PowerShell

While getting a new workstation is usually nice, reinstalling all your softwares and settings is definitely not the most pleasant thing that comes to my mind. One of the factors that can contribute the most to making the process even less pleasant is working around the corporate proxy. Many applications live on the assumption that nobody uses proxy servers, thus making online repositories inaccessible for new installations and for automatic updates. [Read More]

One of the things I hate the most about “old” databases is the fact that unused tables are kept forever, because nobody knows whether they’re used or not. Sometimes it’s really hard to tell. Some databases are accessed by a huge number of applications, reports, ETL tools and God knows what else. In these cases, deciding whether you should drop a table or not is a tough call. Search your codebase The easiest way to know if a table is used, is to search the codebase for occurences of the table name. [Read More]

SQL Server logins can implement the same password policies found in Active Directory to make sure that strong passwords are being used. Unfortunately, especially for servers upgraded from previous versions, the password policies are often disabled and some logins have very weak passwords. In particular, some logins could have the password set as equal to the login name, which would by one of the first things I would try to hack a server. [Read More]