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Question of the Day

The Cloud Time

The Voice of the DBA

Daily Coping Tip

Take five minutes to sit still and breathe, repeat regularly.

For many of you out there working in a new way, I'm including a thought of the day on how to cope in this challenging time from The Action for Happiness Coping Calendar. My items will be on my blog, feel free to share yours.

When Will Privacy Matter?

More and more people are becoming concerned about data privacy. There's more advocacy, and this shows in more laws being passed around the world. Those are good steps forward, but those rules and restrictions are just the lowest bar of what I'd hope for. Regulation will always lag behind best practices and technology, and I'd hope that organizations look to do better.

I expect more competition to crop up again in the future as the world grows, and I wonder if some of these businesses will start to take privacy seriously. Not because of regulation, but because it might provide some competitive advantage. I ran across a short piece that has a few ideas on how you might be more competitive in your niche if you take privacy seriously. These are ways that taking privacy seriously might make you more competitive.

I think the big one for me is transparency. Showing customers that you are open and up front with data will pay off. Most of us know that our data is being collected. We know it's being used for marketing. Many of us don't love the idea, but we also do get used to the value we do get from services. A few people might balk, but once they realize everyone is collecting and using data, they'll appreciate those that are more transparent.

Certifications are nice, and having employees work on security can help, but for privacy, we need to help customers understand how and why we use data. We need to respect their data, and learn to remove it when a business relationship goes away. It can be tough for many data pros and business people to get rid of data, but it's prudent, it reduces the strain on live systems, and it helps build trust with customers. Plus, if you are treating customers well and they appreciate it, they'll come back over and over, which usually means you won't ever need to trim much of their data.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Join the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums

Featured Contents

Graphical analysis of SSRS report usage with Grafana

Alessandro Alpi from SQLServerCentral

Learn how Grafana can help you quickly set up dashboards to analyze the usage data of your SSRS reports.

Build and fill a SQL Server Database using SQL Compare CLI and a Batch Script

Additional Articles from SQLServerCentral

Phil Factor provides a powerful DOS batch script which, when coupled with SQL Compare CLI, allows you to build databases from source, during development, and fill them with the specific datasets required for testing.

Delete Data from SQL Server Table in Batches

Additional Articles from SQLServerCentral

In this tip we cover a T-SQL script that allows you to batch delete older data from tables and save the deleted records to an archive table.

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - DB Automation with Azure DevOps

Grant Fritchey from The Scary DBA

I sincerely believe the key to your future as a DBA is your ability to automate everything you do. However, the single hardest thing that you have to do...

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Moving Your SQL Workload to the Cloud

SQLEspresso from SQLEspresso

Every day, more IT organizations decide to move their SQL Server databases to Azure. In fact, over a million on-premises SQL Server databases have been moved to Azure. There’s...

Question of the Day

Today's question (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor):
	The Cloud Time
I create a server and database in the US-West region in Azure. When I connect to the database, I run this code: SELECT GETDATE() AT TIME ZONE 'US Mountain Standard Time' If the current time in Denver (mountain time zone) is 4:34pm on March 30, what is returned? Ignore seconds and lower precision.
Think you know the answer? Click here, and find out if you are right.

Yesterday's Question of the Day (by MilesC)

@@CURSOR_ROWS -m Flag

What does the –m flag do on the @@CURSOR_ROWS function?

Answer: The cursor populates asynchronously

Explanation: There is a -m flag on the function @@CURSOR_ROWS. It makes the cursor populate asynchronously. The value returned (-m) is the number of rows currently in the keyset. Ref: @@cursor_rows - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/functions/cursor-rows-transact-sql?view=sql-server-ver15

Discuss this question and answer on the forums

Database Pros Who Need Your Help

Here's a few of the new posts today on the forums. To see more, visit the forums.

