Understanding the System Function FILEPROPERTY() (2022-09-09)

SQLServerCentral Newsletter for September 9, 2022 Problems displaying this newsletter? [View online](. [SQL Server Central]( Featured Contents - [Understanding the System Function FILEPROPERTY()]( - [Rollbacks, Undos and Undonts]( - [Data Visualizations for Excel Multi-Chart Sets with SQL Server Data]( - [From the SQL Server Central Blogs - How To Linux: A Windows Administrator’s Guide to Linux for the Newbie]( - [From the SQL Server Central Blogs - SQL Saturday Baton Rogue Recap]( Question of the Day - [Log File Viewer]( The Voice of the DBA  Daily Coping Tip Let go of self-criticism and speak to yourself kindly 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. Fixing Impostor Syndrome I think that most of us feel like an impostor at some time in our lives. We will get asked to do something we've never done, with others expressing confidence in us. We may tackle the task, or we may not. We may succeed or we may not In any of those cases, we may still feel like an impostor, someone that isn't really qualified to do this thing. Maybe of us continue to feel this way in our careers, suffering from [impostor's syndrome](. While I know that I'm good at my job, good at working with SQL Server and teaching others to do so, I still suffer from impostor syndrome at times. There are periods where my mind wonders if I've just gotten lucky and slipped through some evaluation process. My knowledge hasn't been well tested. Will someone in my boss, or their boss, questions that at some point and get rid of me? Will I be able to find another job if that happens? Can I really compete with others out there? It's not constant, but it does happen to me at times. I work with technology, helping customers better manage their database software. However, I also work in marketing, which is a completely different kind of job. Someone in my company posted an article about impostor syndrome for marketing, which I found fascinating. This could be written for technologists or, perhaps, any other profession. Read through it and think about a few things that I saw in the article. If you feel you don't have the knowledge you need, you're not alone. I think that's very true in technology, where it feels that the pace of change from vendors, from peers, and what you might read in the media (including here at SQL Server Central) can make anyone feel as if they don't know as much as others. I do try to acknowledge to myself that others feel as I though. It's slightly comforting, but not a lot. Especially when I converse with some amazing experts. Discussing execution plans with [Grant]( or T-SQL with [Jeff]( or [Allan]( can cause me to question my knowledge and success. The second thing to think about is how poor that state of the industry can be. Whether this is the skills of others or the architecture of software, systems, or databases. How often have you see software that's been purchased or deployed and you question the decisions that got it to this state. Are you amazed at how many problems you see? Do you start to question the skills of others? I know at SQL Server Central we try to help others, but I can also be amazed at the lack of knowledge out there about what I'd consider to be simple topics. At the same time, I recognize others may be in a different place in their journey. Having empathy and compassion keep me answering questions. The need to keep answering them reminds me that I do know quite a few things. Lastly, education helps. I constantly experiment and build demos of different things. Often these are learning experiments. I don't know that I become an expert in many of them, but learning more about how something works, or increasing the depth of knowledge in some area I've worked help me to build confidence to tackle the challenges I face (or my customers face). The article notes that marketing is an imprecise science. I think software can be that way as well, despite the growing number of "engineers" in our industry. Like marketing, there are no shortage of people who think they know it all, or use boisterous, blustery, loud discussion to convince others, when their choices or design might be suspect. Or perhaps outdated. One of the tenets of DevOps is that we continuously learn and experiment. I try to apply that to my own knowledge, and find it can help me feel like less of an impostor some days. Not all, but there's always tomorrow, and I usually find that these feelings pass with time, especially when I apply myself and continue to grown and learn. Steve Jones - SSC Editor [Join the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums](   Featured Contents [SQLServerCentral Article]( [Understanding the System Function FILEPROPERTY()]( Manvendra Deo Singh from SQLServerCentral Learn how to use the system function, FILEPROPERTY(), to get information about your database in T-SQL. [External Article]( [Rollbacks, Undos and Undonts]( Additional Articles from Redgate Rollback scripts are designed to allow us to recover safely from a failed deployment that leaves the database in an indeterminate state. They must check exactly what needs to be reverted before doing so. If you work with an RDBMS that cannot support transaction DDL rollback they are vital. This article proposes a strategy where you create and test a rollback file, at the same time as the forward migration, and reuse it as a Flyway undo script. [External Article]( [Data Visualizations for Excel Multi-Chart Sets with SQL Server Data]( Additional Articles from MSSQLTips.com This article covers how to create multi-chart visualizations in Excel using data from SQL Server. [Blog Post]( From the SQL Server Central Blogs - [How To Linux: A Windows Administrator’s Guide to Linux for the Newbie]( david.bermingham from Clustering for Mere Mortals Well, it’s long overdue that I left the comfort of my Windows GUI and ventured into the world of Linux. Mind you I have dabbled a very little bit... [Blog Post]( From the SQL Server Central Blogs - [SQL Saturday Baton Rogue Recap]( DataOnWheels from DataOnWheels Thank you to everyone who came out and saw me present at the SQL Saturday in Baton Rogue! It was a blast to see smiling faces and not be...   Question of the Day Today's question (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor):  Log File Viewer Which of these logs cannot be accessed from the Log File Viewer in SSMS? 