How To Begin Your Career As a SQL Server DBA

Let's discuss if this course is for you.

A little about me.

This is where you start.

In it's most basic form a database is a collection of objects.

The most important being the table object.

The table object stores structured data.

Let's learn about the very basics in this lecture.

There's no shortcut on these.

In order to understand relational databases we have to fully understand the ACID properties.

It's one of the pillars relaional databases are built on.

Just a quick overview of what we covered in the first section.

All versions of SQL Server have free versions that have limitations.

It gives those who want to learn SQL Server a chance to work with most of the same functionality of enterprise versions.

This version is called SQL Server Express.

In this lecture we are going to learn how to download and install it.

With each release of SQL Server Microsoft will often have different editions of SQL Server.

When you are deciding on which edition to choose make sure you find our what the editions are for each version.

There is no guarantee SQL Server 2014 will have the same editions as SQL Server 2016 or SQL Server 2018.

When you install Microsoft SQL Server, several system databases are automatically created on every SQL Server instance.

The configuration manager allows us to restart services and manage protocols.

Let's wrap up what we've covered in this course.

As SQL Server DBAs we will spend most of our time working inside SQL Server Management Studio or SSMS.

In this lecture we will learn the basics of manipulating our objects inside SSMS.

What is a table and how do we create one in SSMS and transact.

In this lesson we will continue to learn about our table object.

Let's learn about data types in this lesson.

SQL Server supplies a set of system data types that define all the types of data that can be used with SQL Server.

The fundamental unit of data storage in SQL Server is the page. The disk space allocated to a data file (.mdf or .ndf) in a database is logically divided into pages numbered contiguously from 0 to n. Disk I/O operations are performed at the page level. That is, SQL Server reads or writes whole data pages.

Let's wrap up what we've covered in this lesson.

In this lecture we will discuss the tow kinds of transact-sql.

The SELECT statement is the most often used piece of code in SQL Server.

Let's learn what it does.

DML stands for Data Manipulation Language.

There are only 4 core statements used for the majority of our transactions.

Let's cover what they are.

Let's wrap up what we've covered.

In this lesson we are going to learn how to create logins at the server level then map those logins to databases at the database level.

Let's cover the very basics of what a SQL Server database is. All SQL Server databases must have 2 files. Each database must have one data file and one log file.

All production databases should be in FULL recovery and transaction log backups should be in place. Let's take a look at what our options are here.

SQL Server has three major types of backups.

A full backup.

A differential backup.

A transaction log backup.

Let's discuss the different types in this lesson.

Without a full backup there is no restore. This minute long audio is the very foundation to our restores.

In this lecture let's demo the different kinds of backups. We will start with the full and then work our way to the differential and finally the transaction log backup.

It would be ideal to have have FULL backups nightly but as our databases grow into VLDBs (Very Large Databases), that isn't always possible.

Fortunately, we have differential backs to assist us.

We start with a full backup then restore our transaction logs up to the point where the failure took place.

Transaction logs provide us with an up to the minute (if we set them up that way) ability to recover our databases.

We have lots of ways to set up our backups but for those that are new to SQL Server, the wizard approach gives us a step by step GUI to configure them.

Companies have different retention policies. Many like the 3 days on disk approach. No matter what methodology you use you'll want to remove older .bak and .trn files.

Let's talk about real world backup strategies.

Ideally, I like the idea of having FULL backups nightly. Sometime that's not possible so we have to craft a plan that's right for our environment.

Let's wrap up what we've covered in this section.

Thank you for taking my course!!!