SQL Server 2017 - Development

Workaround maximum length for a nonclustered index in SQL Server - Hi, hope everyone is well. I need to create a unique nonclustered index but that key lenght is 17oo bytes. I know the work around is to create the index with include. My question is: would that index with unique be unique? Will an insert fail if it is breaking the logic of the unique […]

SQL Server 2016 - Administration

Availability Group Failover - Hi We have a Avaliabilty group setup with a 4 node (plus cloud witness) setup. Two of each nodes are in seperate dataceneters and HA partners. It hasn't been an issue until now but in the last 5 crazy days one node, has a couple of times, failed over to the other HA node. It […]

Administration - SQL Server 2014

How is access (read,write) granted to NT user logins? - I have a user who is trying to edit a Crystal report. She is getting ODBC errors. When I investigate, I first log using her credentials. When I open OBBC32ad.exe and examine the System datasource, the database tied to this Crystal report is not listed in the drop down of Databases. If I log into […]

Index Optimize - Based on my understanding during the index optimize it will not take the whole database down. However, there would be impact on the performance. Do you agree with this? If yes, would you schedule any jobs during the index maintenance?

Development - SQL Server 2014

Search with Full Text Index vs "normal" search - Hello, i need your help because i am feeling bad with Full text index. I need to do a search for clients, so i have implemented a full text index on my table "b_utentes". My code is fine, is working very well. But, someone ask me to do a code without use of full text...ok, […]

SQL 2012 - General

Always on DB - Log huge and no free space - Hi, So I've got an Always on database that is 1.4TB in size, the Always on is working fine but the log file just keeps on growing, as of now is at 683GB in size with less than .1% free. We have regular log backups and I need to find out whats using all this […]

How to separate value exist on temp table dynamically separated by comma ? - How to separate value exist on temp table dynamically separated by comma ? problem How to separate value exist on temp table dynamically separated by comma ? i work on sql server 2012 i need to separate field TeamName by comma teamname ,teamname+'Date' i need to loop to teamname filed in tmp table #Teams then […]

SQL Server 2012 - T-SQL

Adding another table to a query but only wanting the top 1 for each record - I currently have query that gives me the results i needs BUT i am needing to add a new table/column to the query. select name, state, id, (case when custapps.app = 'GLG' then 'GASB' else custapps.app end) as app, version, maddr, city, zip, customers.phone, contacts.sort, contacts.email, install_date, population, customers.notes, CASE databasetype WHEN 1 THEN 'Vision' […]

Finding error in nested stored procedure - Hi, Hope everyone is keeping safe from covid-19. I need to find which particular procedure is giving an error in the nested stored procedure. Also, as the log table in the database does not have a separate column for error message, I am unable to go any further. The error I get is - String […]

SQL Server 2019 - Administration

Instance connect through SSMS needs the port - Hi all, I have a weird issue where my ssms cant connect to the instance on SQL Server 2019 if i haven't given the port number. Have tried several things and i couldnt get it to work. Any ideas what it could be? thanks R

SQL Server 2019 - Development

Masking part of a filename with a certain pattern - Hi there I have the following input string which represents the name of a file I have created SVPP_ROYA_00001_00021_7_of_7_20200326_101116.csv There are 7 files named in the target directory SVPP_ROYA_00001_00021_7_of_7_20200326_101116.csv Now this is time date stamped and could be 7_Of_7 of 3_of_3 etc Now I want to be able to identify the part in the […]

SQL Server Newbies

SQL Server – Transact SQL - varbintohexsubstring - Hello there, I need your appreciated help. My version is : Microsoft SQL Server 2005 - 9.00.1399.06 (Intel X86) Oct 14 2005 00:33:37 Copyright (c) 1988-2005 Microsoft Corporation Standard Edition on Windows NT 6.1 (Build 7601: Service Pack 1) I have problem with this transaction : return sys.fn_varbintohexsubstring(1,@pbinin,1,0) Because on Activity Monitor of SQL Server […]

SSDT

Expression with multiple IFs - I am trying to create an expression to derive a data column value based off two other data columns. In English If VARA is greater than three characters long an the first character is "1" then VARB = VARC + ".A" + the last two characters of VARA ELSE If VARA is greater than three […]

Anything that is NOT about SQL!

SQLWatch - Hi, I’m wondering if someone with knowledge/experience of SQLWatch could help me out with something. We have SQLWatch set up on 2 DEV servers and 1 Central monitoring server, its working fine and the data from the 2 DEV servers is coming over to the central server, I can see alerts are being recorded in […]

T-SQL

pulling multiple numbers out of a string - I need help pulling multiple number values out of a string field name is Details and here are some examples of the values DETAILS Maximum width is 13'2", maximum length is 30'. Minimum total size for all custom rugs is 25 sq/ft. Maximum width is 15', maximum length is 25'. Minimum total size for all […]

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