Author: Sachin Diwakar

  • Introduction to Windows PowerShell (Part1)

    Introduction to Windows PowerShell (Part1)

    Windows PowerShell is a configuration management framework to perform administrative tasks.This tool is developed by Microsoft & available from 2006.This is one of the best tool for SQL DBA’s.It is a command line shell and associated scripting language. There are so many sites availabe giving knowledge on powershell, I will not go on theory part.…

  • SQL Server Setup Discovery Reports & Related Queries

    SQL Server Setup Discovery Reports & Related Queries

    Microsoft Sql Server has given so many options to check which version of SQL installed on server. With this Discovery Report we can check how many instances installed on the server, what is the version, the instance belong to which edition, how many features are enabled for that instance, whether it is clustered or not.…

  • Series : Versus

    Series : Versus

      Our Versus Series is a comparsion series of blogs. Here, we will try to compare one concept with another or one feature with another. SN Date Topic  1  04 Jun 2015  CAST vs. CONVERT      

  • CAST vs. CONVERT

    CAST vs. CONVERT

    Datatype conversion is a common scenario that we face while writing SQL queries. Cast and Convert are two functions provided by SQL for this purpose. But what is the difference between the two? CAST and CONVERT provide similar functonality. CAST is according to ANSI standards and has a simpler syntax. CONVERT on the other hand…

  • Series : SQL DBA Cheatcode

    Series : SQL DBA Cheatcode

    SQL DBA Cheatcode is a series or you can say a collection of those SQL Server scripts which we find very useful while troubleshooting issues day to day. These scripts are trusted and tested however there are some chances that a script may not work with some versions of SQL Server. SN Date Topic Part…

  • SQL DBA Cheatcode Part 6 : Know your SQL Server

    SQL DBA Cheatcode Part 6 : Know your SQL Server

    Hello Readers, I am here adding few more feathers to our SQL DBA Cheatcode series hat. If you have not read our others blogs of this series, you may do it by clicking the links below or you may visit here again. SQL DBA Cheatcode Part 5 : Playing with indexes SQL DBA Cheatcode Part 4…

  • SQL DBA Cheatcode Part 5 : Playing with indexes

    SQL DBA Cheatcode Part 5 : Playing with indexes

    Hello Readers, Today, I am trying to put down few but very useful index related scripts. I have used these scripts many times with different versions of SQL Server. 1. Missing Index : Missing indexes are one reason why an SQL query takes longer (much longer) to complete. Here’s how to find out about them and…

  • Misleading Message: DBCC execution completed. If DBCC printed error messages, contact your system administrator

    Misleading Message:  DBCC execution completed. If DBCC printed error messages, contact your system administrator

    Hello Reader, Recently, it was encountered that one of the jobs which was running fine since ages has started failing with below error message. Message : Executed as user: Domain\MSSQLServer. DBCC execution completed. If DBCC printed error messages, contact your system administrator. [SQLSTATE 01000] (Message 2528) SQLServerAgent Error: 32. [SQLSTATE 42000] (Error 22022). The step failed. So,…

  • Proactive Monitor of System Database Files

    Proactive Monitor of System Database Files

    Dear Readers, Today I am writing about a very common problem of Outages that are caused by system database data/log files growth. Problem: generally, we face this issue when system database file is filled up and it can impact to Business an unexpected downtime. This applies to those environments where monitoring/alerting mechanism is not configured properly or not…

  • System Databases : Restrictions Matrix

    System Databases : Restrictions Matrix

    Dear Readers, Today, I tried to consolidate a list of restrictions that are applied to system databases. Restrictions are nothing but the operations that you “can not” perform on a system database. Below is a consolidated matrix (rows are restrictions) and when you see YES in the column, that means restriction is applied. If there is nothing, that…

  • Configure SSIS to use Named Instances

    Configure SSIS to use Named Instances

    SQL Server family has various services like Database Services (SQL Server), Analysis Services, Reporting Services which supports Named Instance of the services but there are few others like Integration Services which does not support named instance. This means, we can have one and only one service of Integration Services on each server. By default, the…

  • Question : Who is a DBA?

    Question : Who is a DBA?

    This post is targeted for those who are keen or new to DBA profession. Based on my experience I tried to write about DBAs and Possible career paths related to it. Who is a DBA? An IT Professional, who is responsible for Installation, Configuration, Upgrading, Administration, Monitoring, Maintenance and Security of Databases in any organization.…

  • SQL Server Day to Day issues- Part2

    SQL Server Day to Day issues- Part2

    Here comes another issue that is being faced by DBAs frequently. (Read part 1 here) Issue- SQL Server Instance fails to start A number of problems can prevent the SQL Server service from starting. Let’s go through each of them. 1) Service account password incorrect or account locked or disabled If someone changes the SQL…

  • SQL DBA Cheatcode Part 4 : Few Important Queries for any DBA

    SQL DBA Cheatcode Part 4 : Few Important Queries for any DBA

    Dear Readers,   I am back with part 4 of Cheatcode series after gap of almost one month. In First three Parts of this series I covered, Few Generic Scripts, Replication Specific Scripts & Database Backup\Restore Specific Scripts.   In this Series, I try to cover those Scripts which we can use in our day…