Microsoft Administering a SQL Database Infrastructure - 70-764 Exam Practice Test

You administer a Microsoft SQL Server 2016 server.
One of the databases on the server supports a highly active OLTP application.
Users report abnormally long wait times when they submit data into the application.
You need to identify which queries are taking longer than 1 second to run over an extended period of time.
What should you do?

Overview
General Overview
ADatum Corporation has offices in Miami and Montreal.
The network contains a single Active Directory forest named adatum.com. The offices connect to each other by using a WAN link that has 5-ms latency.
A: Datum standardizes its database platform by using SQL Server
2014 Enterprise edition.
Databases
Each office contains databases named Sales, Inventory, Customers, Products, Personnel, and Dev.
Servers and databases are managed by a team of database administrators. Currently, all of the database administrators have the same level of permissions on all of the servers and all of the databases.
The Customers database contains two tables named Customers and Classifications.
The following graphic shows the relevant portions of the tables:

The following table shows the current data in the Classifications table:

The Inventory database is updated frequently.
The database is often used for reporting.
A full backup of the database currently takes three hours to complete.
Stored Procedures
A stored procedure named USP_1 generates millions of rows of data for multiple reports. USP_1 combines data from five different tables from the Sales and Customers databases in a table named Table1.
After Table1 is created, the reporting process reads data from Table1 sequentially several times. After the process is complete, Table1 is deleted.
A stored procedure named USP_2 is used to generate a product list. The product list contains the names of products grouped by category.
USP_2 takes several minutes to run due to locks on the tables the procedure accesses. The locks are caused by USP_1 and USP_3.
A stored procedure named USP_3 is used to update prices. USP_3 is composed of several UPDATE statements called in sequence from within a transaction.
Currently, if one of the UPDATE statements fails, the stored procedure fails. A stored procedure named USP_4 calls stored procedures in the Sales, Customers, and Inventory databases.
The nested stored procedures read tables from the Sales, Customers, and Inventory databases. USP_4 uses an EXECUTE AS clause.
All nested stored procedures handle errors by using structured exception handling. A stored procedure named USP_5 calls several stored procedures in the same database. Security checks are performed each time USP_5 calls a stored procedure.
You suspect that the security checks are slowing down the performance of USP_5. All stored procedures accessed by user applications call nested stored procedures.
The nested stored procedures are never called directly.
Design Requirements
Data Recovery
You must be able to recover data from the Inventory database if a storage failure occurs. You have a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 5 minutes.
You must be able to recover data from the Dev database if data is lost accidentally. You have a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of one day.
Classification Changes
You plan to change the way customers are classified. The new classifications will have four levels based on the number of orders. Classifications may be removed or added in the future. Management requests that historical data be maintained for the previous classifications. Security A group of junior database administrators must be able to manage security for the Sales database. The junior database administrators will not have any other administrative rights.
A: Datum wants to track which users run each stored procedure.
Storage
ADatum has limited storage. Whenever possible, all storage space should be minimized for all databases and all backups.
Error Handling
There is currently no error handling code in any stored procedure.
You plan to log errors in called stored procedures and nested stored procedures. Nested stored procedures are never called directly.
You need to recommend a solution to minimize the amount of time it takes to execute USP_5. What should you include in the recommendation?

Note: This question is part of a series of questions that present the same scenario. Each question in the series contains a unique solution that might meet the stated goals. Some question sets might have more than one correct solution, while others might not have a correct solution.
After you answer a question in this sections, you will NOT be able to return to it. As a result, these questions will not appear in the review screen.
You have a database that includes a table named Candidate.
You need to update the statistics for a column named Skills in the table and turn off automatic statistics updates for the column.
Solution: You run the following query:

Does this meet the goal?

