Voice of the DBA

Category: Blog

  • Basic FORMATting– #SQLNewBlogger

    Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers.

    I saw the addition of FORMAT() to the T-SQL language, but didn’t play with it much. Recently it appeared in some code, and decided to experiment a bit. I had assumed this was mainly for dates, but it’s a general format/culture function that handles numbers as well.

    On the doc’s page, there are the basic description of the parameters, which are NVARCHAR(), so passing in VARCHAR() causes an implicit conversion. It shouldn’t be much, but there are already performance penalties (see Aaron Bertrand’s piece), so don’t add to the overhead.

    One good thing to note is that if you pass in invalid formats or cultures, a NULL is returned. Since the format and culture strings aren’t completely intuitive, this might be a source of issues in your code.

    This is a neat function, relying on CLR formatting rules. That means I can do fun things like:

    DECLARE @i int = 5000;

SELECT FORMAT(@i, N'USD$#');

    Which returns:

    USD$5000

    Or even:

    DECLARE @i INT = 5000
;
SELECT  FORMAT(@i, N'# dahlahs')
;
GO

    Which gives me:

    5000 dahlahs

    There are lots of formats, and certainly lots of nuances to numeric formatting strings. It’s worth reading up if you plan to use this, but again, beware of performance. I’d avoid using this if the data size is large, maybe more than a few hundred rows.

    After all, the database server is a shared resource, and using this CPU to handle simple formatting may not be the best use of your system.

  • All Day DevOps Slides

    The conference will upload the slides to Slide Share at some point, but if you want to get them now, here are the slides from my talk:

    Including Database in DevOps – AllDayDevOps.pptx

    If you  have questions, drop a note at AllDayDevOps.Slack.com in the #modern-infrastructure channel. I’m way0utwest.

  • Redgate at Summit 2017

    I’ll be heading out to the PASS Summit next week, spending Halloween in a conference center with a lot of other geeks. I know some of you won’t make it, and we’ll miss you, but I understand.

    I’m meeting my colleagues from Redgate there, including the new editor of Simple Talk, Kathi Kellenberger. We’ll be at the event all week and we look forward to chatting with you about databases, DevOps, and more. We’ve also got a few events during the week that we hope you’ll attend.

    Stop by the Redgate Booth in the expo center for a demo, or just to chat about SQL Server.

    Adopting a DevOps Process for Your Database

    I’ve got a session on Wednesday, Nov 1, at 1:30 that will provide an overview of how you might rub some DevOps on your database development. I’ll use some of the Redgate tools, but really I want you convince you that a smoother, more reliable database development process is possible.

    Lower your risk, make your deployments reliable and repeatable. Come join me, see how the process can work, and ask lots of questions. I’ll have lots of answers.

    How DevOps for the Database Helps with Compliance

    Immediately after my DevOps talk, I’ll be joining Grant Fritchey and Richard Macaskill to talk about DevOps and compliance. We are seeing more and more organizations bound by rules and regulations that require them to be careful about who can see their production data and how it’s stored. This will mean that more of us need to be careful about how we manage data.

    With the move to DevOps and releasing changes more often, this can present some challenges for data professionals. However, DevOps can actually help with compliance if done right. Join Grant, Richard, and I for a discussion of the challenges and potential solutions.

    Redgate Rocks

    If you are coming to the Summit, make sure you stop by the Redgate booth to pick up your #RedgateRocks ribbon for entrance to our party Thursday night. I’ll be there with the Redgate crew to celebrate the last evening of the Summit at 1927 Events.

    This is your chance to get out of the Conference Center, head towards the ocean and have a good time in downtown Seattle with us.

  • SQL Clone Server Service Permissions

    SQL Clone is amazing, and it can really save time and disk space for many organizations. I’ve got a series posted here on various little things I’ve learned about the product. There are also a number of articles on the Redgate Community Hub.

    I was working on helping a customer install the SQL Clone server recently and one of the things that the client wanted to know was what are the minimum permissions needed for the SQL Clone Server.

    When you install the SQL Clone server, the configuration dialog asks you for a Windows account and password. This is noted in the documentation as the account that configures and starts the server.

    sqlcloneserver

    This means that during the configuration, this account will:

    • Create a local service on the Clone Server OS
    • Connect to the SQL Server specified
    • Create a new database (or use the one that exists)
    • Map itself to dbo in the new database

    If the SQL Server can be a remote SQL Server from the SQL Clone server, a domain account is needed. If this is a local SQL Server, then you can use a local account. The account does need to have local administrator privileges.

    With that in mind, here’s what I did as a minimum permission set:

    • Create a new domain account, SQLCloneServer (I want to be able to use a remote SQL Server. I left this as just a member of Domain Users.
    • Add this account as a local administrator on the SQL Clone server host.
    • Add this AD user as a login to the SQL Server that will host the configuration databse
    • Give the SQL user the dbcreator role (you can remove this later and leave them with permissions inside the db)

    That’s it.

    Scripting

    It’s always better to script. Here’s the AD part in PowerShell:

    New-ADUser -Name “SQL Clone Server” -GivenName “SQL” -Surname “Clone Server” -SamAccountName “SQLCloneServer” -UserPrincipalName SQLCloneServer@mydomain.com

    Here’s the local SQL Clone, web server permissions part, using local commands. This could be in PoSh, but it’s not as clean (to me).

    net localgroup Administrators "MyDomain\SQLCloneServer" /add

    Here’s the SQL Part

    USE [master]
GO
CREATE LOGIN [MYDOMAIN\MySQLCloneUser] FROM WINDOWS WITH DEFAULT_DATABASE=[master]
GO
ALTER SERVER ROLE [dbcreator] ADD MEMBER [MYDOMAIN\MySQLCloneUser]
GO