Imagine if you could decrypt and pump all the wealth of transactional information and details contained in the SQL Server transaction log, in human readable format, and then store this as data directly in SQL Server tables, ensuring it wasn’t lost when the log was truncated, and such that data could be queried, reported on etc. using T-SQL.
March 7, 2016Part 1 of this article explains and provides instructions on how to properly set ApexSQL Audit in order to cover implementation of the Subpart B § 11.10 (a), § 11.10 (b) and § 11.10 (c) requirements of the Title 21 CFR Part 11 FDA’s compliance regulations. In this part, the rest of the Title 21 CFR Part 11 Subpart B will be presented and processed in form that will help ApexSQL Audit users easy setup of ApexSQL Audit for each specific requirement, with a short explanation of each requirement itself as well as what particularly ApexSQL Audit can cover and how
February 25, 2016Title 21 Code of Federal Regulations Part 11 (in the rest of the text it will be referred to as Title 21 CFR Part 11) is part of the Code of Federal Regulations established by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a set of regulations on electronic records and electronic signatures (ERES). The CFR Part 11 specifically defines the standards that have to be imposed in order to consider electronic records and electronic signatures as trustworthy, reliable, and equivalent to paper records
February 25, 2016
Before and after auditing tracks changes to data, showing the old and new values after each change. This data can be re-constructed to show an entire history of row changes and is important for forensic auditing in the case of malicious or inadvertent data changes.
February 25, 2016Introduction
A request is received from the development team asking to copy one of the production databases to the DEV SQL Server in order to simulate real time testing scenarios on it. Once the production database backup is restored to the DEV SQL Server instance, replacing the old copy, the old DEV database users will be replaced with the live ones. But, there will be also a need for the old DEV database logins for the DEV site connection.
February 5, 2016
The Format SQL objects feature allows users formatting one or more database objects with the specified formatting profile, without having to script them first.
There are three ways to invoke the Format SQL objects feature:
January 25, 2016
In part 1 and part 2 of this series information was provided on how to configure ApexSQL Audit to accomplish PCI requirements from 3 and up to 8, while in part 3 the addressing requirements 10.1, 10.2 and 10.3 of the PCI DSS 3.1 standard via ApexSQL Audit was explained
In this part, the rest of the PCI DSS 10-Track and monitor all access to network resources and cardholder requirements section will be described and as well as some requirements from section 12 that can be met using the ApexSQL Audit. This article is based on the latest PCI DSS 3.1 compliance regulation
January 22, 2016A piecemeal restores allow the user to restore only a specific filegroup from a database instead of restoring a whole database. In cases of emergency, the important thing is to get the needed data as quickly as possible and restore the rest of the data later while having the most significant data online. This approach minimizes the downtime when a disaster occurs.
January 12, 2016
Part 1 and part 2 of this article described configuring ApexSQL Audit to meet PCI DSS 3.1 standard developed to ensure security of cardholders’ payments and data. In this part, the requirement sections 10-Track and monitor all access to network resources and cardholder will be described. For more details about differences between PCI DSS 2.0 and PCI DWW 3.0 and differences between PCI DSS 3.0 and PCI DSS 3.1, check the official PCI Security Standards Council LLC documents Summary of Changes from PCI DSS Version 2.0 to 3.0 and Summary of changes from PCI DSS Version 3.0 to 3.1
January 6, 2016
From time to time, DBAs find themselves in a situation where a SQL Server database becomes too large for their production environment and needs to be shrunk in size in order to free space and allocate it back to the system.
Before shrinking a SQL Server database or database files, it is very important to understand how the process works and what are the immediate consequences of the shrinking process.
January 4, 2016
The purpose of the SQL Server index is pretty much the same as in its distant relative – the book index – it allows you to get to the information quickly, but instead of navigating through the book, it indexes a SQL Server database.
January 4, 2016
Part 1 of this article described configuring ApexSQL Audit to meet PCI DSS standards that developed to accomplish and to enhance security of payment card data. In this part, the requirement sections 7-Restrict access to cardholder data by business need to know and 8-Identify and authenticate access to system components will be described.
December 14, 2015
The PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) is a multidimensional security standard designed as a set of technical and operational requirements to protect data of credit card holders. The PCI DSS applies to all entities that store, process or transmit cardholder data, including software developers of applications and devices manufacturers when used in those transactions
This standard originated in 2005 and was created by the PCI SSC (Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council) organization. The PCI SSC organization is founded by American Express, Discover Financial Services, JCB International, MasterCard Worldwide, and Visa, Inc., with a goal to improve security of payment account data via the PCI Security Standards
December 11, 2015In Automating daily transaction log reading, we’ve shown how to automate the process of pumping transaction log data into SQL Server tables with ApexSQL Log. The proposed solution revolved around the creation of a batch file which runs ApexSQL Log CLI commands. The batch file is then scheduled with a Windows scheduler to run on a daily basis. The result is a regular daily update of 2 tables, specifically created by ApexSQL Log to hold audited data, which are populated with fresh auditing results each night.
December 9, 2015When confronted with a disaster recovery scenario with a very large database, but a small group of effected records, an opportunity exists to both speed the process and reduce risk of further damaging data, by updating more rows than necessary, simply by narrowing the subset of compared records.
ApexSQL Data Diff offers the ability to narrow the rows that should be synchronized, so only affected rows are updated. But, if the filtering isn’t done properly, “false positives” are risked, rows that are flagged as different/changed and should be synchronized, even if they weren’t in the subset of affected rows. Synchronizing these rows will update “good” data and roll back any production changes that may have been made, further damaging the data.
November 6, 2015A SQL database source control “label” or “tag” (aka revision tag) (name depends on the particular source control system) represents a snapshot in time of the source control repository and its contents. It can be saved as a reference for the future use. When the database development cycles reach a particular milestone e.g. a new build, a source control label can be created as a checkpoint. The team can continue to work on the database but revert to the source control label at any time.
October 27, 2015Having a team of developers working on the same (shared) database can be challenging for many reasons. It is critical to ensure that all changes are properly tracked and that each developer is informed about the status of objects currently used by the rest of the team. When using a shared database, all changes will be applied against the database before they are committed to the repository.
October 9, 2015Part 1 of this series shows how ApexSQL Audit should be set up for implementing the Administrative safeguards section of the HIPAA compliance (CFR 45 Part 164, Subpart C – Security Standards for the Protection of Electronic Protected Health Information developed to undertake protection of EPHI). In Part 2, the ApexSQL setup for fulfilling the remaining parts of the Administrative safeguards are discussed.
September 22, 2015Having a SQL Server database under source control is rapidly becoming the norm vs the exception in many software development teams. Using any development model (dedicated or shared), requires the team to establish a workflow and a set of rules. The dedicated model, though, allows a developer to act as an independent part of the process mainly in case the central server/repository is down. In this case, the team can continue to work unhindered. This article will focus on using the dedicated development model for SQL Server source control
September 17, 2015In Part 1 of this article it was presented how to set up ApexSQL Audit to implement Administrative safeguards standards of the HIPAA regulatory (the 45 CFR Part 164, Subpart C – Security Standards for the Protection of Electronic Protected Health Information that is developed to accomplish protection of electronic protected health information (EPHI)). In this part, the rest of the Administrative safeguards will be presented, while in the Part 3 we will provide ApexSQL Audit settings which will allow you to fulfill the HIPAA’s Technical safeguards and Policies and procedures and documentation requirements sections
September 14, 2015
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