This year we started publishing a weekly email newsletter (subscribe) – nothing deep, just each of us writing our 3-4 favorite links from the week. We read a lot, and we thought you might like some of the same things we liked. It’s not technology-specific, just interesting stuff. To finish up 2011, here’s the most…
Author Archives:
Silent CPU Killers
It’s always important to make sure that SQL Server is running at peak efficiency – nobody wants to waste resources. In the past we’ve concentrated on ways to reduce I/O – either network I/O or disk I/O. The increasing number of cores available in modern CPUs meant that CPU tuning wasn’t as much of a…
Coping with Change Control Video
Managing change is part of a DBA’s job. If you aren’t managing database changes effectively, though, disaster can strike. Jeremiah Peschka has worked with good and bad change management practices and even brought some awful ones under control. In this session, he introduces you to tools, tips, and techniques that will help you effectively handle…
What the Users Want: Ad Hoc Reporting
Eventually we all run into a situation that makes us cringe: the users want to design their own reports. If this were something as simple as giving users a color picker and some visual layout tools, that would be one thing. Most of the time it’s more complex. Business users know their problem domain very…
Hadoop Basics for SQL Server DBAs
Microsoft have made announcements about bringing Hadoop to Windows, but what does that mean for SQL Server? In this talk, Jeremiah Peschka will cover a the Hadoop ecosystem at a high level and discuss specific use cases for Hadoop. By the end of this talk, you should have a general idea of how different parts…
What Good is a Pig?
Data matters. Every day we generate huge volumes of data. Processing all of this data presents challenges for many people. Pig is a data flow language. It sits on top of Hadoop and makes it possible to create complex jobs to process large volumes of data quickly and efficiently. Best of all, it supports many…
Third Normal Form is Snake Oil
Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, and I will sell you the solution to all of your database needs. That’s right, it’s Doctor Codd’s Third Normal Form, guaranteed to cure all ailments of the schemata, pragmata, and performata. Doctor Codd’s Form will make your data performant and compressive. Accept no substitutes or imitators; Doctor Boyce’s…
How to Tell When TempDB is a Problem: Webcast Video
TempDB is an important part of a healthy database. To keep your database healthy, you can’t just monitor the user databases, you have to pay attention the whole system. Join Jeremiah Peschka and the Brent Ozar PLF team as they take a look at how to monitor an overlooked cause of database health problems: Queries…
How to Tell if TempDB Is a Performance Problem
Years ago, I came across an article about a gentleman who made a cat camera. Without boring you too much, this camera gave him a detailed view (including GPS info) about what his cats got up to all day. I got excited about the idea of finding out what my pets did all day. Not having…
Get Your Hands on SQL Server 2012 CTP3 in Five Minutes
I really hate waiting for software to download. It’s a first world problem and I’m an impatient guy. Thankfully, you don’t have to wait through the hour long download of a SQL Server 2012 CTP3 ISO, Windows installation, and SQL Server installation and configuration. You can now just fire up a browser, connect to AWS,…