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) An Interesting Conversion What is the result from this code? SELECT CONVERT(nvarchar,N'123456789012345678901234567890!') Answer: 123456789012345678901234567890 Explanation: This converts to a 30 character field by default, of type nvarchar. Without specifying the length, this is what we get. In this case, the exclamation point is stripped off the string. Ref: CAST and CONVERT - [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 2016 - Administration [SQL Multisubnet DNS issue]( - Hello We have a situation where we need to setup AlwaysOn configuration in hybrid mode (2 servers on on-premises and 2 on Azure hosted hosted under same cluster) with listener having 2 different IP's from 2 different subnets (one IP of Azure subnet and other of on-premises subnet) Since we had application connection issues we […] [non-sysadmins have been denied permission to run cmdexec job steps without a pro]( - Hello Some of the devleopers need to run xp_cmdshell. These are the steps followed, still have the error as: "non-sysadmins have been denied permission to run cmdexec job steps without a proxy account" Created a windows group account 2. Under credentials, added the account as proxy 3. Under agent jobs, under CmdExec, added the proxy […] SQL Server 2016 - Development and T-SQL [Finding first record that meets conditions + allowing grouping]( - Just want to explore the best way to pick the "first" record from a table that meets certain conditions, while at the same time allowing grouping to occur. As one example, consider a "planting" scenario where one needs to know the first month it is safe to plant seeds in different cities. Assume the temperature […] [Is It Possible to Join a Table-Valued Function w/Param To DB table]( - If I have a TVF (Table Valued Function) that accepts a date as a parameter I can join it to a Regular DB table if the value passed into the TVF is a fixed date so I can either use GetDate() or I can assign a date to a variable and pass the variable into […] [Modify Trigger to take values from inserted except for 1 field]( - I am working with a system that has audit trail triggers on most of it's key tables. On an INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE the audit table records get written with the domain table name and the before and after image using the following generic code if exists (select 1 from inserted) select @myai = CAST((SELECT TOP 1 * […] Development - SQL Server 2014 [Export to Fixed width file]( - I have an SSIS process that I would like to replace. It imports an Excel file, transforms the data and exports to a text file. I am trying to create a stored procedure that will do the same so I can execute it from an agent job. All of the solutions I have seen do […] SQL Server 2019 - Administration [SQL user and AD Group - Blank out the "Default Schema"]( - A previous DBA managed this before me. An application had a requirement to blank out the "Default Schema". See pic. Does anyone know how this was done? Every time I do it in SSMS the default schema reverts back the the previous schema. T-SQL, I couldn't get to do it either.  [SQL Server consolidation - infra and infosec applications]( - Hi, When I join my current company we had plenty of single porpoise SQL instances and my boss (senior DBA) indicated an consolidation effort... and left company. I am trying to proceed with his plan which was clear at the beginning but I encountered a few applications for which I have serious doubts. I wander […] [Background CREATE INDEX process is blocked by an UPDATE and UPDATE waits]( - Hi, In one of our projects we are using SQL Server 2019 Enterprise ed. 15.0.4249.2 version and we have synchronous always on high availability in all databases. There we have 5 databases. So, in one database, we have a stored procedure running everyday which includes an update on a table in a different database and […] SQL Server 2019 - Development [Connect PowerBI to SQL Server - TrustServerCertificate]( - Hi there, I have a problem with connecting my PowerBI desktop to my SQL server. I know 100% the problem lies with the 'TrustServerCertificate' attribute. When logging into to SSMS, or creating and ODBC data source, I need to ensure TrustServerCertificate is true. However, when using the SQL server connector (and the Azure SQL Server […] [Add another column with some commands]( - i have a script below to find all the db fixed role db_datawriter. this is working fine, no issues. what i want to do is come up with a series of commands: drop the member from the db grant update, delete, insert to the member So the 5th column will look something like this: USE […] [Joining tables]( -  I'm a real beginner of SQL and have not managed to solve this. I'm trying to join all the information below. For this I want to use the customer_id whos in table 1 and table 2. The first step will be to join the last_name (table 2) into the new table. In the next […] SQL Azure - Administration [Can an Azure Public Endpoint access/login be restricted to select Applications?]( - WARNING: Not an Azure veteran by any means (barely a newbie) so may ask some very dumb questions We've hired a 3rd party to migrate an on prem SQL Server DB to Azure and develop a cloud based solution to replace the current MS Access based application that has been accessing/using the SQL Server DB. […] Azure Data Factory [Azure data factory]( - Hi all I was wondering if anyone knows where to go for help with azure data factory. I'm trying to use a derived column to create a column from data in another column. The problem is I don't know how to write the expression or where to look for help. The azure documentation isn't clear […] Reporting Services [Need to migrate on prem SSRS to Azure Managed Instance]( - Can it possible to migrate the on prem SSRS to Azure Managed Instance ? I can see Hosting catalog databases for all supported versions of SSRS in Azure SQL Managed Instance. But don't think so, work with Managed Instance for SSRS some thing like on prem SSRS. As the reporting services won't be installed / […]   [RSS Feed]([Twitter]( This email has been sent to {EMAIL}. To be removed from this list, please click [here](. If you have any problems leaving the list, please contact the webmaster@sqlservercentral.com. This newsletter was sent to you because you signed up at SQLServerCentral.com. ©2019 Redgate Software Ltd, Newnham House, Cambridge Business Park, Cambridge, CB4 0WZ, United Kingdom. All rights reserved. webmaster@sqlservercentral.com  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -