Month: November 2013

Two SQL Server Resources That Improved When You Weren’t Looking

Last Updated November 22, 2013

SQL Server learning materials seem to live at two extremes. Blog posts are short and to the point, but they don’t cover material in depth. Books are long and detailed, but to quote a famous philosopher, ain’t nobody got time for that. Enter two resources that have been out for quite a while. They aim…

Filtered Indexes vs. Table Partitioning

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Jes Schultz

Indexing, Partitioning, SQL Server

It was a dark and stormy… Oh, wrong story. It was actually a warm, sunny afternoon in Charlotte, NC. I was presenting “Index Methods You’re Not Using” at PASS Summit. In this talk, I discussed how indexed views, filtered indexes, and compressed indexes can improve your query performance by reducing I/O. From stage right, an…

Getting Started with SQL Server Sample Databases

Last Updated November 14, 2013

Jeremiah Peschka

SQL Server

The best way to improve your skills as a database professional is to practice. If you’re like me, you might even take that practice outside of the workplace and do a bit of homework on the side. You can’t take a copy of your production database home with you, so what can you do? Thankfully,…

Free Ebook: SQL Server DBA Training Plan

Last Updated June 24, 2017

Brent Ozar

SQL Server

Our Hierarchy of Database Needs training email plan has been a lot of fun. Thousands of SQL Server professionals have signed up to get an email in their in-box every Wednesday for 6 months. It’s like a part-time college course – the one you should have been given when you first got shuffled into this…

What You Can (and Can’t) Do With Indexed Views

Last Updated May 9, 2019

Jes Schultz

Indexing, SQL Server

Views are logical objects in SQL Server databases that present you with a “virtual table”. Views are typically created for one of three reasons: security, simplification, or aggregation. Security: we create views so that a user can read specific columns out of certain tables, but not all the data. Simplification: sometimes, it’s easier to write…

Update on Stack Overflow’s Recovery Strategy with SQL Server 2014

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

Always On Availability Groups, Stack Overflow

Back in 2009 (wow, seems like only yesterday!), I wrote about designing a recovery strategy for Stack Overflow. Back then, I wrote: With these answers in mind, Stack Overflow’s decisions not to do transaction log backups, offsite log shipping, database mirroring, and so on make good business sense. Us geeks in the crowd may not like it,…

How to Winterize Your Database

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Brent Ozar

CHECKDB and Corruption, SQL Server

In Michigan where I grew up, we pull the boats out of the water at the beginning of the fall. It’s a bit of a sad time, realizing we’re done having fun on the water, and the seasons are about to change. Winterized boats at Goose Island Boatyard – Daniel X. O’Neil To prepare a…

Filtered Indexes and Dynamic SQL

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Jeremiah Peschka

Indexing, SQL Server

I’ve been told that an attendee at the PASS Summit pre-conference event asked about using dynamic SQL to get around some of the problems with filtered indexes. I’m not entirely sure what the question was, but it did give me the opportunity to play around with filtered indexes and write some simple demo code to…

What You Can (and Can’t) Do With Filtered Indexes

Last Updated January 21, 2019

Brent Ozar Unlimited Team

Indexing, SQL Server

Filters aren’t just for instagram photos. When you write a query, you (usually) don’t want to return all the rows from the table(s) involved – so you add a WHERE clause to the statement. This ensures that fewer rows are returned to the client – but doesn’t reduce the amount of I/O done to get…

How I Became Employee #2

Last Updated July 13, 2017

Doug Lane

Company News

Let’s get this out of the way: I’m every bit as surprised as you are that I’m going to work for Brent Ozar Unlimited®. Two months ago, I would not have believed it. I saw the blog post, just as you did. And I dismissed it. I believed because it wasn’t a BI job, I wasn’t the…

The Road to Employee #3: The Interview

Last Updated February 12, 2017

Jeremiah Peschka

Company News

What was the interview like for the fine folks who went through it? Talking Points We’re big believers that one of most important things for a consultant is their ability to interact with customers. The type of work we do relies on communicating clearly with our customers, and we wanted to make sure that our…

How to Be Employee #3

Last Updated February 12, 2017

Brent Ozar

Company News

These four things are important if you want to join us in Cabo: 1. Demonstrate curiosity about the technology you use. Don’t focus on the specific technology you think we want – follow your dreams. If you use a technology on a daily basis to get your job done, be curious about how it works.…

How to Write a Killer SQL Server Job Description

Last Updated February 12, 2017

Kendra Little

Professional Development

Hiring managers often feel like they’re trying to find a mythical creature On September 24, we published a blog post that we were looking for a new employee. We didn’t advertise on any job listing sites (even though there are some really good ones out there). We tweeted about it a few times, but most…

Introducing Employee #2, @TheDougLane

Last Updated February 12, 2017

Brent Ozar

Company News

This video was my first introduction to Doug Lane (Blog – Twitter): You can see the full video on SQLcruise.com, where Doug had entered a contest for a free cruise a couple of years ago. Of course he was picked as one of the winners, because I was in stitches as soon as I saw…