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Released: Kerberos Configuration Manager for SQL Server This diagnostic tool can help to troubleshoot Kerberos-related configuration issues with SQL Server. Kerberos authentication plays a critical role in many BI-related authentication and delegation scenarios, such as to enable multi-tier BI solutions to access external data sources securely on behalf of the user. read more... Our Server’s Hard Drive is Dead. We didn’t have a backup. "We messed up bad. We launched without having a backup procedure in place, and without the resources to make it happen...Your data is gone, and we are deeply sorry that your first forays into design have been lost." read more... PAGELATCH_EX waits and heavy inserts Dealing with PAGELATCH_EX contention, when a table has a clustering key that conforms with the concept of a small and monotonically increasing value, such as IDENTITY, and the table itself is somewhat narrow. read more... Security Questions: Differences between “Grant” and “With Grant?” When you GRANT something within SQL Server, that provides the permissions required to access the object, or securable, that is included in the statement. For instance, a GRANT of read permissions on a tables allows the person to read from the table. The WITH GRANT option, requires that Grant Fritchey (Blog | @GFritchey) show up for any of your permissions to work. No, that’s not right... read more... Functions & sargable queries Using functions improperly in your where clauses always prevents index usage right? I’ve been reviewing some queries generated by linq and I’ve found out this isn’t always the case. A quick demo… read more... Database Deployment: The Bits - Agent Jobs and Other Server Objects Databases often need more than just the database objects to run. There may be certain server objects and components, and SQL Agent objects, that are required as well. For an automated deployment, these need to be identified and their build script placed in source control. They then need to be deployed via the pre, or post deployment script. Phil spells out how and why. read more... Moving Data From Excel to SQL Server - 10 Steps to Follow SQL Server Integration Services provide a versatile way of reading Excel files into SQL Server. A task like this illustrates the advantages of the graphical approach of SSIS. Andy Brown explains. read more... Per Member Per Month Per 1000 Calculations in MDX In a lot of industries there is a popular calculation called “Per Member Per Month Per 1000” calculation or the “Per Customer Per Month Per 1000” calculation. This is used to determine the level at which the company is rendering services compared to the number of company customers. This calculation is sometimes called the 1000pmpm calculation for short. read more... New Immersion Event for Accidental/Involuntary/Junior DBAs SQL Skills launch a new IE0 immersion event for new or accidental DBA. read more... Twitter launches two-factor authentication, too late to save The Onion Login authentication aims to stem flood of accounts exposed by phishing attacks. read more... Microsoft unveils Xbox One next-generation console Microsoft has unveiled the Xbox One, a voice and gesture-controlled "all-in-one" system offering games, live TV, movies and music, which will go on sale later this year. read more... Dedicated Administrator Connection (DAC) We all dread the scenario whereby SQL Server is under so much load and has a complete lack of resources that no further connections can be made. Although extreme and a situation I have never been in there is a saving grace, one last chance before opting for measures that will induce outages, the Dedicated Administrator Connection or DAC. read more... Dealing with Windows Azure Storage transient faults When an application uses a service, errors can occur because of temporary conditions such as intermittent service, infrastructure-level faults, network issues, or explicit throttling by the service. These types of error occur more frequently with cloud-based services, but can also occur in on-premises solutions. read more... Cloud Broiler: Hyper-V: A Platform that Scales out for Building the Largest Public and Private Clouds The Microsoft Cloud Platform Team explain what is new in Hyper-V, the "crown jewel of their enterprise virtualization and private cloud strategy", and what you can do with hypervisor technology out of the box in Windows Server 2012 today. read more... Using Scoped Assignments To Show Calendar and Financial Year-To-Date Values In The Same Calculated Measure A worked example of how to use scoped assignments to implement two different types year-to-date calculation on two different hierarchies in the same dimension. read more... On how to Googlify your SQL statements for future searching For sake of future generations, let’s begin to reduce typing and reuse code we’ve built. BitBarbarian expains how atools like SSMSToolsPack and SSMSBoost can help. read more... Microsoft SQL Server Continuous Integration [slides] This presentation shows how to simplify your database deployments, ensure that no database changes are overlooked, and implement unit tests using the suite of Red Gate developer tools. read more... Performance and Stability-Related Fixes in All SQL Server 2008 SP2 Cumulative Updates SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 2 was retired and became an “unsupported service pack” back on September 17, 2012. Despite this, Glenn Berry is still encountering a lot of systems still running SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 2 or older lately, so lists out some of the most relevant hotfixes in all eleven of the SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 2 Cumulative Updates. read more... Getting Started with the SSAS Tabular Model SSAS Tabular models are in-memory databases that model data with relational constructs such as tables and relationships, in order to provide a rapid and powerful way of providing self-service BI to client applications such as Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Power View. You’ve deployed SSAS in tabular mode, and deployed Adventureworks into it. What next? Rob Sheldon explains all. read more... New SQL Monitor Custom Metric: Issues found by sp_Blitz This custom metric adds Brent Ozar's popular SP_Blitz scripts to Red Gate SQL Monitor. It looks for configuration, security, health and performance problems, and reports back with a list of issues for you to look into. It’s great for quickly understanding the state of a server you’ve been asked to look after. read more...