Overview
Application Overview
Contoso, Ltd., is the developer of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) application.
Contoso is designing a new version of the ERP application. The previous version of the ERP application used SQL Server 2008 R2.
The new version will use SQL Server 2014.
The ERP application relies on an import process to load supplier data. The import process updates thousands of rows simultaneously, requires exclusive access to the database, and runs daily.
You receive several support calls reporting unexpected behavior in the ERP application. After analyzing the calls, you conclude that users made changes directly to the tables in the database.
Tables
The current database schema contains a table named OrderDetails.
The OrderDetails table contains information about the items sold for each purchase order. OrderDetails stores the product ID, quantities, and discounts applied to each product in a purchase order.
The product price is stored in a table named Products. The Products table was defined by using the SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS collation.
A column named ProductName was created by using the varchar data type. The database contains a table named Orders.
Orders contains all of the purchase orders from the last 12 months. Purchase orders that are older than 12 months are stored in a table named OrdersOld.
The previous version of the ERP application relied on table-level security.
Stored Procedures
The current version of the database contains stored procedures that change two tables. The following shows the relevant portions of the two stored procedures:

Customer Problems
Installation Issues
The current version of the ERP application requires that several SQL Server logins be set up to function correctly. Most customers set up the ERP application in multiple locations and must create logins multiple times.
Index Fragmentation Issues
Customers discover that clustered indexes often are fragmented. To resolve this issue, the customers defragment the indexes more frequently. All of the tables affected by fragmentation have the following columns that are used as the clustered index key:

Backup Issues
Customers who have large amounts of historical purchase order data report that backup time is unacceptable.
Search Issues
Users report that when they search product names, the search results exclude product names that contain accents, unless the search string includes the accent.
Missing Data Issues
Customers report that when they make a price change in the Products table, they cannot retrieve the price that the item was sold for in previous orders.
Query Performance Issues
Customers report that query performance degrades very quickly. Additionally, the customers report that users cannot run queries when SQL Server runs maintenance tasks. Import Issues During the monthly import process, database administrators receive many supports call from users who report that they cannot access the supplier data. The database administrators want to reduce the amount of time required to import the data.
Design Requirements
File Storage Requirements
The ERP database stores scanned documents that are larger than 2 MB. These files must only be accessed through the ERP application. File access must have the best possible read and write performance.
Data Recovery Requirements
If the import process fails, the database must be returned to its prior state immediately.
Security Requirements
You must provide users with the ability to execute functions within the ERP application, without having direct access to the underlying tables.
Concurrency Requirements
You must reduce the likelihood of deadlocks occurring when Sales.Prod and Sales.Proc2 execute.
You need to recommend changes to the ERP application to resolve the search issue.
The solution must minimize the impact on other queries generated from the ERP application.
What should you recommend changing?

You are planning the deployment of two new Always On Failover Cluster Instances (FCIs) of Microsoft SQL Server to a single Windows Server Cluster with three nodes. The planned configuration for the cluster is shown in the Server Layout exhibit. (Click the Exhibit button.)

The SAN team has configured storage for the cluster and sent the configuration to you in the email shown in the SAN Team Email exhibit. (Click the Exhibit button.)

Each node of the cluster has identical local storage available as shown in the Local Storage exhibit. (Click the Exhibit button.)

All local storage is on SSD.
You need to plan specific configurations for the new cluster.
For each of the following statement, select Yes if the statement is true. Otherwise, select No.

You are configuring a new Microsoft SQL Server Always On Availability Group. You plan to configure a shared network location at \\DATA-CI1\SQL.
You need to create an availability group listener named AGL1 on port 1433.
In which order should you perform the actions? To answer, move all actions from the list of actions to the answer area and arrange them in the correct order.

You use SQL Azure to store data used by an e-commerce application.
You develop a stored procedure named sp1.
Sp1 is used to read and change the price of all the products sold on the e-commerce site.
You need to ensure that other transactions are blocked from updating product data while sp1 is executing.
Which transaction isolation level should you use in sp1?

You have a data warehouse that stores sales data. One fact table has 100 million rows.
You must reduce storage needs for the data warehouse.
You need to implement a solution that uses column-based storage and provides real-time analytics for the operational workload.
Solution: You implement a columnstore index on the fact table.
Does the solution meet the goal?

You plan to create a database.
The database will be used by a Microsoft .NET application for a special event that will last for two days.
During the event, data must be highly available.
After the event, the database will be deleted.
You need to recommend a solution to implement the database while minimizing costs.
The solution must not affect any existing applications.
What should you recommend? More than one answer choice may achieve the goal. Select the BEST answer.

You are troubleshooting an application that runs a query. The application frequently causes deadlocks. You need to identify which transaction causes the deadlock.
What should you do? More than one answer choice may achieve the goal. Select the BEST answer.

