Free SQL Server help, 3× a week
Three blog posts a week, plus a Monday roundup of my favorite database news from around the web. No fluff, occasional jokes.
Recorded classes
The Fundamentals of Index Tuning, Query Tuning, and Server Tuning have all been updated as of July 2026, reflecting the latest advancements in the First Responder Kit, AI, and SQL Server 2025. They're perfect for folks who have never been to a formal training class, but are responsible for performance on SQL Server, Azure SQL DB, and Amazon RDS.
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Get first dibs (and the early-bird price) the moment registration opens.
Need hands-on help? SQL Critical Care® — my 2-day server assessment that finds the root cause and hands you the fix.
See consultingI'm back at the People's Park in Zhengzhou, Yves' hometown, watching retirees be active while I lounge around and take your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento.
Prefer listening to this via podcast? Good news! You can now subscribe to Office Hours on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Podcast Index, Podcast Addict, Podchaser, and anywhere else fine podcasts are sold.
When the new MiniMax H3 image-to-video model dropped this month, I was really impressed with how quickly and easily it was able to make 5-10 second videos from a starting image - not in the cloud, mind you, but on my own home computer gear:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Dbl8udOEq_d/
You've probably heard of the setting Max Degree of Parallelism. I hate that name: it should really be called just plain ol' Degrees of Parallelism, and here's why. There are a lot of conflicting opinions out there about how to set it, and Microsoft has official guidance about it in that article above. It's basically set…
Common Table Expressions are awesome because they let SQL Server reorder processing in whatever way it deems to be the most efficient for your current data distribution, on your current version of SQL Server. Default to CTEs.
When SQL Server gets that process wrong, switch to temp tables.
