Debugging Type Binding in PowerShell
What is the best way to debug more complicated parameter binding and type casting scenarios in PowerShell.
Blog By Year
2019
SQL Server Database Experimentation Assistant - How to Run a Capture
Just a quick look at the very beginning of setting up SQL Server Database Experimentation Assistant
Migrating From Hipchat To Slack
Migrating from hipchat to slack can be a little painful if you have some issues similar to mine to cleanup. Maybe this will help save you some time.
2018
Dedupe Google Drive with RClone
Trouble with duplicate files in Google Drive? Want to fix a mess? Found the tool to do it!
NTFS Compression and SQL Server Do Not Play Well Together
accidentally copying a database to a ntfs compressed volume can result in some unpleasant aftertaste. If you get the error The requested operation could not ...
Deleting a Directory That Has a Trailing Space Shouldn’t Be This Hard
Can’t delete a directory due to some edge case in naming errors… like a trailing space. Here’s the fix!
SQL .NET Requirements
SQL Server requirements vary based on the version.
Git Cracking
Git can be an interesting learning curve if you are coming from TFS (Team Foundation Server). However, there are some great things about using Git if you can...
Migration To Jekyll
I’ve been in the process of migrating my site to it’s final home (as far as my inner geek can be satisfied staying with one platform)… Jekyll.
2017
Time With Family - Thanksgiving
I’ve made it my personal quest as a creative who has a passion for videography to try and capture simple moments during my life with family. There are plenty...
Delight in the Little Moments
This last Easter I had some fun with the kids at their grandparents. Remember the days of spinning until you were nauseous? Was fun to watch the kids enjoyin...
Welcome to the World Little Ella
Proud to announce Ella the newest addition to my family joined us today @ 6:19pm, weighing in at 6lbs and 11 ounces. Yes, that’s 6lbs of cuteness. :-) I’m in...
Recovery is a Marathon, Not a Sprint - Hurricane Harvey
It’s important to remember that the road to recovery is not an instant process.
A Waterlogged Texan Reporting In from Northpoint Tomball
What a crazy weekend. Choose to evacuate the family as water was slowly creeping up closer to the house.
A Not-So Waterlogged Texan - Tuesday
info “Updated: 2017-08 1:30pm Wednesday” Better than expected, we are looking to be back in our house Thursday. Apparently some SUV’s are just starting to...
Ultrawide Monitor - Samsung CF971 - First impressions
As a developer, I’ve been a big fan of multiple monitors for a long time. I moved to a triple screen setup years ago, and up until recently, had no desire to...
Fixing VirtualBox Only Showing 32bit Windows OS Options
Original help was identified from this article Why is VirtualBox only showing 32 bit guest versions on my 64 bit host OS?
Exploring SQL Server With Powershell And SMO Basics
SqlServer Powershell Cmdlets 2017 - Initialize Look
Capturing Perfmon Counters With Telegraf
Other Posts in Series
InfluxDB and Annotations
Other Posts in Series
Dataedo - First Look
info “update 2019-02-22” Image links broken. Since their product is continually improving, I’m going to just link to their product here instead so you can...
Spotify vs Google Play
I’ve recently switched over to Spotify for the nth time to explore the Spotiverse world and compare as a long time Google Play Music user. This is a big deal...
ANTS Performance Profiler for the SQL Server Dev
There are a few .NET tools that until recently I haven’t had the chance to work with as much, specifically ANTS Memory Profiler and ANTS Performance Profiler...
Update SSMS With PS1
Installing and Updating SSMS with a simple PowerShell script can be a nice little timesaver…
External Tool VSCODE called from SQL Management Studio
Previous Related Post: Split personality text editing in SSMS with Sublime Text 3
Best Practices: Defining Explicit Length for Varchar/Nvarchar
SA0080 : Do not use VARCHAR or NVARCHAR data types without specifying length. Level: Warning
Add User To Admin Group on Machine
In setting up some build machines for development, it’s tedious to go and add several users to the admin group. Here’s a snippet to expedite that task and he...
Powershell Module Improvements for SQL Server in 2017
info “Updated: 2018-03-19” I don’t use these much, if any now. Check out dbatools which is a much better module with a full range of features to save you ...
Running InfluxDB as a service in Windows
Other Posts in Series
Setting Up InfluxDb, Chronograf, and Grafana for the SqlServer Dev
Other Posts in Series
Automate Windows Updates for Development
I’ve run into the case where I wanted updates continually applied, while the machine still was part of the GPO that didn’t automatically install updates. For...
