Email separator in Powershell

Question: I'm trying to send an email with multiple recipients in Powershell, and getting an exception error message: Exception calling "Add" with "1" argument(s): "An invalid character was found in the mail header: ';'." When I revert to send the email to one recipient - the email is successfull . What is the correct way to pass multiple recipients for powershell email. Some more information that may assist in troubleshooting. 1) When I hardcode the email addresses in the Powershell code e.g $emailTo = "user1@org.com,user2@org.com" it works ok . 2)When I attempt to pass the values in as input parameters... Read more →

Adding SSMS to the PATH variable with Powershell

Question: I've installed the latest SQL Server Management Studio onto a server. I can find the ssms.exe through the directory - but I cannot start the SQL Server Management Studio through the cmdline - i.e type "ssms" in the command line. How can I fix this problem? Answer: I had a similar problem recently when installing SSMS 18.4. I downloaded the binary - installed without any errors - but then couldn't execute "ssms" from the command line. To solve this issue I added the directory with ssms.exe into the PATH variable and applied this as a machine wide change ,... Read more →

SQL Server Maximum Columns per table

Question: What is the limit on SQL Server Maximum Columns per table? I have a very wide Excel worksheet and want to migrate the data to a SQL Server table - where we can then manage the data? Answer: The standard SQL Server table maximum columns limit is 1024. Tables that include sparse column sets include up to 30,000 column A Sparse column set combines the table's sparse columns and translates into a structured representation. The column set is not stored physically in a table. Read more on SQL Server tables Table sizes and percentages (SQL Server DBA) SQL Server... Read more →

How to get ODBC drivers using Powershell

Question: I had a question from a developer who was troubleshooting an application to SQL Server connection via a DSN using ODBC. They wanted the SQL Server ODBC Driver names and platform (32 bit|64 bit) used to connect . They will use this information to check application compatibility . Although i can just RDP onto the server and grab the information through the ODBC gui - how can I use Powershell to get these ODBC details? Answer: You can extract the ODBC Driver name and platform via the Powershell cmdlet - Get-OdbcDriver. There are various options including to run the... Read more →

Common causes of SQL Server BACKUP LOG Failures

There are some repeat questions I get from Backup or Operations staff - when they receive alerts for a BACKUP LOG failure. There are multiple reasons it could be happening ranging from media failure , human error, software failure ,and SQL Server database status issues e.g OFFLINE Let's leave those to one side for a moment and assume they are all ok . The two main reasons are; 1) the initial database FULL BACKUP not taken and 2) the database in SIMPLE RECOVERY mode 1) Initial FULL BACKUP not executed when database is in FULL RECOVERY mode Msg 4214, Level... Read more →