This post explores SQL Server triggers, a tool for automating database tasks. Learn how triggers can enforce data integrity, maintain referential integrity, and automate routine operations to enhance efficiency. The post includes practical examples and explains how to implement triggers to improve operational efficiency and compliance in database management. No previous experience with triggers is required to understand their benefits and applications.
Category: Tutorial
Automated Database Health Checks: Leveraging SMO in PowerShell
Safeguard your databases with automated PowerShell scripts! This guide walks you through creating scripts to check critical database health metrics like size and free space. Learn how to connect to SQL Server and format results for clarity. The post also explores optional features for enhanced functionality.
The DNN Listener: Guide to Distributed Network Names (DNNs) for SQL Server VMs
This guide explores Distributed Network Names (DNNs) for managing AlwaysOn Availability Groups on Azure SQL Server VMs. It explains how DNNs differ from Virtual Network Names (VNNs), highlights the benefits of DNNs (simplified configuration, enhanced flexibility, improved availability), and provides a step-by-step walkthrough for setting up a DNN listener using PowerShell.
Optimizing Large Tables in SQL Server Using Table Partitioning
SQL Server table partitioning is an invaluable feature for improving database performance and management, especially for large-scale databases. This blog post provides an overview of setting up and managing partitioned tables in SQL Server, using TSQL commands. Partitioning helps manage large tables by dividing them into smaller, more manageable segments known as partitions. Each partition can be stored on a separate filegroup, enhancing query performance and simplifying maintenance tasks such as backups and index rebuilds.
Capturing SQL Server Inventory with PowerShell
Maintaining an accurate and comprehensive inventory of your SQL Server environment is crucial for effective database management, ensuring security, and meeting compliance requirements. With PowerShell, database administrators can automate the collection of detailed information about SQL Server instances and databases, streamlining the inventory process. This blog post introduces a PowerShell script designed to efficiently gather SQL Server inventory data, separating instance-level information from database-specific details into two distinct reports.
SQL Server Stress Testing: A Step-by-Step Guide Using ostress
Today we will explore a practical approach to enhancing the performance of your SQL Server instances using ostress. This tool, part of the RML Utilities for SQL Server, is a game-changer for database administrators and developers looking to simulate heavy workloads and ensure their databases can handle the pressures of real-world applications. This comprehensive guide will walk you through the essentials of downloading RML Utilities, setting up your test environment, and leveraging ostress for performance testing.
Ensuring Continuous Data Capture in SQL Server Across Failovers
Discover how to configure Change Data Capture (CDC) in SQL Server to be High Availability (HADR) aware. This guide covers step-by-step instructions to ensure continuous data capture and system resilience across failovers, minimizing manual intervention and maximizing uptime.
Automating Data Insertion into SQL Server with PowerShell
PowerShell is a powerful scripting language that can automate a wide range of tasks, including database operations. In this post, we’ll demonstrate how to create a DataTable in PowerShell, populate it with random data, and then save that data into a table in SQL Server using SqlBulkCopy. We will first look at what is required for this task and then we’ll script it out.
Automating SQL Server Database Refreshes with PowerShell
In today’s agile software development environment, keeping lower environments like development and testing synchronized with production data is essential. It not only helps in identifying issues early but also ensures that features are developed and tested against the most current dataset. This blog introduces a PowerShell script that automates the process of refreshing a SQL Server database in lower environments using a “copy only” backup from a production environment. By diving into the script, we aim to shed light on how automation can simplify database management tasks, making them more efficient and error-resistant.
Leveraging C# within PowerShell for Advanced ETL Operations in SQL Server
The ability to efficiently perform Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) operations is essential for database administrators and developers, particularly those working with data warehouses and others with large data transformation. While PowerShell is a powerful tool in its own right for database management, embedding C# within PowerShell scripts can significantly enhance your ETL processes. This blog post will guide you through a practical example of using C# code within a PowerShell script to perform ETL operations on SQL Server tables. We’ll start with extracting data from a SQL Server, followed by transforming it using C#, and finally, loading it back into a different table.