Getting the most out of your SQL Server
If you’ve stumbled on this blog, then the likelihood is that SQL Server performance is pretty critical to your business. Whether you’re chiefly responsible for your organisation’s IT strategy, or a newly-appointed DBA needing to make an impact, the onus is on you to maximise the not-inconsiderable investment your organisation has made. Over the past […]
SQL Server – Hashing an Email Address
“When storing an email address in a SQL Server table, is it more performant to store it as a hashed value rather than plain text?” This question was asked by one of our Remote Database Administration clients, to much speculation around the (remote) office. So, let’s find out by generating some data and running some […]
SQL Server – Transparent Data Encryption is Standard!
Last year, Microsoft announced that Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) would be part of SQL Server 2019 Standard edition. This was BIG news – TDE has been around since SQL Server 2008, but until now, it’s been for those lucky guys with Enterprise-deep pockets. You can read about TDE here in one of my earlier blogs (which […]
SQL Server – Plan Cache Bloat
Plan Cache bloat is generally bad – it wastes CPU, it wastes memory. Plan Cache bloat happens when SQL Server stores multiple query plans for seemingly identical queries….except they’re not identical. Let’s look at an example. Before we begin, let’s ditch the plan cache as this will help highlight the impact of our code. DON’T […]
SQL Server and GDPR: How to Protect Your Data
SQL Server … GDPR … one of these is my favourite thing to blog about … the other is GDPR. Fortunately, this blog isn’t about GDPR! It’s about SQL Server, or more specifically, how to secure your data in SQL Server. However, if you care about GDPR (and let’s face it, we’re constantly told we […]
SQL Server Waits: Why?
I’m British, and we’re used to waiting in line for things, but why is my SQL Server waiting? This is a question that comes up a lot, and is a lesson 101 problem for any Database Admin. We know that SQL Server waits, but is this bad? Should we be doing something, or buying something? What do […]
