Detect Databases with High VLF Count
Introduction Broadly speaking, the recovery process for SQL Server consists of reading the transaction log, rolling forward committed transactions, and rolling back uncommitted transactions, since the last checkpoint. The SQL Server Transaction Log is segmented…
How to Fix Databases with High VLF Count
In our earlier posts on recovery, we’ve covered the importance of properly managing SQL Server Transaction Log file growth. This includes how to detect databases with a high VLF count. It can be time-consuming to…
Generate Restore Database Commands
Restoring a database backup from one server to another, or from one database to another on the same machine, often requires MOVE … TO … commands. For databases with a lot of files, this can…
Using Check Constraints with Column Sets
In our previous post on how to use columns sets, we saw how to design a simple table with a set of sparse columns representing 3 different groups of columns. Each group of columns represents…
Using Column Sets for Sparsely Populated Columns
SQL Server has a little-known feature called Column Sets that is very useful when dealing with large numbers of sparse columns. Sparse columns are useful when you need a table with many columns where the…
Filesystem security for TDE Keys and Certificates
What is TDE, and why is filesystem security important? Transparent Database Encryption, or TDE, is used to encrypt an entire database. The encryption is “transparent” since once the database is loaded by SQL Server, anyone…
