Datatypes and the Default Mask with Dynamic Data Masking - Step 2 of the Stairway to Dynamic Data Masking (2021-03-31)

 SQLServerCentral Newsletter for March 31, 2021 Problems displaying this newsletter? [View online](. [SQL Server Central]( Featured Contents - [Datatypes and the Default Mask with Dynamic Data Masking - Step 2 of the Stairway to Dynamic Data Masking]( - [What is interpolation?]( - [From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Moving Into Consulting 101 - Part 2 - The Tact of a Consultant]( - [From the SQL Server Central Blogs - How to add a Constant value to Dynamic JSON array in Azure Data Factory]( Question of the Day - [More Which in R]( The Voice of the DBA  Daily Coping Tip Walk a different route today and see what you notice I also have [a thread at SQLServerCentral]( dealing with coping mechanisms and resources. Feel free to participate. For many of you out there working in a new way, I'm including a thought of the day on how to cope in this challenging time from [The Action for Happiness Coping Calendar](. My items will be on [my blog](, feel free to share yours. Constant Integration I've been part of a company that purchased another, as well as part of a company that was purchased. In both cases, the changes were slow, with integration between technology, departments, and the org chart often taking a year or more. Apple buys a new company every month, or every 3-4 weeks according to [this article](. That's about 15 companies a year, which seems like a lot to me. The cheapest part of this entire process is likely the purchase price of the company. The cost in productivity, in changing habits, correcting mistakes, and other integration tasks is likely high. Apart from the human aspect, integrating data is another issue. While some companies can use separate systems, there will be some exports and imports of data, not to mention the potential mistakes made by employees using new systems. That's work for us data professionals, as much of the time help desks or support systems might not have the tooling or access to make changes. Then there are the challenges of dealing with triggers or even a lack of referential integrity, which can result in tedious editing of fields by DBAs or other privileged users. No DBA? Developers might have to take time to fix things. On top of all this, auditing is likely a concern in public companies whenever we are changing data. I used to save scripts and put them in public folders, as a cheap way of auditing. However, these days I think I'd use XEvents tied to my userID (or all domain admins) and ensure that all activity is captured. Those of us that work with data ought to be worried and concerned about all of our data editing work. Often if there are mistakes have are widely noticed, we should ensure we have records that show we are following the proper procedures for our organization. It might not prevent repercussions, but it does give us some protection for whimsical actions by others. Steve Jones - SSC Editor [Join the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums](   Featured Contents [Stairway to Dynamic Data Masking]( [Datatypes and the Default Mask with Dynamic Data Masking - Step 2 of the Stairway to Dynamic Data Masking]( Steve Jones - SSC Editor from SQLServerCentral.com This article digs deeper into the ways that Dynamic Data Masking works with different data types. [What is interpolation?]( Additional Articles from SimpleTalk In this article, Joe Celko explains interpolation and covers a bit about the history and what we all did before computers. From the SQL Server Central Blogs - [Moving Into Consulting 101 - Part 2 - The Tact of a Consultant]( Will Assaf from SQL Tact This is part two in a five part series this week, Moving into Consulting 101. Today's consulting topic is friendly advice on how to handle yourself in front of clients,... From the SQL Server Central Blogs - [How to add a Constant value to Dynamic JSON array in Azure Data Factory]( Rayis Imayev from Data Adventures (2021-Mar-22) I had an interesting Azure Data Factory (ADF) case last week while pulling a list of files from an Azure Storage account with the help of [Get Metadata] activity....   Question of the Day Today's question (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor):  More Which in R I have this code: > newletters<- c("q","w", "e", "r", "t", "y", "u", "i", "o", "p", "q", "w", "e" ) > which (new_letters=="q") What is returned from this? Think you know the answer? [Click here]( and find out if you are right.    