Posts by Brent Ozar

Brent Ozar

2261 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.

Office Hours: Questions That Didn’t Make the Cut

Last Updated March 23, 2023

Brent Ozar

Production Database Administration

Sometimes, y’all post questions at https://pollgab.com/room/brento and they don’t get a lot of upvotes, and reading through ’em, I bet it’s because other people don’t quite understand what you’re asking. I think there might actually be a good question at the heart of it, but … I’m just not sure what it is, and it needs…

[Video] Office Hours in Cartagena, Colombia

Last Updated March 16, 2023

Brent Ozar

Videos

Before heading out to Old Town for sightseeing, I went through your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento. Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Start 00:44 Haydar: Is there a good way to suppress part of TSQL batch from showing the query plan in SSMS but having the rest of the batch show the query plan? 02:13 Mike:…

It’s Monday. Do You Know Where Your PowerShell Training Is?

Last Updated March 21, 2023

Brent Ozar

PowerShell

You’re over the hump! Just two weeks left to go. All month long, I’m giving away our newest class, Fundamentals of PowerShell for DBAs. Here’s what you’ll be learning this week: March 20, Mon: Parameters and Error Handling and Demos March 21, Tues: The SQL Server Module and Demos March 22, Weds: The SQLSERVER:\ Drive…

Slow Startup, Failover, and Restore Times with In-Memory OLTP

Last Updated March 8, 2023

Brent Ozar

In-Memory OLTP (Hekaton)

When In-Memory OLTP came out, I worked with it briefly, and I remember coming away thinking, “Who in their right mind would actually use this?” I was so horrified that I wrote a presentation about it and gave it at a couple of conferences: Many laughs were had, but obviously that didn’t make me any…

[Video] Office Hours at Sea: Heading to Jamaica

Last Updated March 13, 2023

Brent Ozar

Videos

I’m on a boat! I’m on a 10-day Panama Canal cruise, and I stopped (well, not the boat) off the coast of Florida to answer questions y’all posted at https://pollgab.com/room/brento. 00:00 Start 00:56 DBe: In several places I’ve worked, it’s been “policy” to automatically restart heavy-use SQL servers off-hours on a regular cadence. Usually monthly…

Who’s Hiring in the Microsoft Data Platform Community? March 2023 Edition

Last Updated February 8, 2023

Brent Ozar

Who's Hiring

Is your company hiring for a database position as of March 2023? Do you wanna work with the kinds of people who read this blog? Let’s set up some rapid networking here. If your company is hiring, leave a comment. The rules: Your comment must include the job title, and either a link to the full…

I’m Coming to Boston for SQLSaturday!

Last Updated March 7, 2023

Brent Ozar

Conferences and Classes

I’m coming back to Boston for SQLSaturday this October 14th! On Friday the 13th (muhaha), before the event, I’m teaching a one-day pre-conference workshop on Mastering Query Tuning. You need to speed up a SQL Server app, and you’re allowed to change the queries and indexes – but not the server hardware or settings. Good…

I’m Coming to Gothenburg and Oslo This Fall!

Last Updated February 13, 2023

Brent Ozar

Conferences and Classes

Back in 2020 before the wheels came off the world, I’d scheduled visits to Gothenburg and Oslo for their annual SQL Server events. Now that things are back to normal, it’s back on! Data Saturday Gothenburg, Aug 26 & 28, 2023 – Monday Post-Con: Mastering Server Tuning – You’re constantly facing new performance challenges on different servers.…

Can You Nest Transactions in SQL Server?

Last Updated February 28, 2023

Brent Ozar

T-SQL

To find out, let’s set up a simple status log table: DROP TABLE IF EXISTS dbo.StatusLog; CREATE TABLE dbo.StatusLog (TimeItHappened DATETIME2 PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED, Step VARCHAR(20)); GO 123456 DROP TABLE IF EXISTS dbo.StatusLog; CREATE TABLE dbo.StatusLog (TimeItHappened DATETIME2 PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED, Step VARCHAR(20));GO And then let’s try a two-part transaction: BEGIN TRAN INSERT INTO dbo.StatusLog VALUES…

Find 40 Problems in This Stored Procedure.

