I wanted show someone how to use table-valued parameters available in SQL Server 2008 and higher. The main use case of table-valued parameters is for sending a list or array of items as parameter to a SQL Server stored procedure or function. This is more efficient than parsing strings or XML on the SQL Server…
Category Archives: SQL Server
Gaining SQL Server SysAdmin Access
I’ve seen this come a few times at work and I’m sure most you have experienced something similar. Someone or an application installs SQL Server, doesn’t grant access to the DBA group and asks for DBA support. In SQL Server 2008 and higher the built-in local administrators group is no longer automatically part of the…
Managing AlwaysOn with Powershell
Although you can use SQL Server Management Studio or T-SQL to manage AlwaysOn, SQL Server Denali CTP 3 includes 25 cmdlet which together provide complete coverage for creating, confiiguring and administering the AlwaysOn database feature. In this post we’ll look at using Powershell to perform various management tasks for AlwayOn. Note: This blog post describes…
Counting Licenses for VMs
This is old news, but I’ve had to explain SQL Server VM licensing to enough people recently that I thought I’d put together a post. In June 2009, Microsoft released an update to SQL Server licensing which can significantly lower TCO for SQL Server instances running under VMs for not only Hyper-V, but also VMWare….
What’s Going on with SQL Server Service Account Changes?
For years we’ve been told you should use Enterprise Manager in SQL Server 2000 or SQL Server Configuration Manager in SQL 2005 or higher to change the SQL Service account. Why you may ask well, because according to the documentation Configuration Manager does “magic” stuff to re-ACL things for the new account. I decided to…
Scripting Guy Guest Blog Post
Ed Wilson (Blog|Twitter) aka Scripting Guy is kicking off a SQL Server week (Nov 1st 2010) with my guest blog post. The post, Use PowerShell to Collect Server Data and Write to SQL, demonstrates my number one use case for database related PowerShell activities—loading data into a SQL Server table. I’ve used the techniques described…
Building A Remote Desktop Manager Cluster List
The Microsoft Clustering and High Availablity bloggers have taken noticed of the Remote Desktop Connection Manager (RDCMan) utility from a cluster management perspective. I’ve previously blogged about Building A Remote Desktop Manager Connection List from the SQL Server Central Management Server (CMS) tables. The RDCMan use case for cluster administration is very useful and it…
Building A Remote Desktop Manager Connection List
Remote Desktop Connection Manager or RDCMan is a free download from Microsoft for managing multiple remote desktop connections. The functionality provided by RDCMan is above and beyond what you’ll find in the built-in Remote Desktop MMC and comparable to other 3rd party Remote Desktop utilities. If you’re connecting to multiple remote desktop sessions, RDCMan is…
The Truth about SQLPS and PowerShell V2
With the release of SQL Server 2008 R2 there have been claims that sqlps is really PowerShell V1 under the covers or that sqlps is PowerShell V2 because it returns $psversiontable information. Although, technically, sqlps neither PowerShell V1 nor V2, the answer to this question is a little more complicated and a closer look into…
SQL Agent Visual Job Schedule Viewer
If you have experience with the SQL Server Agent you quickly realize the difficulty in managing job schedules. On a busy server with many SQL jobs scheduled to run throughout the day at various times finding clashing job schedules and long running jobs is hard to do using the native SQL Server tools. To address…