Programming Fonts For The Newb
the camps
TFS Custom Task - Service Actions (for TFS 2015 Update 2.1 or before)
Apparently, boolean values for custom VSTS tasks for versions prior to TFS 2015 Update 3) require some special handling as they don’t pass the checkbox value...
Red Gate SQL Clone (#1) - Initial Setup
Note this was during earlier beta usage, so some of the UI and other features will have been updated more. I plan on writing more on this promising tool as ...
Life Hack: When you need a mouse pad
My Logitech Master mouse went on the fritz… Requiring me to use my trusty Microsoft mouse. This is an optical based mouse based mouse that started driving me...
Track Creation of Databases
Sys.Databases has some create information, but I was looking for a way to track aging, last access, and if databases got dropped. In a development environmen...
SSMS 2016 - Object Explorer Read Uncommitted
I ran through some directions from others, including the very helpful post from SqlVariant, but I had issues locating the correct keys. For my Windows 10 mac...
Redgate SQL Data Compare & Devart DBForge Data Compare
I’m a big fan of Redgate, as I’m in the Friend of Redgate program. However, I do also utilize some other toolkits. One competitor that I find has some , but ...
Quick Way to Run Powershell Tasks in Parallel
Running tasks in parallel can be a bit difficult in powershell. However, there are a few projects out there that optimize the performance and provide a bette...
Bad Idea Jeans: Query Optimization Through Minification
SQL is pretty verbose compared to some languages. It’s a pretty big disappointment that I have to type out select customer from dbo.customers where id = 2 in...
2016
ManicTime - Timetracking Automation Done Right
Tracking time is always a beast. With the amount of context switching many developers do, it can be tough to remember how much time went to each project. Wit...
Dynamically Set Powershell Variables from json
I created this small snippet to allow a list of values from a json file be turned into variables to work with. For working with a fixed list of configuration...
The Traditional Birthday Song Is Terrible
The traditional birthday song is terrible.It’s never really changed. It’s like singing a dirge. It’s really really hard for people to sing anywhere close to ...
Scan folder of dlls to identify x86 or x64 compiled assemblies
Point this at a directory of dlls and you can get some of the loaded assembly details to quickly identify what type of processor architecture they were compi...
Attaching Database Using SMO & Powershell
Steve Jones wrote a great article on using this automation here titled The Demo Setup-Attaching Databases with Powershell. I threw together a completed scrip...
Parallel Powershell for Running SQL
This is just a quick look. I plan on diving into this in the future more, as I’m still working through some of the changes being made in the main parallel mo...
Get Backup History for All Databases in Server
Here’s a quick snippet to get a listing of the database backups that last occurred on a server. Most solutions provided a single backup listing, but not the ...
Pizzicato Pizza
Had a blast making this song. Unfortunately, creating video of slow motion pizza cutting was going to be a bit awkward to do, as I didn’t feel like asking a ...
Data Compare on Temporal Tables
I hadn’t seen much talk on doing data comparisons on temporal tables, as they are a new feature. I went through the exercise to compare current to historical...
Fixing Untrusted Foreign Key or Check Constraint
Untrusted constraints can be found when you alter/drop foreign key relationships and then add them back without the proper syntax.If you are deploying data t...
An Internet With Less Ads - Adguard
Ads…I know they employ people, make the world go round, gave us google…. but seriously I hate almost all ads.
Easy SQL Maintenance with Minionware
Review of using Minionware sql maintenance solution
Cannot Generate SSPI Context
Troubleshooting
Centralized Management Server 101
I’ve used Central Management Server registered servers in SSMS for primarily one purpose, saving connections. :-) This is definitely not the intended usage....
Diff All Files - Reviewing Changesets Quickly
Diff all files
DAW Dive 02 - BFD3 - Drumming for the Rest of Us
Creating tracks at home can be very intensive in time, so I’m always looking for a better way to bring a larger sound to a track with less effort. One of the...
Migrating Database Collation - The Red Gate Way
I had some cross database comparisons that I wanted to simplify, but ensuring the collation matched. The amount of objects that I would have had to drop and ...
Syncovery & Arq - Syncing & Backup
Syncovery & Arq 5I’ve tried a lot of file sync/backup utilities.
Powershell ISE: Updating Theme
For all the dark theme aficionados, or those who just want a better theme than the default, here’s a quick set of directions to update your ISE.1. Go to down...
