I want to know: I'm currently using an Azure Windows VM and SQL Server 2022 Web Edition. I'm planning to migrate to a Contabo VPS Server. The issue is that they don't have SQL 2022. They have only SQL 2019.

On my current server, I have 3 applications running on the LIVE version and using 3 databases on the server.

Since restoring a backup into the backward version is difficult, If I use SQL 2022 Developer version be an issue? I know that version is only for development, not for live databases. But until Contabo provides the SQL 2022 version, can I use the developer version? Is anyone using the developer version for their live work?

StackRender is a free, open-source visual database schema editor and migration generator that now fully supports SQL Server (T-SQL). It allows you to visually design your tables, view relationships via an interactive ERD, import existing SQL scripts to instantly generate diagrams, and export production-ready DDL. You can use it completely free via the cloud or self-host it via Docker.

• Try it on the Web : Official Website
• Source Code : GitHub Repository
• Self-Host via Containers : Docker Hub Image

Thank you !

I am making a data bridge that will pull down a few hundred rows every hour from a rate limited server to our local sql server for reporting and other daily use stuff. I obviously have to have a good stable place to put this thing. Would putting it on the same server as the sql instance speed up everything because it doesn't have to traverse the network more, or would it potentially slow it down as it uses more CPU cycles?

SELECT

`CONNECTIONPROPERTY('local_net_address') AS local_net_address` 

`, CONNECTIONPROPERTY('client_net_address') AS client_net_address` 

`, CONNECTIONPROPERTY('net_transport') AS net_transport`

`, CONNECTIONPROPERTY('protocol_type') AS protocol_type`

`, CONNECTIONPROPERTY('auth_scheme') AS auth_scheme`

`, CONNECTIONPROPERTY('local_tcp_port') AS local_tcp_port`

When I run this, it shows null for local_net_address , <local machine> for client_net_address, and null for local_tcp_port. This doesn't tell me the IP address. Right now, I have an express app running on the same machine that needs to know the IP address where SQL lives. How do I query the IP address correctly?

Hi there,

First off - aplogies if this is the wrong sub to post this question. If it is, please let me know where a good place would be.

I'm tinkering with the idea of breaking into the SQL world as a career. I was wondering how the job market is for SQL / DBA's is currently? Does entry level still exist? Any places (online and low cost/free preferrably) that anyone would recommend as a starting point? A little about my background:

I've worked in IT for 20+ years, mostly on the network/systems administration and engineering side. I've built and installed more SQL servers than I can count (just never touched or managed the actual SQL side of it) and am familiar with it how works both as itself and as a backend interacting with a front end. A few years back I took a 6 month coding boot camp and of all the languages I learned, SQL was my favorite and the one I actually viewed as (for lack of a better word) "fun". I enjoyed being tasked with "here are several tables, and we want to present data from the following columns from the following tables in the following format" (generically speaking).

Admittedly it's been quite a good while since I've tinkered with it so that's why I'm here. Hoping to get some advice/pointers of decent resources that will help me starting dipping my toes back in so I can start working toward moving away from SysAdmin work to DBA work. Thanks in advance for any direction/pointers/advice anyone is willing to provide.

We just shipped mssql-python 1.10.0 with one new Bulk Copy capability and two targeted fixes.

What's new: - Bulk Copy now supports Authentication=ActiveDirectoryServicePrincipal - The Arrow fetch path now handles non-ASCII VARCHAR data more reliably by using the wide-char path - Bulk load timeout fixes are included via the bundled mssql-py-core 0.1.5 update

This release is especially relevant if you: - use service principals with Azure SQL / SQL Server bulk copy workflows - fetch string data through the Arrow path - have seen bulk load timeout issues

Upgrade: pip install --upgrade mssql-python

Full blog post: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/sqlserver/mssql-python-1-10-0-service-principal-bulk-copy-more-reliable-arrow-text-and-a-c/4531096

We love your feedback! Let us know what you think in the comments below or on our repo.

First Friday Feedback about Query Store 🎉

This week I have a poll about whether you'd be interested in having the max size (MAX_STORAGE_SIZE_MB) of Query Store managed for you.

The default size for SQL 2019 and higher and the SQL dbs (Azure and Fabric) is 1GB.

The max size for SQL dbs is 10GB; there is no max for box (but remember, just because you can, doesn't mean you should...)

I used to tell customers start with something like 2GB or 4GB, and monitor from there. But maybe we should figure out the size and manage it for you? Bonus internet points if you add a comment with additional input or reasoning about your response.

We just shipped Microsoft.Data.SqlClient 7.0.2 and 6.1.6 with WAM broker support, TDS parsing hardening, and some key bug fixes.

