Voice of the DBA

Category: Blog

  • You Can’t Disable the CLR in SQL Server – MCM Prep

    At least not completely. There are some functions in SQL Server that are built on the SQL CLR, and even if you have disabled the CLR for user written code, it still loads app domains and functions for system code.

    An example of this is the spatial data type. It’s a SQL CLR written user defined data type, but written by Microsoft. If you create a spatial variable, the SQL CLR loads an app domain and code for the UDT using spatial data.

    Not a big problem, and not a security risk from my standpoint, but it is worth knowing if you have to debug into memory or some detailed traces/events and see the SQL CLR loading. Don’t panic, and understand that you can’t prevent this from loading for these system objects.

  • T Minus Three Days to the MCM Test

    I take the MCM test on Friday. I’ve been watching videos and reading white papers and blogs for the last few weeks and I know that I don’t necessarily know enough. To some extent I have an advantage since I test well on multiple choice tests and I have a broad set of knowledge for SQL Server.

    rockholesBut I don’t know enough. The more I study, the more it becomes painfully clear how much more there is to SQL Server that I don’t understand. Each day I learn something new, but I also learn that there are things I wasn’t aware of

    Often, I find that things I just learned are things that friends already know. The thing that gives me some hope is that they will learn something and tell me, not realizing I already know about it.

    We all have these uneven holes of knowledge, and just because we do, or don’t, know about feature X, doesn’t mean that we don’t know a lot about feature Y. We have un-evenly learned SQL Server since there isn’t a set path on which to learn.

    So I’m nervous, just because it’s a measure of my skill, not because it matters to my career. It will give me a benchmark, and a place from which I can make a plan for how much more I want to learn about SQL Server, and in which areas to work.

  • Catching Up

    It’s President’s Day in the US, and technically a holiday for me (I think). Hard to tell since my company is a UK company and the holidays get a little weird for me. However it’s a holiday for my wife and kids, so I’ll take part of the day off.

    I do have some things to do, and a ton of messages piled up from vacation, so I need to go through things a bit and get some things done for tomorrow.

    Strange to be back, after being gone for a week and mostly unwired. I took my laptop and checked some email, thinking I might work and write a bit, but didn’t. I did get some MCM studying done, so it wasn’t a complete sit-by-the-pool-and-drink-fest, but not as much as I might have liked. Some notes, and some good questions to run on SQLServerCentral as the Question of the day.

  • Backups after a DR Restore – MCM

    If you have a disaster, and you need to restore to some point in time prior to the last log backup you have, what’s the first thing you should do at this point in time?

    Make a full backup, of course.

    Actually anytime you complete a restore sequence, you want to do a full backup immediately before you turn users loose to do work. Why is that?

    Think about what happens if you complete the restore and then have another issue? You would have to go through the entire restore sequence again from before the first disaster. If that were a full backup, a differential, and a dozen log backups, would you want to explain that delay to your boss again?

    Would you even want to go through it?

    I wouldn’t, and it’s easy to prevent. Once you get done with your restore, start a full backup right away. You might never need it, but then again, you probably said that about the full backup you just restored.