Fixing non-deterministic error when creating indexed view
I discovered a bit of info on working with float values, while creating a hash value that contained a float value, and a date value.
SQL 2016 - Configuration Manager Not Showing in Start Menu
Didn’t see SQL 2016 Configuration manager in the start menu. Ran a quick search to see if this was a common issue and found an article: Quick Trick Where is ...
DAW Dive 1 - Getting Started - Studio One 3
I’m a geek, software nerd, and a musician. As I’ve been stagnating lately in my musical progression I decided to dive into trying to produce some recordings ...
Setting DBCC 1222 on startup
The following command is run to gain details on deadlocks.
Ableton Live & Lemur Setup (From a Windows User)
Had a chance to look at this program thanks to the generosity of the developer. They had a promotion that ended prematurely and they sent me a license as a g...
Lack for Nothing
The message of this song is one that that has been driving itself home as more and more important to me. We are not viewed in our frailty as we come before G...
Remote Desktop Workflow Improvements
Remote server management is a fact of life for folks involved with sql server. Since we work so often with remote machines I looked into a few tools that pro...
SSMS - Connection Color with SQL Prompt & SSMSBoost
If you haven’t explored the visual color coding of tabs based on pattern matches with SQL Prompt, I’d suggest you check this out. Earlier iterations of Red G...
SQL 2016 - Brief Overview on some new features
These are notes taken from the Houston SQL Pass User group from July. This presentation was given by John Cook, (Data Platform Solution Architect Microsoft) ...
Install ReadyRoll via Command Line
command line install options
Does sp_rename on a column preserve the ms_description?
Did some checking as couldn’t find help in the MSDN documentation. My test on SQL 2016 shows that since the column_id isn’t changing, the existing mapping of...
Regex With SQL Server - SQLSharp
In the context of my developer machine, I had log files I wanted to parse through. I setup a log library to output the results on a test server to a sql tabl...
Improvements with SSMS 2016
Improves to SSMS (Sql Server Management Studio) continue. Use the latest version instead of using the version bundled in older versions of SQL Server Install...
Glasswire: (Giveaway Included) Networking Monitoring even a caveman could use
Giveaway details at the bottom for those interestedDealing with development & sql servers, I like to know what type of network traffic is happening on my...
SQL Compare 12: Initial Look
I know there have been a few other folks going into more detail on SQL Compare 12 (beta), but I thought I’d share just a few looks at the new design. Looks p...
SSMS Tools Pack - A Handy Tool for generating CRUD
So I’ve had this tool around for a while, but never found much usage out of it to be honest. I didn’t end up writing a review as I had other tools that did t...
OmniCompare: A free tool to compare SQL Instances
comparing instances
Continual Deployment of Visual Studio SqlProj
Unveil the inner workings of the esoteric build system…
The Mysterious Black Box of R - For the SQL Server Guy
Took a class from Jamey Johnston @ SQLSaturday #516 in Houston. Lots of great information covered. Follow him for a much more detailed perspective on R. Jame...
Red Gate Dependency Tracker - Making Databases Into Moving Art
data structures are art
Google Search Only Results from the last year
Tech changes quick. Reading google postings from something in 2009 is not my first choice.I found an option after digging through some google discussion post...
Automating SSMS 2016 Updates & Install
simplify your ssms install
Cool Tools: Powershell ISE-Steroids
Disclaimer: I have been provided with a free license because I am reviewing. This doesn’t impact my assessment of the tool. I have a passion for finding tool...
Failed to Initialize SQL Agent Log… not worthy
Moving system databases in SQL Server takes a bit of practice. I got that again, along with a dose of SQL humility (so tasty!), today after messing up some c...
TFS Work-Item Fancy Filtering
If you want to create a TFS query that would identify work items that have changed, but were not changed by the person working it, there is a nifty way to do...
SQL 2012 SP3 and entity framework conflict
the problem
Previewing the new SSRS 2016 portal
Ran into an issue with the “Preview New Reporting Portal” link on a fresh install of 2016 giving me a not found error.
Failover all databases to other server
Quick snippet I threw together to help with failing over synchronized databases to the other server in bulk. No way I want to click that darn Fail-over butto...
Calculating Some Max Mirror Stats
This turned out to be quite a challenge. I couldn’t find anything that made this very clean and straight forward to calculate, and in my case I was trying to...