Yesterday's Question of the Day (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor) The Command Palette in Azure Data Studio I want to zoom in on my code while using Azure Data Studio. I need to get to the command palette to do this, but how can I do this? Answer: CTRL+Shift+P Explanation: CTRL+Shift+P brings up the command palette, which allows you to find and change many settings in Azure Data Studio. Ref: Keyboard Shortcuts - [Discuss this question and answer on the forums](    Database Pros Who Need Your Help Here's a few of the new posts today on the forums. To see more, [visit the forums](. --------------------------------------------------------------- SQL Server 2017 - Administration [Availability Group]( - Planning to setup AG group between 4 replica's and 3 are located in the same DC and a DR node in different DC. Between Primary and SR1 it would be synchronous commit for Automatic failover and HA option. Primary Replica - Full, Diff and Log backups & Maintenance Jobs etc. Secondary Replica 1(Synchronous commit) - […] SQL Server 2017 - Development [improvement suggestion]( - Im breaking my head on this. It runs in 2 ms but just has high reads n cpu sometimes. What can be done to improve or optimize --select top 10 * from firm_master order by 1 desc --select top 10 * from BOOKING order by 1 desc declare @Firmid varchar(20), @Bookingid nvarchar(max), @StartDate nvarchar(30), @EndDate […] SQL Server 2016 - Administration [Controlling Access to Always On Read Only Replicas]( - We currently use Always On Availability Groups on SQL Standard. One of use customers has expressed interest in real time reporting and I'm exploring the option of upgrading their instance to SQL Enterprise to enable read only access to the secondary replica. They intend to connect with PowerBI to the database. I've read that we […] [SQL Server Agent issue]( - I am running into an issue and hoping to get some help. Every time I reboot my server, SQL Server service and agent starts automatically. I see that the Agent is running but when I run a job or any job, I get this error (See screenshot below). I then restart the SQL agent and […] SQL Server 2016 - Development and T-SQL [Return incorrect numeric value]( - Hello, I have make this query to return the max numeric value from the right for adding +1 : SELECT CAST(Isnull(MAX(REVERSE(SUBSTRING(reverse(Ltrim(Rtrim(cod))),0,CHARINDEX ('-',REVERSE(Ltrim(Rtrim(cod))))))),1) + 1 as varchar)[NextNumber] From QNC (Nolock) Where qnc.cod LIKE 'NCREC-CL'+'.'+'CMP' + '-'+'%' --This Return : 10 that is incorrect, the correct value must be 11 --if i modify my query and Group […] Administration - SQL Server 2014 [how to checkf if SQL Server CPU/RAM has bottleneck]( - how to checkf if SQL Server CPU/RAM has bottleneck? thanks! [service broker endpoint in disabled or stopped state]( - I had posted a thread some time back and since that didn't lead anywhere, trying to find answers again. Have a alwaysOn group to host sharepoint (SP) databases. SP was set up to use the cluster name for connection. But we noticed that when the failover occurred SP still pointed to the previous primary. So, […] SQL 2012 - General [Signatures embedded in XML field ?]( - Hi I have a table with a signature embedded in an XML field. I wanted to write a SSRS report to display the signature. Does anyone know where I can look for how to/if I can display the signature? Thanks SQL Server 2012 - T-SQL [How do I get the XSD for an XML field on a table?]( - Hi, I need to get the XSD for an XML field on a table. I know I can take the XML and generate the XSD online. But is the XSD for the field stored in the DB and how do I get to it? Would the one I generate be the same as the one […] SQL Server 2019 - Administration [SQL Server 2019 on linux - memorylimitmb vs. max server memory]( - Short question: What relationship does the memorylimitmb value (from /opt/mssql/bin/mssql-conf get memory) have with SQL Server's "max server memory" value? Long story: We have a new instance of SQL Server 2019 web edition running on linux. The linux environment has 64G RAM, the maximum amount allowed for web edition. Once the server was under load, […] [Unable to force Queryplan in QueryStore, failure 8695]( - The queryplan looks forced but it's not used. Looking in "sys.query_store_plan" it says last_force_failure_reason = 8695 and last_force_failure_reason_desc = 'GENERAL_FAILURE'. The code 8695 doesn't seem to be documented anywhere (not even MS as far as I can see). Anyone knows better? Thanks alot in advance  SQL Server 2019 - Development [Question on BCP]( - I have been looking everywhere, and cannot find anything on this . Can anyone tele me if you can used BCP and xp_cmdshell to insert data from one table to another? and if this can be done please let me know where I can get information on this. Thank you SQL Server 2008 Performance Tuning [Same queries different client]( - I have a Siebel CRM with Sql Server back-end database (Sql server 2008 R2 but the database has compatibility Level 80 (Windows 2000)). Each Siebel client is Windows XP with a front-end installation. The client pc has access to the back-end database through ODBC (Sql Server 2000). All of the clients suddenly slow down a […] General [How can I let system use more CPU and RAM of SQL Server ?]( - I have a system, when I perform one function (nobody uses this server), it works very slow, but I check the SQL server database(SQL server is 2005 ) CPU Utilization rate is about 15%, and RAM usage is low 6.5GB, the total RAM is 16GB. why the CPU and RAM utilization rate is so low? […] SQLServerCentral.com Announcements [Email Issues - 23 Mar 2021]( - We are experiencing some email issues with our provider, apparently from SPAM reports and filters. 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