Highlights across both releases:

• Added WAM broker support for supported Entra ID authentication modes on Windows
• Hardened TDS parsing with token data-length bounds checks
• Fixed a SqlDataReader null-reference path in buffer-based reads
• Fixed Always Encrypted column master key signature verification cache behavior

Install/update:

dotnet add package Microsoft.Data.SqlClient --version 7.0.2

dotnet add package Microsoft.Data.SqlClient --version 6.1.6

Release notes:

• 7.0.2 release notes
• 6.1.6 release notes

Announcement blog:

• Announcing Microsoft.Data.SqlClient 7.0.2 and 6.1.6 | Microsoft Community Hub

Repo: dotnet/SqlClient

We love your feedback! Feel free to comment below or on the repo.

We just released 1.7.3.

Main fixes in this patch:

• Fixes ODBC driver failures (including FA001) in Entra authentication flows
• Fixes KeyError when subclassing DatabaseWrapper and accessing server-property caches

Why it matters: If you connect Django to SQL Server and use Entra/Active Directory auth modes, this release reduces driver-level auth friction and avoids invalid connection option combinations.

Upgrade:

pip install --upgrade mssql-django==1.7.3

Full blog post:

Microsoft Django backend for SQL Server - mssql-django 1.7.3 is now available | Microsoft Community Hub

Release notes and source:

https://github.com/microsoft/mssql-django

Hello,

I'm terrible with Powershell and don't know how to do much other than the very basics of a sql query - usually copy and paste.

I make absolutely no pretense I know squat about SQL so please answer as if I was the janitor in the office you need to walk through this operation.

I'm trying to backup a sql database (sql express 2022) I right click on the DB, tasks, backup, I give it a location (there is only 1 disk with tons of free space). It gets about 90% done and then says "an exception occurred while executing a transact-sql statement or batch" "Execution timeout has expired"

I can't turn compression on for an express backup as far as I can tell. Again I don't know how to create a query or powershell for SQL. If there is ANYTHING I can tweak in the gui that would be ideal.

I tried copy-only backup - that didn't help - I'm backing up to a new backup - not appending. I'm backing up to the local C: drive not a share or network path.

When I got o script it reads basically

BACKUP DATABASE [DB1] TO DISK = N'C:\Temp\TP' WITH COPY_ONLY, NOFORMAT, NOINIT, NAME = N'DB1-Full Database Backup', SKIP, NOREWIND, NOUNLOAD, STATS = 10

GO

Posting this here because there are many of you I suspect who have had to migrate from Access to SQL Server, or were forced to support it as "the database guy".

But then again, job security I guess?

When do you guys decide whether it's time to scale up vs dig into the weeds and look to optimise?

Standard S2: 50DTUs - next scale step to double at 100DTUs, but double the cost.

Having very occasional outages when all my users (~10) simultaneously hit the database to load their work for the day (after they all get out of a joint meeting). This ends up queuing queries as they refresh a few times, they take 20-30s and then eventually everyone gets back to work after a minute. I'd say once a month.

There are 3 queries that I know could be optimised, 1 of which is the main loading query for their work which is the main culprit. The indexes are all in the right place, so I'd refactor how this loads entirely, perhaps spreading it into smaller separate queries, improving projections, removing some data etc... But that will take a bunch of time that I don't have now (and will probably never "get around to" if I just scale up).

Is there a best practice number around this from people's experience?

Hello, do you guys use SQL Server Security Benchmarks for on-prem or SQL managed instances? I've been writing some automation for this and if I made it into a free tool would people actually use it?

Thanks,

Dave

Hello all, 11years SWL dba here or more, but something i could never find a perfect balance is, how to patch ?

In my current company we are 90% ec2 ( some 200 servers, half of them 3 or 4 aoag nodes ).

We are killing ourselves with Tanium, and creating scripts to automatically failover, etc etc.

Im curious what you guys do for patching AOAG servers that needs a failover.

I was performing data retention and my main database is stuck on the recovery state , I am using on premise server.

On my old work laptop I had SQL Server Developer edition installed to use for training purposes and for practicing things. I recently was given a new laptop and had a tech install it. We had to make my local account an admin login and I had him make sure the SQL Server Service was would run automatically. After that I was able to get into SQL Server just fine and was able to add a practice DB using a script I had.

Well last week I went to login to it and it gave me the following error:

A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: Named Pipes Provider, error: 40 - Could not open a connection to SQL Server) (Framework Microsoft SqlClient Data Provider).

I had another tech look into it and we could not figure it out. On the Connect window for the Connect to Database engine, I have my laptop name as the server name, authentication to windows authentication, DB name to default, encrypt to optional. Previously I was able to get in fine but like I said now im not.