Easy way to test log shipping or availability groups setup
Have been working through the fantastic training resources from Brent Ozar’s Everything Bundle and on the recommended resources they mention after all the tr...
Transaction Logging & Recovery (part 3)
Continuation of some notes regarding the excellent content by Paul Randal in Pluralsight: SQL Server: Logging, Recovery, and the Transaction Log. Please cons...
Seeker & Servant: Fantastic Music with incredible dynamics
Just recently discovered this artist after being exposed to an article from Worship Leader magazine. Fantastic dynamics. The dynamics and beautiful harmonies...
Verifying Instant File Initialization
Ran into a few issues verifying instant file initialization. I was trying to ensure that file initialization was enabled, but found out that running the xp_c...
Transaction Logging & Recovery (part 2)
… Continuation of some notes regarding the excellent content by Paul Randal in Pluralsight: SQL Server: Logging, Recovery, and the Transaction Log. Please co...
Transaction Logging & Recovery (101)
Logging & Recovery Notes from SQL Server Logging, Recovery, and the Transaction Log (pluralsight) Paul Randal Going to share some key points I’ve found h...
2015
Model needs exclusive lock
Ran into an issue where a developer was trying to create a database and was denied due to no ability to obtain exclusive lock on model. After verifying with ...
Documenting Your Database with Diagrams
Don’t get too excited. I know you love documentation, and just can’t wait to spend some time digging in to document your database thoroughly. I imagine you p...
Best Tools for Taking Notes In Development
info “Updated: 2016-04-08” Been working through some issues with Clarify app on my personal computer, something I messed up. @trevordevore with @clarifyap...
Dynamic SQL & Quotename
Not quite fineprint, but sure feels like it!
XML Attribute VS Element Assignment when working with SQL
XML handling with aliases
Split personality text editing in SSMS with Sublime Text 3
My preview post showed a demonstration of the multi-cursor editing power of Sublime Text 3 when speeding up your coding with SQL server.There is a pretty str...
Multi-Cursor Editing SQL feels like the movie Inception just became real
Yes… multicursor editing is epic No… SSMS doesn’t support multi-cursor editing the way it should. Yes… you can do some basic editing with multiple lin...
Brentozar’s Training: Chocolate & Cowboy Hats Included
It was entertaining to listen to a technical wizard fighting the obsession with waiting to eat chocolate with 3k viewers watching. Kendra wore about 4-5 cowb...
Monitoring SQL Server on a budget
Cheap ain’t easy
Stranger Danger… The need for trust with constraints
I ran into an issue with errors with an database upgrade running into a violation of a foreign key constraint. Don’t know how it happened. Figured that while...
Red Gate SQL Source Control v4 offers schema locks
Red Gate Documentation Update Looks like the rapid release channel now has a great feature for locking database objects that you are working on. Having worke...
Using Qure Profiler To Benchmark Tuning Progress
Qure Analyzer Benchmark Testing
SET NOEXEC is my new friend
Have never really played around with the option: SET NOEXEC ON Turns out this can be a helpful way to validate larger batch scripts before actually making ch...
Running very large scripts is not a strong area for SSMS
out of memory, argggh!
Database Stuck in Single-User Mode Due to Botched Restore
Working in a development environment, I botched up a restore. After this restore attempt to overwrite my database with the previous version, I had it stuck i...
What was I thinking? Deleting myself from localdb?
Was testing a batch file to add a user to a localdb instance. Assumed that my user as admin on the machine wouldn’t have an issue inserting myself back…. did...
Some simple examples of querying xml with sql
XML is a beast if you’ve never tackled it. Here are some simple examples of what I discovered as I experimented and walked through obtaining values out of a ...
Enabling Instant File Initialization
Found a couple good walkthroughs on enabling instant file initialization. However, I’m becoming more familar with the nuances of various setups and found it ...
Upgrade from SQL 2014 Evaluation to Developer Edition
Couldn’t find documentation showing that upgrade from SQL 2014 evaluation version was possible to developer edition. I just successfully converted an evaluat...
Utilizing the power of table parameters to reduce IO, improve performance, decrease pollution, and achieve world peace…
I was dealing with a challenging dynamic sql procedure that allowed a .NET app to pass in a list of columns and a view name, and it would generate a select s...
Restoring a database that doesn’t exist
When restoring a database that doesn’t exist, say for instance when a client sends a database to you, you can’t use the option to restore database, because t...
