17Jul 2017 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

Database Fundamentals #5: Database Properties

Database Fundamentals
Don’t let the ease of creating databases lull you into a false sense of security. They actually can be very complicated. You can modify and individualize their behavior within your server so that different databases behave in radically different ways. The best way to see all the different manipulations you can make, open the New Database window by right clicking on the Databases folder within the Object Explorer window, assuming you’re already connected to the server. Don’t bother typing anything into the first page. Click on the Options tab on the left side of the window. You’ll see a screen that should look very similar to this: Don’t worry. We won’t be talking about all the possible settings on this page. Instead we’ll focus on a few that are extremely…
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26Jun 2017 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

Database Fundamentals #4: Create a Database

Database Fundamentals, T-SQL
SQL Server provides multiple ways to perform most functions. In order to maximize your understanding of how SQL Server works and have as many different mechanisms as possible for getting work done, you’ll use the GUI and TSQL to learn how to create and drop databases. You can then use whichever mechanism works best for you at the moment. Using  each method, we’ll first create a database using the least amount of work possible, just so you can see how easy it is create a database. We’ll go over how to remove databases from the system, getting rid of the database you just created. From there we’ll drill down to create another database, exploring some of the different mechanisms you can use to change how databases get created. Then we’ll…
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20Jun 2017 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

Database Fundamentals #3: What’s In a Database?

Database Fundamentals
It’s worth noting that a lot of people will never need to create their own database. You may never create your own tables or other data structures either. You may only ever run backups and restores and manipulate the security on the system and let application installs create databases for you. That’s completely understandable and perfectly in line with the needs of many businesses and many accidental DBAs. However, it's a good idea to understand what this stuff is and how it works as part of understanding SQL Server. A Database Is Actually Files You need to store information that you want to be able to retrieve later. It’s necessary that you organize that information. If you were working with a word processing program, you store different documents in different…
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