We went up to Michigan to see my dad’s side of the family, and the snow came down just in time for our arrival. Always love the fresh snow look.

So I stood outside and took your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento. Let’s see what y’all came up with today:

Here’s what we covered:

• 00:00 Start
• 00:27 York!: Hi Brent! Recently you indicated in your Weekly Links that you aren’t a fan of schemas in a db. Can you elaborate as to why? Thanks!
• 02:06 Brian: Linked servers; you bash them and yes they’re evil and slow. You’ve said “why not connect directly to the server that has the data”, I agree. But in cases where my friend has data on two servers (can’t consolidate them) and you need to query it together, how do you optimize that?
• 03:52 Youssef L.: Hi Brent, I’ve been a paid SQL DBA since I was 17(5 years ago), I landed a Senior position and I’m one of 2 DBAs in the company working on a huge migration project from on-prem to Azure(600DBs). Management wants to use MI while I want always on approach.what do you think is best?
• 04:50 M.: Hi Mr. Brent. Can you tell me why it is bad for performance to write WHERE datecolumn = getdate()? Thank You.
• 05:36 Dru: Is the Pluralsight business model not long for this world since content creators can make so much more $$$ hosting their own training videos?
• 05:51 Dance Monkey: Is it ok to simultaneously install Windows updates and SQL cumulative updates at the same time via windows update?
• 06:49 Frank Drebin: What is the next version of SQL Server that will be deprecated in the first responder kit? When will this take place?
• 07:46 Peter Riis: Hello Brent. Querying Spatial Data are sometimes really slow. The est. vs. act. number of rows using spatial functions can be way off. I joined your Level 2 Bundle and can’t find any hints on tuning these Queries. Do you have any ideas on tuning Queries on Spatial data?
• 09:08 Patricia Zysk: Considering the limitations of both, what SQL feature do you recommend for tracking changes AND knowing which user made the change/date. In 2023 seems silly to have to write a trigger for part 2 of this with CDC. Thanks!
• 10:07 thevibrantdba: In a prior webcast you mentioned Andy leonard for SSIS and my experience with the videos has been amazing. Now, who is the brent ozar for SSRS?
• 10:49 Lenny: What is your opinion of distributed partitioned views in SQL Server?
• 11:31 ConsultingMadness: While discussing reporting requirements, a client explained an internal process that sounded like a backdoor to avoid a tax requirement. It sounded a little sketchy. Have you ever encountered something like this, did you keep working with them, or have other advice to share?