SQL Sentry Pro Explorer is worth it…
info “Updated: 2017-04-21” Another great bit of news from reviewing this older post I wrote… SQL Sentry Pro is now a free tool thanks to the generosity of...
Statistics Parsing
Never really enjoyed reading through the statistics IO results, as it makes it hard to easily guage total impact when you have a long list of tables. A frien...
Dev Tools: FARR2 Launching groups of files or apps at once
There are probably a common number of apps you pull up when you pull up your system. For example, I pull up my Trello board, outlook, XYplorer, Sublime text ...
Dev Tools: The File Searcher/Launcher to rule them all
Why does this not have more recognition? In the experimentation of various file management and launching apps, I’ve tried several (Launchy, Listary, etc), bu...
Case of the Mondays… causing me to randomly redefine the Scope of Global temp tables
Today, I was reminded that global temp tables scope lasts for the session, and doesn’t last beyond that. The difference is the scope of the global temp allow...
2014
Dev Tools: XYplorer (review #1) - Catalog
currently on version 14.60 I’m a big fan of finding tools that help automate and streamline things that should are routine actions.Surprisingly, I’ve found i...
Get Information on Current Traces Running
This is just a quick informational query to save as a snippet to get some quick information on running traces, and provide the stop and close snippet quickly...
Generate Random Date With Starting Point
If you want to create sample random samples when dealing with date calculations to test your results, you can easily create a start and end point of randomly...
Snippet Alert: Useful dates (eom, bom, etc)
Common date values you may need to reference that you may not want to write from scratch each time. 400: Invalid request Hope this helps someone else!
Finding Groups - Consecutive Months
A step by step explanation on one way to get a consecutive period of months, which could easily be adapted to days, years, or other values. I’ll continue on ...
Eliminate Overlapping Dates
I was looking for an efficient way to eliminate overlapping days when provided with a historical table that provided events that could overlap. In my case, I...
Scalar functions can be the hidden boogie man
Ran across a comment the other day that scalar functions prohibit parallelism for a query when included. I thought it would be worth taking a look, but didn’...
2013
Renaming all references inside stored procedures and functions can be migraine worthy without a little help…
assistance to convert database references when using synonyms
Shortcut to reference examples, syntax, and definitions straight from SSMS
I’ve never really used the F1 key for help files with most applications. I was surprised at the usefulness in SSMS I discovered today that uses scripting to ...
Check Constraints can help enforce the all or nothing approach when it comes to column updates
If you have a set of columns inside your table that you want to allow nulls in, however if one of the columns is updated force all columns in the set to be u...
SSMS 2012 Extender for the times you want some organization to the random pile of objects gathering in the dusty confines of that database
When dealing with large amounts of objects in a database, navigation can be tedious with SSMS object explorer. This extender organizes the objects into group...
TSQL Snippet for viewing basic info on database principals and their permissions
Quick snippet I put together for reviewing basic info on database users/principals, permissions, and members if the principal is a role.:
A moment of void in the cranium reveals a recursive computed column with an esoteric message
Msg 402, Level 16, State 1, Line 67 The data types varchar and void type are incompatible in the add operator.
View computed columns in database
Snippet to quickly view computed column information. You can also view this by doing a “create table” script. This however, was a little cleaner to read and ...
On how to Googlify your SQL statements for future searching
On using SSMSBoost to improve your SSMS workflow
Get synonym definitions for all databases in server
If you want to audit your enviroment to look at all your synonyms and see where they are pointing, you can use exec sys.sp_MSforeachdb to loop through databa...
Calculating the next beginning of month and the current end of month
Handling dates is always a fun challenge in T-SQL! Finding the current end of month and next months beginning of month is straight forward, but I like to fin...
Installing SSMS 2012 all by it’s lonesome
SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) is not offered as a standalone download on MSDN. Installation requires the user to download the sql server installation p...
snippet designate a certain time of the day in getdate()
Snippet to designate a certain time of the day to evaluate in the current day. If you need to limit a result to the current date after a particular time, str...
Native SSMS a second class citizen no longer…
Intellisense can be a boon to adding quick development. Quick hints on scope specific variables, syntax suggestions, function descriptions and more provide a...
dynamic sql and a char crash
Dynamic SQL can be helpful, but a pain to debug. I spent hours today working on figuring out why my simple date comparison in dynamic SQL wasn’t working. Fou...
How to default SSRS date parameters to the first and last day of the the previous month
Populating default dates in SSRS can be helpful to save the user from having to constantly input the date range they normally would use. When a report is pul...