Posts by Brent Ozar

Brent Ozar

2786 posts

https://www.brentozar.com

I make Microsoft SQL Server go faster. I love teaching, travel, cars, and laughing. I'm based out of Las Vegas. He/him.

SQLBits Bonus: Free Fundamentals + Mastering Bundle for My Training Day Attendees

Last Updated April 10, 2026

Brent Ozar

SQLBits

Good news! My training day workshop, Dev/Prod Demon Hunters, was sold out, but Bits just moved me into the auditorium with way more capacity and space for you to stretch out. Plus, there’s power and tables at each seat. Feel free to bring your charger, gadget, and laptop. You don’t have to follow along, but…

[Video] Office Hours: Microsoft Database Q&A

Last Updated March 28, 2026

Brent Ozar

Videos

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…

Contest: Make the Comments Look Like My ChatGPT History.

Last Updated March 24, 2026

Brent Ozar

AI, Humor

Let’s have some fun. Put yourself in the frame of mind of the fella who writes this blog. What do you think I send to ChatGPT? In the comments, write prompts that you think I’m sending to the giant robots. In one week, I’ll go through ’em and pick my favorites. My top 3 favorites…

How Multi-Column Statistics Work

Last Updated April 7, 2026

Brent Ozar

Statistics

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…

Who’s Hiring Database People? April 2026 Edition

Last Updated January 15, 2026

Brent Ozar

Who’s Hiring

Is your company hiring for a database position as of April 2026? Do you wanna work with the kinds of people who read this blog? Let’s make a love connection. If your company is hiring, leave a comment. The rules: Your comment must include the job title, and either a link to the full job…

SQL Server 2025 CU4 Adds Automatic Updates

Last Updated April 2, 2026

Brent Ozar

Humor

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…

How to Draw Line Graphs in SSMS

Last Updated March 31, 2026

Brent Ozar

SQL Server Management Studio

Ever just need a quick visualization of some numbers to get a rough idea of the trend, like this: Option 1: ask Copilot to write the query for you. In SSMS v22.3 and newer, with the results query on your screen, open up SSMS Copilot and copy/paste this into the prompt: Given the query in…

I’m Coming to the PASS Summit in Frankfurt!

Last Updated March 27, 2026

Brent Ozar

#SQLPass

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…

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

Last Updated March 15, 2026

Brent Ozar

Videos

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…

Y’all Are Getting Good Free AI Advice from PasteThePlan.

Last Updated March 24, 2026

Brent Ozar

AI, PasteThePlan.com

PasteThePlan has a new AI Suggestions tab, and it’s been really fun to watch the query plans come in and the advice go out. Here are some examples: Date “tables” – when I looked at the query, I glossed over the real problem. I thought arc_Calendar was a real date table, but AI figured out…

We do Christmas decorations a little differently around here

My Wish List for SQL Server Performance Features

Last Updated March 12, 2026

Brent Ozar

SQL Server vNext

There are a lot of shopping days left before Christmas, and even more before the next version of SQL Server ships, so might as well get my wish list over to Santa now so the elves can start working on ignoring them. My work focuses on performance tuning, so that’s what my wish list focuses…

SSMS v22.4.1: Copilot is GA. So What’s It Do Right Now?

Last Updated March 21, 2026

Brent Ozar

AI, SQL Server Management Studio

Copilot in SSMS has two parts. Usually people focus on the pop-out Copilot chat window, and that’s useful for sure, but honestly I think you’re going to get way more mileage out of the code completions feature, right away, because it blends in with your existing workflows. Let’s say that I’m working with the Stack…

[Video] Office Hours in North Bay, Ontario

Last Updated March 14, 2026

Brent Ozar

Videos

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…

Updated First Responder Kit and Consultant Toolkit for March 2026

Last Updated March 18, 2026

Brent Ozar

First Responder Kit Updates

For the last few years, I’ve slowed the First Responder Kit release down to once per quarter. It felt pretty feature-complete, and I didn’t want to make y’all upgrade any more than you have to. You’re busy, and I don’t want to take up your time unless there’s something really big to gain from doing…

Get Free AI Query Advice in PasteThePlan.

Last Updated March 12, 2026

Brent Ozar

PasteThePlan.com

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…

[Video] Office Hours, Standing in the Ocean Edition

Last Updated March 12, 2026

Brent Ozar

Videos

My tripod is probably never gonna recover from the salt water, but the water was so nice that I couldn’t resist. This is a 360 video, so you can grab the screen and move it around to see Magens Bay in St Thomas, US Virgin Islands, as I go through your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento.…

Using Claude Code with SQL Server and Azure SQL DB

Last Updated March 12, 2026

Brent Ozar

Let’s start with a 7-minute demo video – I didn’t edit this down because I want you to be able to see what happens in real time. In this video, I point the desktop version of Claude Code at a Github issue for the First Responder Kit and tell it to do the needful: That’s…

Row-Level Security Can Slow Down Queries. Index For It.

Last Updated March 6, 2026

Brent Ozar

Execution Plans

The official Azure SQL Dev’s Corner blog recently wrote about how to enable soft deletes in Azure SQL using row-level security, and it’s a nice, clean, short tutorial. I like posts like that because the feature is pretty cool and accomplishes a real business goal. It’s always tough deciding where to draw the line on…

Actual live Brent reaction to this issue

Logical Reads Aren’t Repeatable on Columnstore Indexes. (sigh)

Last Updated March 6, 2026

Brent Ozar

Columnstore Indexes

Sometimes I really hate my job. Forever now, FOREVER, it’s been a standard thing where I can say, “When you’re measuring storage performance during index and query tuning, you should always use logical reads, not physical reads, because logical reads are repeatable, and physical reads aren’t. Physical reads can change based on what’s in cache,…

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

Last Updated March 6, 2026

Brent Ozar

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…