You administer a database that is used for reporting purposes. The database has a large fact table that contains three hundred million rows. The table includes a clustered columnstore index and a nonclustered index on the ProductID column. New rows are inserted into the table every day.
Performance of queries that filter the Product ID column have degraded significantly.
You need to improve the performance of the queries.
Which three actions should you perform in sequence? To answer, move the appropriate actions from the list of actions to the answer area and arrange them in the correct order.

You are creating a database that will store usernames and credit card numbers for an application. You need to recommend a solution to store and reuse the credit card numbers in the database.
What should you recommend? More than one answer choice may achieve the goal. Select the BEST answer.

You are designing an authentication strategy for a new server that has SQL Server 2014 installed. The strategy must meet the following business requirements:
* The account used to generate reports must be allowed to make a connection during certain hours only.
* Failed authentication requests must be logged.
You need to recommend a technology that meets each business requirement. The solution must minimize the amount of events that are logged.
Which technologies should you recommend? To answer, drag the appropriate solution to the correct business requirement in the answer area.

General Overview
You are the Senior Database Administrator (DBA) for a software development company named Leafield Solutions. The company develops software applications custom designed to meet customer requirements.
Requirements Leafield Solutions has been asked by a customer to develop a web-based Enterprise Resource Planning and Management application. The new application will eventually replace a desktop application that the customer is currently using. The current application will remain in use while the users are trained to use the new webbased application.
You need to design the SQL Server and database infrastructure for the web-based application.
Databases
You plan to implement databases named Customers, Sales, Products, Current_Inventory, and TempReporting.
The Sales database contains a table named OrderTotals and a table named SalesInfo.
A stored procedure named SPUpdateSalesInfo reads data in the OrderTotals table and modifies data in the SalesInfo table.
The stored procedure then reads data in the OrderTotals table a second time and makes further changes to the information in the SalesInfo table.
The Current_Inventory database contains a large table named Inv_Current. The Inv_Current table has a clustered index for the primary key and a nonclustered index. The primary key column uses the identity property.
The data in the Inv_Current table is over 120GB in size. The tables in the Current_Inventory database are accessed by multiple queries in the Sales database.
Another table in the Current_Inventory database contains a self-join with an unlimited number of hierarchies.
This table is modified by a stored procedure named SPUpdate2.
An external application named ExternalApp1 will periodically query the Current_Inventory database to generate statistical information. The TempReporting database contains a single table named GenInfo.
A stored procedure named SPUPdateGenInfo combines data from multiple databases and generates millions of rows of data in the GenInfo table.
The GenInfo table is used for reports.
When the information in GenInfo is generated, a reporting process reads data from the Inv_Current table and queries information in the GenInfo table based on that data.
The GenInfo table is deleted after the reporting process completes. The Products database contains tables named ProductNames and ProductTypes.
Current System
The current desktop application uses data stored in a SQL Server 2005 database named DesABCopAppDB.
This database will remain online and data from the Current_Inventory database will be copied to it as soon as data is changed in the Current_Inventory database.
SQL Servers
A new SQL Server 2012 instance will be deployed to host the databases for the new system. The databases will be hosted on a Storage Area Network (SAN) that provides highly available storage.
Design Requirements
Your SQL Server infrastructure and database design must meet the following requirements:
* Confidential information in the Current_ Inventory database that is accessed by ExternalApp1 must be securely stored.
* Direct access to database tables by developers or applications must be denied.
* The account used to generate reports must have restrictions on the hours when it is allowed to make a connection.
* Deadlocks must be analyzed with the use of Deadlock Graphs.
* In the event of a SQL Server failure, the databases must remain available.
* Software licensing and database storage costs must be minimized.
* Development effort must be minimized.
* The Tempdb databases must be monitored for insufficient free space.
* Failed authentication requests must be logged.
* Every time a new row is added to the ProductTypes table in the Products database, a user defined function that validates the row must be called before the row is added to the table.
* When SPUpdateSalesInfo queries data in the OrderTotals table the first time, the same rows must be returned along with any newly added rows when SPUpdateSalesInfo queries data in the OrderTotals table the second time.
You need to enable users to modify data in the database tables using UPDATE operations.
You need to implement a solution that meets the design requirements.
What should you configure?