Posts by Brent Ozar

Office Hours

[Video] Office Hours: Microsoft Database Q&A

Videos
1 Comment
Let’s go through a LOT of your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento on a VERY early Saturday morning. 00:00 Start 01:52 DBAInAction: Hi Brent Microsoft just announced Automatic Index Compaction for Azure SQL and Fabric. do you see this finally killing off the traditional ‘index maintenance’ debate? Also, any gut feeling on whether this will eventually…
Read More
How you doin

How Multi-Column Statistics Work

Statistics
4 Comments
The short answer: in the real world, only the first column works. When SQL Server needs data about the second column, it builds its own stats on that column instead (assuming they don’t already exist), and uses those two statistics together – but they’re not really correlated. For the longer answer, let’s take a large…
Read More
I'm killing your query.

SQL Server 2025 CU4 Adds Automatic Updates

Humor
33 Comments
April 1, 2026: Big news for everyone who has to manage Microsoft SQL Server, whether they’re DBAs, sysadmins, or developers. Seven years ago, Microsoft announced automatic, downtime-free hot patching of the SQL Server engine in Azure SQL DB. The tail end of that post had a teaser in it: Well, I guess enough of you…
Read More
PASS Data Community Summit Frankfurt

I’m Coming to the PASS Summit in Frankfurt!

#SQLPass
0
The pre-conference lineup for the PASS Data Community Summit Frankfurt event was just released, and I’m proud to share that I’ll be teaching my new all-day pre-conference workshop. Dev-Prod Demon Hunters: Finding the Real Cause of Production Slowness Production is slow. Development is fast. The same query runs in both. Somewhere between the two, a…
Read More

[Video] Office Hours: Q&A on the Mountaintop

Videos
4 Comments
Well, maybe mountain is a bit of a strong word, but it’s one of the highest elevation home sites in Las Vegas, with beautiful views over the valley, the Strip, the airport, and the surrounding mountains. Let’s go through your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento while taking in the view – and you can move the camera…
Read More
Office Hours North Bay Canada

[Video] Office Hours in North Bay, Ontario

Videos
7 Comments
I’m up in North Bay, Ontario, Canada for the 2026 Can-Am Curling Cup run by Aaron Bertrand – and my team actually won! Hanging out with Andy Mallon, Aaron Bertrand, Leanne Swart, Michael J Swart, and Ken Mallon before the tournament The winning team, woohoo! Let’s bask in the warmth (cough) of our glory as…
Read More
Clippy's back, tell a friend

Get Free AI Query Advice in PasteThePlan.

PasteThePlan.com
7 Comments
At PasteThePlan.com, you can paste execution plans into your browser, then send a link to someone else to get query advice. It’s useful for online forums, Stack Exchange, and the like. After you paste the plan, you’ve got a new AI Suggestions tab. It sends your query plan (and my custom prompt) up to ChatGPT…
Read More
Efficiency Efficiency

I’m Not Gonna Waste Time Debunking Crap on LinkedIn.

AI
45 Comments
LinkedIn is full of absolute trash these days. Just flat out bullshit garbage. (Oh yeah, that – this post should probably come with a language disclaimer, because this stuff makes me mad.) People wanna look impressive without actually putting in the work to gain real knowledge. They’re asking ChatGPT to write viral “expertise” knowledge posts…
Read More

[Video] Office Hours: Back in the Bahamas Edition

Videos
1 Comment
Yes, I’m back on a cruise ship with another 360 degree video. Lest you think I’m being wildly irresponsible (or responsible perhaps?) with your consulting and training money, be aware that this particular cruise was free thanks to the fine folks in the casino department at Norwegian Cruise Lines. In between beaches and blackjack, let’s…
Read More