Uncategorized – Page 3 – T-SQL Tuesday

T-SQL Tuesday #076 – Text Searching/Processing

Invitation and wrap-up from Bob Pusateri.

This month, I’d like to talk about text, particularly searching and processing it. Many systems contain large amounts of text in one way or another. Often, that text ends up being stored in a database, and SQL Server has offered Full-Text Search for quite a while now to handle such usage cases. But that’s only a small part of the story.

If you’re using SQL Server Full-Text Search, I’d love to hear from you. But I’d also love to hear from anyone using any other kind of text searching or processing methods. Maybe your organization previously used SQL Server Full-Text Search but you’ve since moved to a different application. Maybe you have a tale of success or woe from a previous job. Maybe you don’t let any of your text search operations touch a relational database with a 10-foot pole. Whatever your story is, I hope you’ll please consider sharing it with us all on Tuesday, March 8.

T-SQL Tuesday #075 – Power BI

Invitation and roundup from Jorge Segarra.

Hello everyone and welcome to this month’s T-SQL Tuesday. This month’s topic is all about Power BI! If you’re reading this and thinking “crap, I’m not a BI person!”, don’t you fret. My intention is to make folks who normally don’t use BI on a day to day basis try their hand at creating cool new visualizations and reports with Power BI and seeing how the other side lives. Maybe it can spark some ideas on how you can make use of it in your operational day-to-day. For the BI folks, let’s see your creative side! What cool things can you show us with Power BI?

Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to create and publish your very own Power BI report! Great news, one of the latest features of Power BI to come out is the ability to publish your report to the web so when you create and publish your report, embed it in your T-SQL Tuesday post! Here’s a couple of great examples of this feature in action:

T-SQL Tuesday #074 – Be the Change

Invitation and roundup from Robert Davis.

The topic for T-SQL Tuesday #74 is Be the Change. More specifically, data changes. How do you track changing data? How do you do your ETL? How do you clean or scrub your data? Anything related to changing data. Give us your most interesting post involving changing data next Tuesday, January 12, 2016.

2015 T-SQL Tuesdays

December – T-SQL Tuesday #73 – Naughty or Nice? – As you work with SQL Server look around you. Is your environment Naughty or Nice?
November – T-SQL Tuesday #72 – Data Modeling Gone Wrong (summary)- I would like to invite you to share some data modeling practices that should be avoided, and how to fix them when they do occur.
October – T-SQL Tuesday #71 – SQL Server Audit () – For this month, I would like to invite you to write about Auditing. Auditing is certainly a security related topic, and with that fits right in with the August topic (Encryption).
September – T-SQL Tuesday #70 – The Enterprise (roundup) – How do you manage an enterprise? What tricks do you use? What are the challenges?
August – T-SQL Tuesday #69 – Encryption (roundup) – Write about how you use encryption, why not, what’s blocking you, or what you just learned.
July – T-SQL Tuesday #68 – Just Say No to Defaults (roundup) – running with defaults is far from ideal. We all change things after we install an instance, sometimes not until we encounter a problem. Write about something you’ve dealt with as far as defaults go.
June – T-SQL Tuesday #67 – Extended Events (Wrap-up) – How have you used extended events? If you haven’t, try to learn something, set up a session, and write about it.
May – T-SQL Tuesday #66 – Monitoring (roundup) – you must monitor your systems, your SSIS packages, your reports, something. Talk about monitoring in SQL Server.
Apr – T-SQL Tuesday #65 – Teach Something New (roundup) – Completely open ended. Teach yourself something new, anything, about SQL Server and write about it. Bonus for talking about how you learned something new.
Mar – T-SQL Tuesday #64 – Calling All Tuners and Gearheads (roundup) – Russ wants posts tackling “focused” performance tuning. By “focused,” he means tackle something head on; the more secret sauce, tricks, code samples, operator costs, or demonstrable metrics against a defined problem the better.
Feb -T-SQL Tuesday #63 – How Do You Manage Security? (roundup) – What tips, tricks, techniques, or philosophies do you have around security?
Jan – T-SQL Tuesday #62 – HealthySQL (roundup) – How do you ensure your instances are healthy? Monitoring? Maintenance? Something else?

T-SQL Tuesday #073 – Naughty or Nice?

Invitation from Bradley Balls.

Since it is the holiday season, I wanted to keep this holiday themed. I couldn’t help but think of the approaching Christmas holiday. Every year I get my children to make a list of presents that they would like to get from Santa Clause. If we are out and about and they start to misbehave I remind them about their list and that only Nice children get presents.

“So Balls,” you say, “What in the ever loving wide wide world of sports does this have to do with SQL Server?!?”

As you work with SQL Server look around you. Is your environment Naughty or Nice? If it is Naughty what’s wrong with it? What would you do to fix it? Do you have a scrooge that is giving you the Christmas chills? Perhaps you have servers of past, present, and future haunting you. Maybe you are looking at SQL Server 2016 like some bright shining star in the east.

First and foremost the rules.

