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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Last time out we looked at the concepts behind implementing Transparent Database Encryption (TDE) on a SQL Server database. This time we’re going to go through a worked exampled of how to implement this practically so we’ll get into some scripting. For this example I’m using a database named ‘Blog’ on my local instance. First things […]
With SQL Server there are a variety of ways we have available to secure data within the databases, however if an attacker can gain access to the underlying data files we may be vulnerable to having that data interrogated. Similarly when we backup our databases these flat files could also be intercepted and restored elsewhere […]
Following on from previous posts where we looked at Dynamic Data Masking, how to use it, and the challenges we may encounter, there’s one last area I wanted to touch on. With the arrival of SQL Server 2022 the masking functionality has been extended so we have an additional masking function and more granular permissions […]
This month’s invitation from Steve is asking about strategies for upgrades with SQL Server. We might be more familiar with patching a SQL environment semi-regularly – and those processes may be tried and trusted – however its much rarer that we have the opportunity to uplift an entire environment to a later version. Here’s a […]
Andy Brownsword 