Last Updated February 24, 2023

Brent Ozar

T-SQL

Aaron Bertrand posted a challenge: We’re going to use the AdventureWorks sample database (get your copy here), where the folks in marketing requested a list of users to e-mail a new promotional campaign. The customers need to meet at least one of the following criteria: last placed an order more than a year ago placed…

Office Hours: Short Text Answers Edition

Last Updated February 19, 2023

Brent Ozar

Production Database Administration

Not all of the questions y’all post at https://pollgab.com/room/brento require long-winded responses. Brandon: Do you seen a rise in json queries to address impedance mismatch between data/objects? I struggled with EF to produce a query that was neither simple nor complicated against a properly designed db (according to 2 experts). Dropped EF; used json query…

Ambulance generated with Stable Diffusion. Prompt: red and white ambulance, cartoon

Updated First Responder Kit and Consultant Toolkit for February 2023

Last Updated February 15, 2023

Brent Ozar

First Responder Kit Updates

Thanks to this technique to run SQL Server on Apple Silicon chips, I’m now developing exclusively on my Mac! I’ve been using a Mac for over 15 years, but in the past, I’ve always used Windows at some layer somewhere. This time around, it’s all Mac the whole way down, which is kinda nifty. Makes…

[Video] Office Hours Brought to You by Quest Software

Last Updated February 14, 2023

Brent Ozar

Videos

Today’s episode of Office Hours is brought to you by Quest Software. I went through your top-voted questions from PollGab.com/room/brento, and, uh, kinda looked like I was sponsored by Fendi while doing it, hahaha: Wow, those logos are bigger than I thought. Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Start 01:20 reluctantly_tolerant : I used FCI instead…

[Video] Office Hours: Ask Me Anything About SQL Server

Last Updated February 8, 2023

Brent Ozar

Videos

Y’all post and upvote questions at https://pollgab.com/room/brento, and I stream sessions on my Twitch.tv channel where I answer ’em and chat with the audience. 00:00 Start 02:09 Chad Baldwin: Hey Brent! “a friend told me” MSSQL will use an index’s stats to generate a plan, but not use the index itself. 03:25 Jeremiah Daigle: Hey…

Who’s Hiring in the Microsoft Data Platform Community? February 2023 Edition

Last Updated February 8, 2023

Brent Ozar

Who's Hiring

It’s Valentine’s day – let’s do some matchmaking! Is your company hiring for a database position as of February 2023? Do you wanna work with the kinds of people who read this blog? Let’s set up some rapid networking here. If your company is hiring, leave a comment. The rules: Your comment must include the job…

[Video] Office Hours: Quiet Sunday Edition

Last Updated February 5, 2023

Brent Ozar

Videos

While waiting for the dry cleaner to open, I went live to stream a quiet session going through a bunch of y’all’s questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento. Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Start 01:45 Rollback is single threaded: Hi Brent! In microservices application architecture, Using a database per service or a shared database? I asked this because…

Free Training Coming Up! March is PowerShell Month.

Last Updated March 21, 2023

Brent Ozar

PowerShell

You’re a production database administrator responsible for the health, security, and uptime of many database servers. You’ve been pointing and clicking your way through SSMS for years, scripting out T-SQL to files, but… when you need to do the same task repeatedly across several servers, it’s a bit of a pain. You’ve told yourself someday…

[Video] Office Hours: Snowy Michigan Edition

Last Updated February 1, 2023

Brent Ozar

Videos

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…

[Video] Office Hours: 22 Good Questions and a Stinker

Last Updated January 29, 2023

Brent Ozar

Videos

Lots of good questions on today’s broadcast! If you’d like to submit one, go to https://pollgab.com/room/brento and upvote the ones you’d like to see me cover. Here’s what we covered today: 00:00 Start 01:05 Testing123: When inserting or updating data into a table, from a concurrency perspective, does it make sense to break up the…

[Video] Office Hours: Quickie Before Dinner

Last Updated January 29, 2023

Brent Ozar

Videos

Before heading out to dinner, I went through your highly-upvoted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento. Here’s what we covered in this episode: 00:00 Start 00:20 Mert: Hi Brent, what is the relation between AlwaysOn and Windows Failover Cluster? Is WFC an obligation or a choice for creating an Always On availability group? It will be nice if…

Posts by Brent Ozar

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