go down, so we'd like to implement Always On Availability Groups."

Let's say on January 1, 2016, you rolled out a new Availability Group on SQL Server 2014. It's the most current version available at the time, and you deploy Service Pack 1, Cumulative Update 4 (released 2015/12/22). You're fully current, and it's a stable engine from 2014 - how many more bugs can they find, right?

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Performance Tuning

Breaking News: 2016 Query Store cleanup doesn’t work on Standard or Express Editions

July 4, 2016

If you're using SQL Server 2016's awesome new feature, Query Store, there's a new bug with automatic cleanup. Books Online explains: Automatic data cleanup fails on editions other than Enterprise and Developer. Consequently, space used by the Query Store will grow over time until configured limit is reached, if data is not purged manually. If…

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News & Opinion

“Breaking” News: Don’t Install SQL Server 2014 SP1

April 16, 2015

Yesterday, Microsoft announced availability of Service Pack 1, saying: As part of our continued commitment to software excellence for our customers, this upgrade is available to all customers with existing SQL Server 2014 deployments via the download links below. Yeah, about that commitment to software excellence. This morning, the download is gone: Notice: The SQL SSIS…

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News & Opinion

The Hard Truth About Patching SQL Server Availability Groups (Hotfixes, Cumulative Updates, and Service Packs)

February 3, 2015

As a DBA, you're responsible for identifying necessary updates to keep your SQL Servers healthy. Your business may have some mandates about the frequency of patches, but even if they don't, you have a duty to look out for Cumulative Updates, Service Packs, and out of band hotfixes that can prevent downtime and prevent performance problems. It's your task to test and apply them as needed.

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