Code I Can’t Live Without–T-SQL Tuesday #104

Bert Wagner has a good invitation this month, a T-SQL Tuesday question about code, specifically code you can’t live without. I’ve got my thoughts below.

This is a monthly blog party, and you can participate. Write a post on this topic, and publish it on your blog. Drop a comment on Bert’s post. You can read the rules on his invitation, but you can really post anytime. It’s fun and good for your brand.

The Critical Code

I’ve managed lots of instances in my career. Some mission critical, some just important, some not important to me or the business, but important to someone.

One thing I’ve found is that there are plenty of common things I do on most systems. I’ve had lots of code that I’ve written to manage all aspects of DBA work, from backups to maintenance to monitoring. I’ve had routines that handled all sorts of security or auditing.

The code that I can’t live without, isn’t my code, but I’ve used it on probably every instance I’ve managed at some point. The code is actually from Microsoft, and it’s indispensable.

The code is sp_helprevlogin from this support article .

While I tend to be distrustful of keeping passwords the same for too long, and I usually don’t attempt to recover them in any way, just reset them. There are cases, however, when we’re moving an app, failing over to DR, or recovering some system and we need to keep the password the same.

At least in the short term. When systems are down, I need them back up, and I can argue about a password reset later.

This has been the most useful piece of code for me, and one that I think most of you could use as well.