Voice of the DBA

Category: Blog

  • Pensacola in June–SQL Saturday #491

    One June 5, I’ll be back in Pensacola, FL for SQL Saturday #491. It’s been a few years since there was a conference in the area, and I’m excited to go back. I really like the area, and am looking forward to visiting for a few days.

    I’ll be presenting my dive into Always Encrypted in SQL Server 2016. I presented this in Phoenix recently and the session was well received. I like this feature, but there are some caveats and gotchas, as well as various items you should consider before making the decision to implement it. Hopefully I’ll see a few of you there and you’ll enjoy the talk.

    However if you’re nearby, there are pre-conference sessions on both Thursday and Friday that you can attend. Both are inexpensive training and the chance for you to quickly improve some data skills.

    There are lots of great sessions from other speakers, and Pensacola is a great place to spend a weekend. Lovely beaches, not too large, not too expensive, and a beautiful area in June. If you’re anywhere from Houston to Florida to Tennessee, consider combining a little learning with a vacation on the gulf coast.

  • Another Day, Another City

    After a few days in Copenhagen for SQL Nexus, I traveled to London late last night, and am now making my way to Liverpool for SQL Bits. A hectic schedule, leaving one city, flying to another, a few hours sleep and moving again today.

    It’s exciting to be heading back to SQL Bits again, as it’s my favorite conference, and I am looking forward to seeing people from all over the world that I’ve become friends with across the years. Plus it will be fun to see all the costumes at Friday night’s space themed party.

    I’ve got two sessions to deliver. A lunchtime session on version control Friday and then a testing talk Saturday.

    Between now and then, some final rehearsals, and hopefully an hour or two at the Beatles museum.

  • Off to SQL Nexus

    This week begins my two city, two conference journey across the Atlantic. I arrive in Copenhagen today, after traveling overnight from Denver. I wrote this before leaving, knowing that I’ll likely be a bit worn out as I make my way from Denver to Washington D.C. to London to Copenhagen.

    This is the most relaxing part of my trip, with a day to adjust in a new country before the SQL Nexus conference starts tomorrow. I’m looking forward to getting some coffee and exploring the city.

    Tomorrow is a conference day, hanging out and learning a bit before I speak on Wednesday morning. I’ll be talking about SQL Server 2016 Encryption, and I expect that if SQL Server 2016 hasn’t RTM’d by this time, it will either Tuesday am at SQL Nexus or Friday am at SQL Bits. I could be wrong, but as I write this, I expect those are the likely dates.

    I’m looking forward to Nexus, which has lots of SQL 2016 content scheduled. I just hope all the sessions are in English Winking smile

  • Am I a sysadmin?–#SQLNewBlogger

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

    I was doing some security testing and wondered if I was a sysadmin. There are a few ways to check this, but I thought there should be a function to tell me.

    There’s this code, of course:

    SELECT
    ServerRole = rp.name,
    PrincipalName = SP.name
    FROM sys.server_role_members rm
    Inner JOIN sys.server_principals rp
    ON rm.role_principal_id = rp.principal_id
    Inner JOIN sys.server_principals SP
    ON rm.member_principal_id = SP.principal_id
    where sp.name = SUSER_SNAME()
    and rp.name = ‘sysadmin’

    That lets me know if my login is a sysadmin. However, there is a function that you can use. IS_SRVROLEMEMBER() is a function that you can use, passing in a server role as a parameter. The code I’d use to check on sysadmin membership is this:

    SELECT IS_SRVROLEMEMBER(‘sysadmin’);

    If I run this, I get a 1 if I’m a member, or a 0 if I’m not.

    2016-04-12 11_38_34-Settings

    Using this function in your code allows you to make decisions based on role membership for the users involved, and perhaps alert them of needs for certain rights.

    SQLNewBlogger

    This was a quick one, really about 10 minutes to organize and write. Most of the time was writing the code to join system tables. If you tackle this subject, talk about how you  might use this, or where this type of check could come in handy in your code (maybe before taking some action).