This book provides an understanding of the SQL Server transaction log, what it does and how it works, and its role in ensuring data integrity. Topics covered include: write ahead logging; how to perform transaction log backup and restore in FULL and BULK_LOGGED recovery models; managing log growth, and dealing correctly with an overgrown or full log; and optimizing log throughput and availability, and how to avoid log fragmentation. --

Conquer SQL Server 2017 administration—from the inside out Dive into SQL Server 2017 administration—and really put your SQL Server DBA expertise to work. This supremely organized reference packs hundreds of timesaving solutions, tips, and workarounds—all you need to plan, implement, manage, and secure SQL Server 2017 in any production environment: on-premises, cloud, or hybrid. Four SQL Server experts offer a complete tour of DBA capabilities available in SQL Server 2017 Database Engine, SQL Server Data Tools, SQL Server Management Studio, and via PowerShell. Discover how experts tackle today’s essential tasks—and challenge yourself to new levels of mastery. • Install, customize, and use SQL Server 2017’s key administration and development tools • Manage memory, storage, clustering, virtualization, and other components • Architect and implement database infrastructure, including IaaS, Azure SQL, and hybrid cloud configurations • Provision SQL Server and Azure SQL databases • Secure SQL Server via encryption, row-level security, and data masking • Safeguard Azure SQL databases using platform threat protection, firewalling, and auditing • Establish SQL Server IaaS network security groups and user-defined routes • Administer SQL Server user security and permissions • Efficiently design tables using keys, data types, columns, partitioning, and views • Utilize BLOBs and external, temporal, and memory-optimized tables • Master powerful optimization techniques involving concurrency, indexing, parallelism, and execution plans • Plan, deploy, and perform disaster recovery in traditional, cloud, and hybrid environments For Experienced SQL Server Administrators and Other Database Professionals • Your role: Intermediate-to-advanced level SQL Server database administrator, architect, developer, or performance tuning expert • Prerequisites: Basic understanding of database administration procedures

A database administrator's duties include ensuring that a database can be restored and recovered in the event of error or disaster. This book discusses how to perform backup and restore operations using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), basic T-SQL scripts and Red Gate's SQL Backup tool. Capturing backups using SSMS or simple scripts is fine for one-off backup operations, but any backups that form part of the recovery strategy for any given database must be automated with some built-in checks that, for example, alert the responsible database administrator immediately if a problem arises. The tool of choice in this book for backup automation is Red Gate SQL Backup. Building an automated solution will take a lot of work, but this book offers some advice on possible options, such as PowerShell scripting, T-SQL scripts and SQL Server Agent jobs. --

Design and configure SQL Server instances and databases in support of high-throughput applications that are mission-critical and provide consistent response times in the face of variations in user numbers and query volumes. Learn to configure SQL Server and design your databases to support a given instance and workload. You’ll learn advanced configuration options, in-memory technologies, storage and disk configuration, and more, all toward enabling your desired application performance and throughput. Configuration doesn’t stop with implementation. Workloads change over time, and other impediments can arise to thwart desired performance. High Performance SQL Server covers monitoring and troubleshooting to aid in detecting and fixing production performance problems and minimizing application outages. You'll learn a variety of tools, ranging from the traditional wait analysis methodology to the new query store, and you'll learn how improving performance is really an iterative process. High Performance SQL Server is based on SQL Server 2016, although most of its content can be applied to prior versions of the product. This book is an excellent complement to performance tuning books focusing on SQL queries, and provides the other half of what you need to know by focusing on configuring the instances on which mission-critical queries are executed. Covers SQL Server instance-configuration for optimal performance Helps in implementing SQL Server in-memory technologies Provides guidance toward monitoring and ongoing diagnostics What You Will Learn Understand SQL Server's database engine and how it processes queries Configure instances in support of high-throughput applications Provide consistent response times to varying user numbers and query volumes Design databases for high-throughput applications with focus on performance Record performance baselines and monitor SQL Server instances against them Troubleshot and fix performance problems Who This Book Is For SQL Server database administrators, developers, and data architects. The book is also of use to system administrators who are managing and are responsible for the physical servers on which SQL Server instances are run.

Dynamic Management Views (DMVs) are a significant and valuable addition to the DBA's troubleshooting armory, laying bare previously unavailable information regarding the under-the-covers activity of your database sessions and transactions. Why, then, aren't all DBAs using them? Why do many DBAs continue to ignore them in favour of "tried and trusted" tools such as sp_who2, DBCC OPENTRAN, and so on, or make do with the "ready made" reports built into SSMS? Why do even those that do use the DMVs speak wistfully about "good old sysprocesses"? There seem to be two main factors at work. Firstly, some DBAs are simply unaware of the depth and breadth of the information that is available from the DMvs, or how it might help them troubleshoot common issues. This book investigates all of the DMVs that are most frequently useful to the DBA in investigating query execution, index usage, session and transaction activity, disk IO, and how SQL Server is using or abusing the operating system. Secondly, the DMVs have a reputation of being difficult to use. In the process of exposing as much useful data as possible, sysprocesses has been de-normalized, and many new views and columns have been added. This fact, coupled with the initially-baffling choices of what columns will be exposed where, has lead to some DBAs to liken querying DMVs to "collecting mystic spells." In fact, however, once you start to write your own scripts, you'll see the same tricks, and similar join patterns, being used time and again. As such, a relatively small core set of scripts can be readily adapted to suit any requirement. This book is here to de-mystify the process of collecting the information you need to troubleshoot SQL Server problems. It will highlight the core techniques and "patterns" that you need to master, and will provide a core set of scripts that you can use and adapt for your own systems, including how to: * Root out the queries that are causing memory or CPU pressure on your system * Investigate caching, and query plan reuse * Identify index usage patterns * Track fragmentation in clustered indexes and heaps * Get full details on blocking and blocked transactions, including the exact commands being executed, and by whom. * Find out where SQL Server is spending time waiting for resources to be released, before proceeding * Monitor usage and growth of tempdb The DMVs don't make existing, built-in, performance tools obsolete. On the contrary, they complement these tools, and offer a flexibility, richness and granularity that are simply not available elsewhere. Furthermore, you don't need to master a new GUI, or a new language in order to use them; it's all done in a language all DBAs know and mostly love: T-SQL.

Harness the powerful new SQL Server 2012 Microsoft SQL Server 2012 is the most significant update to this product since 2005, and it may change how database administrators and developers perform many aspects of their jobs. If you're a database administrator or developer, Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Bible teaches you everything you need to take full advantage of this major release. This detailed guide not only covers all the new features of SQL Server 2012, it also shows you step by step how to develop top-notch SQL Server databases and new data connections and keep your databases performing at peak. The book is crammed with specific examples, sample code, and a host of tips, workarounds, and best practices. In addition, downloadable code is available from the book's companion web site, which you can use to jumpstart your own projects. Serves as an authoritative guide to Microsoft's SQL Server 2012 for database administrators and developers Covers all the software's new features and capabilities, including SQL Azure for cloud computing, enhancements to client connectivity, and new functionality that ensures high-availability of mission-critical applications Explains major new changes to the SQL Server Business Intelligence tools, such as Integration, Reporting, and Analysis Services Demonstrates tasks both graphically and in SQL code to enhance your learning Provides source code from the companion web site, which you can use as a basis for your own projects Explores tips, smart workarounds, and best practices to help you on the job Get thoroughly up to speed on SQL Server 2012 with Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Bible.