Rule 1: Don’t get yourself fired. If your boss is a scrooge don’t name names, don’t hint to hard. It’s okay to protect yourself. You want to write about events we can look back on and reflect over, not events HR would *love* to know about. Perhaps a reminder of SQL Server’s past would be better than that of SQL present.

Rule 2: Some Time next Tuesday using GMT, here’s a link to a GMT time convertor, publish your blog post. For example in the US that would cover 8 pm Monday to 8 pm Tuesday.

Rule 3: Make sure that you include the Image at the top of the page helping to identify your post as a T-SQL Tuesday blog. Then come back here and post a link in the comments so I can find them. Before the end of the week I’ll do a round up of all the blogs.

Extra Credit!

Tweet your blog with the hash tag #tsql2sday, use SQL Server 2016, & go read someone else’s blog on the subject!

T-SQL Tuesday #072 – Data Modeling Gone Wrong

Invitation and roundup from Mickey Stuewe.

The purpose of SQL Server, is to make sure that the databases are kept safe and run as optimally as possible. The problem is, if the data model is flawed, or not maintained, then no matter how optimally the SQL Server is configured, the database won’t be able to function efficiently.

I would like to invite you to share some data modeling practices that should be avoided, and how to fix them when they do occur.

T-SQL Tuesday #070 – The Enterprise

Invitation and roundup from Jen McCown.

Here is your invitation for T-SQL Tuesday #70, and the topic is:

Strategies for managing an enterprise

We define “enterprise” in a number of ways, but I tend to default to two definitions: “the things I’m in charge of” and “anything I don’t want to do manually”. In other words, you don’t need a large shop to have yourself an enterprise. Of course, feel free to modify the definition to what works for you.

So. How do you manage an enterprise? Grand strategies? Tips and tricks? Techno hacks? Do tell.

T-SQL Tuesday #071 – SQL Server Audit

Invitation from Sebastian Meine.

For this month, I would like to invite you to write about Auditing. Auditing is certainly a security related topic, and with that fits right in with the August topic (Encryption).

But don’t write this up as yet another “boring” security topic. There are other use cases for auditing too. The built-in SQL Server Audit feature for example can be used to track down how many different applications are accessing a particular table.

There are several approaches you can take with this topic. You could tell us a story:

Have you encountered a situation where auditing saved the day?
Where you able to stop an ongoing attack because auditing alerted you?
Have you encountered a situation, in which auditing would have been helpful, but was not set up?
Have you worked with the SQL Server Audit feature? What is particularly interesting to you about it?
Do you think that everybody should use some form of auditing? Let us know, why.
Do you think auditing is a waste of resources? We would like to hear more.
Are you forced to be compliant? Under what regulation? HIIPA, PCI, CCC? How did auditing help to get you compliant?

If stories are not your thing, let us know how you use auditing. Or, write about how to use a fascinating piece of SQL Server Audit.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of SQL Server Audit over other possible audit implementations, like triggers, traces, Extended Events or external tools like log file readers?
How can you use SQL Server Audit to see if a particular table or procedure is still in use?
What is the difference between a Server Audit Specification and a Database Audit Specification and when should you use which?
SQL Server Audit is based on Extended Events. What does it offer that XEs do not provide?

Finally, you could go totally meta:

How do you audit the audit? How do you make sure that the audit does not just get disabled by an adversary?
How do you monitor your audit log to make sure you get alerted when something irregular is happening?

I hope I was able to spark your interest. I can’t wait to see you (or at least your post) next week at the party.

T-SQL Tuesday #069 – Encryption

Invitation and roundup from Ken Wilson.

This month I am honored to be your host, and the topic is encryption. There are so many options to encrypt data in SQL Server, and yet, it is often a feature that is left unused. If you are struggling for ideas to write about, consider a few questions to get started. How are you encrypting your data? Why did you choose that option over another? What were some of the performance impacts or issues you encountered along the way?

Not using encryption? That’s okay; you can still participate. Write about the obstacles that are preventing you from implementing encryption in your environment, or to steal a quote from Adam’s first T-SQL Tuesday post, “any post that is related to both SQL Server and the theme is fair game. So feel free to post about SSIS, SSRS, Java integration, or whatever other technologies you’re working with in conjunction with SQL Server.”

T-SQL Tuesday #068 – Just Say No to Defaults

Invitation and roundup from Andy Yun.

I am honored to be your host this month. This month, I’d like to ask everyone to blog about SQL Server Defaults. While SQL Server CAN be run with just the default settings, doing so is far from ideal. As we progress through our careers, many of us build lists of things we change. Let’s blog about those! And don’t think this month’s topic is constrained to just the SQL Server engine. SSIS & SSAS are absolutely fair game as well. SQL Server developer tools – sure! Want to take a different spin on “defaults,” go right ahead and be creative!

Need Ideas?

Do you have a checklist of “always change” settings? Blog about that!
Do you have a preferred method for mass-deploying your changes? Blog about that!
Do you have a specific default setting you ALWAYS change? Deep dive & blog about that!