SQL Server Agent is a Microsoft Windows service that executes scheduled administrative tasks, which are called jobs in SQL Server.
T-SQL includes a large collection of stored procedures that deal with SQL Server Agent jobs.
Here, we’ll use some of them to create and schedule a SQL Server Agent job.
You can also create SQL Server Agent jobs via the GUI (in SSMS) if you prefer.
Continue readingWhen you first create a SQL Server Agent job, you might want to do a quick test to see if it’s going to actually run without any issues.
This is quite straightforward when using the SSMS GUI, but how do you do it in T-SQL?
Answer: The sp_start_job stored procedure.
SQL Server error Msg 206, Level 16 is a common error to get when inserting data into a table.
It happens when you’re trying to insert data into a column that is incompatible with the data type you’re trying to insert.
This could happen if you accidentally try to insert data into the wrong column (or even the wrong table). But it could also happen if you incorrectly assume that SQL Server will convert the data for you.
To fix this issue, make sure you’re inserting the correct data type.
Continue readingIf you’re familiar with creating partitioned tables in SQL Server, you might be used to creating a separate filegroup for each partition. This has its benefits, and may very well be the method you would choose in most scenarios.
However, you also have the option of mapping multiple partitions to a single filegroup.
In this article I share two examples of mapping multiple partitions to a single filegroup.
If you have a partitioned table or index in SQL Server, and you want to determine which partition a given value would be mapped to, you can do this nice and quickly with the $PARTITION system function.
All you need to know is the name of the partition function (and of course, the value you’re interested in).
Continue readingSQL Server error Msg 245, Level 16 tells us that there was a problem when trying to convert a value to a specific data type.
You’ll get this error if you try to insert the wrong data type into a column.
To fix this issue, make sure the data type of the value you’re trying to insert, matches the column’s type.
Continue readingIf you’ve previously created a partitioned table in SQL Server, and you now want to know how many rows are being stored in each partition, here are three queries you can use.
In particular, you can:
sys.dm_db_partition_stats viewsys.partitions view$PARTITION function in a queryBelow are examples of all three.
Continue readingSQL Server has the UPDATE() function that you can use within your DML triggers to check whether or not a specific column has been updated.
While this function only accepts one column, there’s nothing to stop you from including multiple UPDATE() clauses with AND or OR to test for multiple column updates.
In SQL Server, you can query the sys.partitions system catalog view to find out whether or not a partition has been compressed.
In particular, the data_compression column tells you whether it’s compressed or not. The data_compression_desc column tells you what type of compression it uses. If it isn’t compressed, it returns NONE.
SQL Server error 120 occurs when you don’t specify enough columns in your INSERT list when using a SELECT list for the values to insert.
To be more specific, it happens when you use a SELECT list in your INSERT statement, but the SELECT list doesn’t return as many columns as you’re specifying with the INSERT.
This is easy to fix. Simply make sure the number of columns match between your INSERT and SELECT list.