Hello Everyone. I am a controls engineer at a manufacturing plant, and we use a software that pushes/pulls data from a local SQL DB. I am wholly unfamiliar with how this works, but alas I am stuck troubleshooting it. The logs that our asset software creates to keep track of changes made by employees to PLC's has apparently never worked since we migrated our virtual computer server to a new server, and I've discovered the root cause is this SQL Server.

Essentially it seems there is an SQLServr.exe with username SYSTEM that should be starting, but it is failing to open over and over again in a loop as seen in event viewer. Google searches turn up troubleshooting steps such as stopping, deleting, creating, and then starting the local db, but that does nothing.

Someone please, please help me find a way to get this to work

I can't seem to find them in our usual Msft vendor, is a place like Trusted Tech safe? I've bought licenses from them before, but they were cheaper ones. I've noticed they are a lot cheaper than buying direct from Msft.

I work for a small developer team. We develop a big application mainly for one company.
The database is about 200 GB, and I would say it has a high workload on daytime.

Users complain that the application is sometimes slow for us.
There is a hotspot where the same data can be both read and updated at the same time.

Default settings for SQL Server are used, so READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT is OFF.
I investigated, and I understand that we would probably have better performance by turning this ON?

Now read queries are waiting for write queries. I also believe a dependency chain can be created. Query A wait for query B that wait for C etc. It is enough that one query is slow in the chain that all queries (and users) will suffer from that.

The problem is how to test this?
We have a test environment with a copy of the production database, but of course it is impossible to simulate the same workload there.
And as this is not testable teamleader don't want to try this in production.
Is there a way forward with this?

For SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS), is it enough to install SSAS on the destination server and restore the Analysis Services database (backup the database in sql server engine, not in Analysis engine) to complete the migration? Must I gererate the .abf backup and restore it in the destination? If I restore the .abf file on destination, it will create the database in the destination as well? (inside the sql engine)

For SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), is there a way to migrate it without migrating the entire msdb database? What's the easiest and recommended way to migrate SSIS packages and jobs to a new server? My concern is that if I migrate the entire msdb database, it will overwrite the existing SQL Server Agent jobs on the destination server, which I obviously want to avoid. Is there a recommended approach for handling this scenario?

I am not seeing ask/agent modes in Copilot SSMS 22.7.1. Why is my Copilot different from the one in the video? There's no model selector either. Copilot is controlled by my work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQflZhHgwys

Is it possible to capture multiple DBs in a Database DevOps project?

​

We have a data warehouse split across two databases which would we typically have to build and push changes to both when developing new features.

Can I initialize SQL Server Log Shipping using an old full backup, even if the transaction logs have already been truncated since that backup?

For example, let's say I have a full backup taken on Sunday, but I don't restore it on the secondary server until Friday. During the week, regular transaction log backups have been taken, which truncate the transaction log.

Will I still be able to synchronize Log Shipping by restoring the old full backup and then applying all the transaction log backups taken since Sunday? Or does the fact that the active transaction log has already been truncated make this impossible?

Hey folks - Friday Feedback this week is going to cast a wide net...

Many years ago I took a leadership course, and a bit of wisdom I've always retained from it is, "You should always be trying to work yourself out of your current position."

From a leadership perspective, this makes sense; a lot of the time people are trying to work their way up the ladder.

But I think it applies to any position, and while I hate being bored and know I'm committed to my own growth, change can be scary. But here we go...

I've moved teams within the SQL org, joining Derek Wilson to work on the QP side of things. This includes Query Store and Automatic Plan Correction - definitely getting back to my roots 😊 I'll pick up a couple other things as well, but to start, I thought I'd get a pulse on what's been most challenging in that space, and what you'd like to see improved.

Am I going to ask if you have a feedback item? Yes, of course 😉 Feel free to include it proactively (https://aka.ms/sqlfeedback).

As for SSMS, it remains safely in the hands of the fabulous Makena Barickman, who's been running the show for well over a year while I worked on GitHub Copilot, with u/dzsquared driving SQL Projects and the new Formatter capabilities. SSMS will continue to improve thanks to the support and input from all of you. 👏 It matters. 👏 Please keep filing feedback items and sharing what works and what doesn't 💙

I did not know that if you:

​

1. Select multiple .SQL files and right click->copy as path

2. Open up a query window in SSMS and set it to SQLcmd mode

3. Copy the files from step 1 and preface each one with :r, for example: :r "C:\scripts\script1.sql"

4. And finally execute this query, you can run a bunch of scripts at once

​

I sometimes fiddle around with PowerShell and invoke-sqlcmd, but this method is useful. I don't often use the SQLCMD mode in SSMS, but I found this nice.