This post discusses how to set up log shipping, which is a disaster recovery (DR) solution, with existing Microsoft® SQL Server® AlwaysOn-configured databases.

Microsoft® SQL Server® Query Store, as the name suggests, is like a store that captures the database history of executed queries, query runtime execution statistics, and execution plans. Because the data is stored on a disk, you can retrieve the query store data anytime for troubleshooting purposes, and SQL Server restarts do not affect the data. Use Query Store, which was introduced in SQL Server 2016 and is available in all later editions, to troubleshoot performance issues caused by query plan changes.

The blog describes corruptions that can occur at the database level in Microsoft® SQL Server®, how to detect them, and how to correct them by using advanced restore and repair techniques.

Microsoft® introduced a new feature called a hybrid buffer pool in SQL Server® 2019 (Preview) CTP 2.1. This feature enables you to directly access data pages in database files stored in persistent memory (PMEM) devices.

Database compatibility level, one of the database level settings, impacts how a database functions. Each new version of Microsoft® SQL Server® introduces many new features, most of which require new keywords and change certain behaviors that existed in earlier versions. To provide maximum backward compatibility, Microsoft enables us to set the compatibility level according to our needs.

Microsoft® has focused on security in SQL Server®, and almost all releases either have an enhancement to existing features or have introduced new security features. In SQL Server 2016, Microsoft introduced many new security features that help users protect their data, including Row-Level Security, Always Encrypted, and Dynamic Data Masking.

Originally published by TriCore: November 7, 2017

Microsoft® introduced the idea of self-service business intelligence (BI) back in 2009, announcing Power Pivot for Microsoft Excel® 2010. After several years, Microsoft released version 1 of Power BI®, but the user experience wasn’t great. Microsoft collected feedback from end users and crafted a newer version of Power BI that became popular. This blog provides an introduction to this tool.

Originally published by Tricore: April 20, 2017

SQL Server 2016 introduced three new principal security features: Always Encrypted, dynamic data masking, and row level security.

This blog introduces the dynamic data masking (DDM) feature.

Are you considering an upgrade to a more modern version of SQL Server? Are you choosing between SQL Server 2016 or SQL Server 2017? If so, then my advice is to upgrade to SQL Server 2017 as I explain in this post.

The release of SQL Server technology provides lots of interesting new features for SQL administrators and developers to ponder. The Community Technology Preview (CTP) 2.0 for SQL Server vNext (generally called SQL Server 2017) is no exception. Many updates have been implemented in the existing features and services of the application. In this blog post, I discuss what is new in the database engine of SQL Server 2017 from a database administrator (DBA) perspective.

How do you read execution plans? From right to left, left to right, or by checking out costs? Or what about objects like index scans, table scans, and lookups? This blog discusses how to read a Microsoft® SQL Server execution plan.