Category: Microsoft SQL Server

Microsoft SQL Server Blog which includes troubleshooting, performance tuning, and database administration guides from an experienced SQL DBA, Peter Whyte.


  • Get Database Sizes & Free Space Info In SQL Server

    Monitoring database file sizes and free space within data and log files is an important part of monitoring SQL Server health. This information, along with other metrics such as growth events, can help you to better predict and plan for future disk space provisioning needs. The following script…

    Read More


  • SQL Server: Searching for a String (Text) in All Tables

    When working with SQL Server, you might need to find where a specific string exists in a database. This is especially useful when working with large or unfamiliar schemas. For example, you may want to check where a value like a username, email, or other data is stored…

    Read More


  • Show Only the Domain of an Email Address in SQL Server

    When working with email data in SQL Server, you may often need to show only the domain of an email address. Extracting email domains is useful for analyzing trends, identifying invalid emails, or finding the most frequent domains in your dataset. In this guide, I’ll demonstrate how to…

    Read More


  • The USE Database Statement in SQL Server

    The USE [database] command in SQL Server is used to switch the context to a specific database when running queries. This is useful when you need to work with multiple databases or change the active database during a session. When to use this statement:– When you want to…

    Read More


  • Disk Usage by Top Tables Report in SQL Server

    The Disk Usage by Top Tables Report in SQL Server is a quick way to get the sizes of all tables within a database. It’ll show all tables largest to smallest tables by total size on disk. If you notice that a database is growing larger in size,…

    Read More


  • SQL Script: Get Last Backup Times in SQL Server

    Backing up databases is crucial for data protection in SQL Server, yet it’s surprising how often business-critical databases lack proper backups. When reviewing a new SQL Server instance, one of the first tasks is checking the last backup times to ensure recovery points are available before making any…

    Read More


  • Why use WHERE 1=1 in SQL Queries

    A common SQL question is, why would anyone use WHERE 1=1 in their queries? And what does it do? The WHERE 1=1 condition means WHERE TRUE. It returns the same query result as it would without the WHERE Clause. There is no impact on query execution time. This…

    Read More


  • Creating a Linked Server with a MySQL Database

    This is my third Linked Server demo post, and this time, we’re connecting to a MySQL database. Here’s a simple diagram of the setup covered in this post, configuring a Linked Server to a MySQL Database: For this setup, I’ve covered it all in previous blog posts: –…

    Read More


  • Check & Restart SQL Server Services on Linux

    As of the 2017 Edition of SQL Server we have been able to install SQL Server on Linux. Linux will likely be more of an unfamiliar environment for traditional Microsoft SQL DBAs. This guide will walk you through how to check the status of SQL Server services and…

    Read More