Oracle 12 New Limits

Hi!  I’ve been working on PL/SQL topics and wanted to share with you a new Oracle12 feature.  Oracle12 now allows for much longer varchar2, nvarchar2, and raw fields…in both the database (tables) and in PL/SQL.  The new 32K size not only lines up the...

3 Things You Didn’t Know About Black Box Trace

3 Things You Didn’t Know About Black Box Trace

Black Box Trace In earlier versions of SQL Server, there have been situations where root cause analysis was never possible because data saved by SQL was just confined to SQL Server Error Logs. From SQL Server 2005, there is a default trace that runs in the background...

Top 3 Security Concepts Any DBA Must Know

Top 3 Security Concepts Any DBA Must Know

DBAs understand how critical and important security is but due to other administration priorities, it can often take a back seat. When working inside an enterprise, the CIO’s are constantly worried about data theft and how to secure their environments. Most of the...

3 Things You Didn’t Know About Black Box Trace

Top 2 Errors When Working with Datetime Conversions

Working on universal applications has its own challenges. Often I have seen developers resort to unwanted conversions inside the database based on application needs. I am a firm supporter that databases are not the place to play with date and time conversions....

SQL Safe and AlwaysOn Availability Groups

SQL Safe and AlwaysOn Availability Groups

With the release of version 7.4 in August, SQL Safe added AlwaysOn Availability Group support by taking into account the preferred replica when backing up availability replicas. The preferred replica setting is only checked when backups are done through a SQL Safe...

Adhoc Database Monitoring Made Easy

There are times when you need to get adhoc monitoring information from your databases. Well, now you can! with Embarcadero's DBArtisan Analyst Pack. The Analyst Pack, it comprises of three main components 1) Space Analyst 2) Capacity Analyst and 3) Performance...

Altering wait categories in SQL Diagnostic Manager

SQL Diagnostic Manager ships with built-in categorization of wait types which are encountered in monitoring. These categories are used on both the Query Waits and Server Waits screens and can also affect whether data is captured at all. Recently I was asked whether it...

Achieving Data Modeling Nirvana

Data Modeling has forever been a realm of a segment of folks that are immersed into the nitty gritty of Database Architecture from a model to Database approach. These are the individuals are that encompass, what Architects are to Buildings! So you have decided on...

Did you choose to be a DBA?

Did you choose to be a DBA?

We have had this survey question and a few others on the community for a few months and thought we would share some of the results. This was a brief survey of questions to gather some insights into the SQL community of users. The 4 questions were the following: How...

Top 3 Security Concepts Any DBA Must Know

Top 4 Startup Parameters DBAs Must Know

Introduction Working on a server is always something DBAs cherish. With every environment that they monitor, they want to know how applications can be optimally run on a specific server. In this constant pursuit of performance tuning, they always find unique ways of...

Black Friday Sale – Flat 30% OFF on all products

Update: Thank you all for making this campaign a huge success. We are extending this offer till Dec 1st, 23:59 PST. Many corporate users requested us to extend the offer as they require time to get official approval. Pick your copy right now! Use coupon code cm2014 to...

Internals of Statistics That You Were Not Aware Of

Internals of Statistics That You Were Not Aware Of

As a developer statistics is one of the important things we need to know while doing SQL Server query performance tuning exercise. Let us try to make a correlation with real world example to make sure these concepts stay in our memory. Imagine if you need to travel...

3 More Reasons SQL Server Service is Not Responding

NOTE: This content has been updated and expanded in a whitepaper: 7 Reasons Your SQL Server Service Won't Start, by Pinal Dave ---------- After our previous blog on SQL Server Service is not responding, there were few who wanted to know if there were more reasons....

SQL Server Data Modeling Made Easy

Microsoft SQL Server is slowly beginning to become the preferred platform for most organization big and small. So it would make sense in building Data Models that would be scalable for the Microsoft Data Platform? Well, you have a choice! And enter Embarcadero...