Tips For Microsoft SQL Server

Find SQL Server Edition and Version using T-SQL

Jack — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 11:41:04 +0000

To find out what version of SQL Server you are running, use the following :-

Viewing The SQL Error Log

Jack — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 14:14:52 +0000

The error log – the first place you should look to diagnose issues and errors within SQL Server. The most common way to view the log is though the “Log File Viewer” in Management Studio (2005 and 2008) or through “SQL Server Logs” in Enterprise Manager for SQL 2000. There are a couple of other …

XP_CMDSHELL

Jack — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:54:38 +0000

In an effort to reduce the attack surface, in SQL 2005 upwards, XP_CMDSHELL is disabled by default. To enable XP_CMDSHELL, in SQL 2005 or 2008, the following script will work.. Before it can be enabled, you need to allow the advanced options to changed which is what the ‘show advanced options’ does. This is then disabled …

Backup Compression

Jack — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:43:43 +0000

It’s been a while, since I posted and as SQL 2008 has been out a while now, I figured it should make an appearance on my blog.. There have been utilities around for a while now that enable you to compress backup files – which is always a good thing, especially if you have to …

Profile Name Is Not Valid

Jack — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:07:32 +0000

This is a problem that I have only come across very recently. I was trying to provide the abiliby to send database mail to a group of applicaiton users. In order to do this, I planned to follow these steps. Add the Windows group to the DatabaseMailUerRole in the MSDB database. Create a private mail …

SQLSafe Freeware Edition – Log Backup

Jack — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 14:14:59 +0000

So, back to the Freeware Edition of SQL Safe. In order to create a log backup using the extended stored procedures, the script is almost identical to the one used for a Full Backup, but with one simple change which you can see on line 5 in the code below And also, not …

Enabling AWE Support

Jack — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 13:56:30 +0000

Unlike SQL Server 2000, you can take advantage of AWE in the Standard Edition of SQL Server 2005 as well as the Enterprise and Developer Editions. The first thing that you MUST do is to enable the the “Lock Pages In Memory” option for the service account that you are running SQL Server with. In …

CheckDB

Jack — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 12:58:52 +0000

We all know that corruption within a SQL Server database can happen (although, in my experience usually becuase of an issue with the underlying disk system), and the built in CheckDB database console command is usually very good at interrogating the database to find it. I know that some people schedule this to run at …

SQLSafe Freeware Edition – Simple Backup

Jack — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 12:40:11 +0000

In a previous post, I blogged about the freeware edition of SQLSafe which can be used to compress and speed up backups and restores of SQL Databases. Here is a very simple script which will backup a database using the SQLSafe extended stored procedures The variables are fairly self explanitory, however @Database is the database to …

Speed Up And Compress Backups – For Free

Jack — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 14:57:32 +0000

There are many different third party tools available for Microsoft SQL Server to provide encrypted, compressed and quicker backups – all of which have their own costs and licensing. Idera Software however, provide a freeware version of their backup tool – SQLSafe, cleverly named “SQLSafe Freeware Edition”. While this version of the tool has nowhere …