We’re pleased to see that there are now a large number of people using our free SDU Tools for developers and DBAs, and that number grows every day. One of the surprising requests that we’ve constantly received is for something that simply shows the name SQL Server version.
We’ve seen people doing quite messy things to derive the name, like parsing the return value from @@VERSION and so on.
2019-12-04
When SQL Server requests storage space from the operating system, the default action is for the OS to write zeroes over all the space before it’s presented to SQL Server to use. This is to ensure that the SQL Server process cannot read the data that was previously on that section of the storage (drive).
This can cause significant delays in at least two common situations:
If this security issue isn’t a concern for you (if you have a dedicated SQL Server system, or you have a corporate SAN then it’s unlikely to be), then SQL Server has an option called Instant File Initialization that avoids all the writing of zeroes.
2019-11-27
Often when I convert a decimal number to a string in T-SQL, I want the simplest version of the number. I really don’t want any trailing zeroes (i.e. at the end of the number).
In our free SDU Tools for developers and DBAs, we added a function to do just that: TruncateTrailingZeroes.
The function just takes one parameter: the number to be processed.
You can use our tools as a set or as a great example of how to write functions like these.
2019-11-20
We’ve got a lot of very useful string-related functions in SDU Tools. This is another one. At times, there’s a need to remove excess spaces between words in strings. In our free SDU Tools for developers and DBAs, we added a function to do just that: SingleSpaceWords.
The function just takes one parameter: the string to be processed.
You can see it in action in the main image above, and in the video here:
2019-11-13
More and more users of SDU Tools are adding the deployment of the tools into their standard deployment pipelines, and into their standard operating environments (SOEs).
One common but simple request that we’ve had is that they need to be able to check which version of SDU Tools is currently installed. So we added a function to do that.
It doesn’t take any parameters but just returns the version number as a string.
2019-11-06
Finishing up my recent theme of running queries against the SQL Server Reporting Services catalog. I often need to list which users have access to which items in the SSRS catalog.
So, in our free SDU Tools for developers and DBAs, we added a procedure that does just that. It’s called RSListUserAccessToContent.
It takes two optional parameters:
@RSDatabaseName sysname - the name of your SSRS database
@IsOrderedByUserName bit - should the output be ordered by user name?
2019-10-30
Continuing my recent theme of running queries against the SQL Server Reporting Services catalog, I often need to list which users have access to the service.
So, in our free SDU Tools for developers and DBAs, we added a procedure that does just that. It’s called RSListUserAccess.
It takes two optional parameters:
@RSDatabaseName sysname - the name of your SSRS database
@IsOrderedByUserName bit - should the output be ordered by user name?
2019-10-23
I mentioned last week that I’ve been needing to write queries against the SQL Server Reporting Services catalog. I often need to list the items that are contained in the SSRS catalog.
So, in our free SDU Tools for developers and DBAs, we added a procedure that does just that. It’s called RSListContentItems.
It takes two optional parameters:
@RSDatabaseName sysname - the name of your SSRS database
@IsOrderedByUserName bit - should the output be ordered by user name?
2019-10-16
Lately, I’ve been needing to write queries against the SQL Server Reporting Services catalog. And if you’ve ever tried that, you’ll find that items in the catalog have a type, but there’s no table or view that turns that type (a number) into a name.
So, in our free SDU Tools for developers and DBAs, we added a simple view that does just that. It’s called RSCatalogTypes.
You can see it in action in the main image above, and in the video here:
2019-10-09
If you used computers much in the 1980’s or 1990’s you’ll remember jokes that circulated all the time, but encoded in ROT13. It was a type of Caesar Cypher or Shift Cypher where the letters in the original words were shifted by a fixed number of positions in the alphabet to create the cyphertext.
ROT13 was a specific type of shift cypher where, for our alphabet of 26 characters, a 13 character shift is applied. That means that the same function can be used to encode text and then to decode the same text.
2019-10-02
