Category: SQL Server Internals

• Partition Boundaries – Left or Right: That is the Question

  

  2014-07-16 - Fundamentals, General, Series, SQL Server Internals, Storage Wednesday

  Do you know the difference between a RANGE LEFT and a RANGE RIGHT partition function? Read on and discover a unique query to determine the actual partition a row is stored in. With this query you can quickly confirm your RANGE-assumption or find out where you got it wrong.

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• How to Crack the Symmetric Keys in the Database Wide Open

  

  2014-07-14 - Cryptography, DMVs & CVs, General, Security, Security, SQL Server Internals

  Did you always want to get to the root of symmetric key encryption in SQL Server and actually decrypt a protected symmetric key? In some circumstances this can actually be done. Find out how to do this now.

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• The sys.dm_db_database_page_allocations DMF

  

  2014-07-09 - General, Series, SQL Server 2012, SQL Server Internals, Storage Wednesday

  Are you looking for an alternative to DBCC IND? Read on to see how the new sys.dm_db_database_page_allocations DMF can be used to return all pages for a particular table (or even all tables in a database).

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• Intermediate Index Pages in SQL Server

  

  2014-07-02 - General, Series, SQL Server Internals, Storage Wednesday

  SQL Server stores indexes in B+ Tree format on disk. Each node is represented by a SQL Server page. The actual rows are stored in data pages while the index structure resides in intermediate index pages. Read on to find out more.

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• Hash Algorithms – How does SQL Server store Passwords?

  

  2014-06-30 - General, Passwords, Security, SQL Server Internals

  How does SQL Server store its own passwords? Discover which hashing algorithm is used and how you can calculate your own password hash value in T-SQL.

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