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SQL Server

Managing Table Partitions (Part 1)

Last time out we tried our hand at implementing partitioning on a table with some data inside it. We looked at creating the partition function, followed by the partition scheme, and then applied that to our table and looked at the results. Following up on that I now wanted to look at how we can manage […]

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SQL Server

Implementing Table Partitioning

A little while back we looked at an introduction to table partitioning where we covered the concepts involved in the partitioning. This time out we’ll look at how to implement those concepts to create a partitioned table. As we’re going through the motions for this let’s start off by creating a table and fill it with some […]

Categories
SQL Server

Challenges with Changing Object Schema

A few weeks back we looked at altering an object inside our database and changing the schema in which it resides. Whilst the ALTER SCHEMA … TRANSFER statement itself is straightforward, there are some gotchas you might find as a result of the change which I thought it was worth covering. To set up for what we’re going […]

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SQL Server

Comparing Views and Synonyms in SQL Server

Last time out we looked at referencing tables across databases. While we of course have the option of using three-part naming to address the table, we also considered views and synonyms as two alternative options. Both of these can be used to achieve similar results. There are elements which they have in common and others which […]

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SQL Server

Referencing Cross-Database Objects

In SQL Server we’ll typically end up using environments containing multiple databases which happen to have data which relate to each other. Due to this there will be times when we’ll need to reference objects in another database when writing a query. What options do we have for doing this? Here we’ll look at three […]

Categories
SQL Server

Introduction to Partitioning

In SQL Server you can use partitioning to split a table into multiple segments based on the data contained within it. This feature can be used to bring improvements to performance and provide more flexibility with maintenance for those tables which are partitioned. The impact of these will be key for large data sets where […]

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SQL Server

Rotating Transparent Database Encryption Certificates

This post goes out to both the administrators and security folks out there who may be looking after encrypted databases. If you have schedules in place to maintain your certificates for any accounts, web sites, SFTP, etc. then you may want to add the certificates protecting your databases into the mix too. One element of […]

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SQL Server

Removing Transparent Database Encrypion

We’ve recently been looking at Transparent Database Encryption and how we go about implementing it an dealing with it in our environments. Now the question comes – what if we need to remove it? Well that’s why we’re here! Decrypting the database We’ll be approaching this in the reverse order to how we applied the […]

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SQL Server

Transparent Database Encryption Restores

We’ve previously looked at how to implement transparent database encryption and then crucially how we can back up the certificate we’re using to apply the encryption. This time we’ll look at how we restore the certificate and a database backup which has been encrypted with Transparent Database Encryption (TDE). When we implement TDE on a […]

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SQL Server

Backing Up Transparent Database Encryption Keys

Over the last couple of weeks we’ve had an overview of Transparent Database Encryption (TDE) followed by a scripted example of the process. In both of these posts I’d mentioned the importance of backing up the keys and certificates which we’re using for the encryption. In this post we get to looking at this key step in the […]