Posts by Brent Ozar

Brent Ozar

1781 posts

https://www.brentozar.com

I make Microsoft SQL Server go faster. I love teaching, travel, and laughing. I live in California with my wife Erika.

[Video] How Can I Measure If My Database Does More Reads Than Writes?

April 7, 2020

Brent Ozar

Production Database Administration, Videos

When someone asks you, “Is this database read-intensive or write-intensive?” you probably look at sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats to measure the file activity – but that isn’t really correct. After all, your users run a lot of queries all day that are simply satisfied from the buffer pool. SQL Server caches your data so it doesn’t have to hit…

Announcing Two Free Live Fundamentals Courses This Wednesday & Thursday

April 6, 2020

Brent Ozar

Conferences and Classes

During the quarantines, I’m trying to keep you busy with free online training. Last week, I unveiled the new free Quest Database Training Days, and this week, I’ve got another one. I’m going to teach my Fundamentals classes live, free! Wednesday, Fundamentals of Index Tuning – 9:00-5:00 Eastern (14:00-22:00 UTC) – click to see in your own…

[Video] Watch Brent Work on sp_Blitz

April 2, 2020

Brent Ozar

sp_Blitz, Videos

During the quarantines, I’m looking for new ways to help you level up for free. I decided to start live-streaming whenever I’m working on things I can share with you publicly. I wanted to add a new check to sp_Blitz, so I figured I’d do it live on camera while you watch, and talk you…

Congrats. Y’all Raised $8,919 for Doctors Without Borders in March.

April 1, 2020

Brent Ozar

Company News

I hate posting things on April 1, but there’s no laughing here, only cheering. During our March quarantine sale, I donated 10% of all sales to Doctors Without Borders. I’m proud to announce that y’all raised $8,919 to provide lifesaving medical humanitarian care in over 70 countries. I’m excited to see you in class. Y’all…

What Does This Button Do? Wrong Answers Only.

March 31, 2020

Brent Ozar

Humor

121

One of my favorite memes is Wrong Answers Only, where you show something and people have to answer incorrectly, like this and this and this. So now it’s your turn: you’re in SSMS, you right-click on a database, and go into Tasks: What does that bottom right task do? Wrong answers only.

Announcing Quest Database Training Days: Free Live Training with Me, Janis, and Pinal

March 30, 2020

Brent Ozar

Conferences and Classes

During the quarantines, I’m trying to find as many ways as possible to get y’all free training. Today & tomorrow are the last days that you’ve got free access to the recordings of my Fundamentals of Index Tuning and Fundamentals of Query Tuning classes – get those while you can, because they’ll disappear when March…

[Video] What Percent Complete Is That Index Build?

March 26, 2020

Brent Ozar

Index Maintenance, SQL Server 2017, Videos

SQL Server 2017 & newer have a new DMV, sys.index_resumable_operations, that show you the percent_completion for index creations and rebuilds. It works, but…only if the data isn’t changing. But of course your data is changing – that’s the whole point of doing these operations as resumable. If they weren’t changing, we could just let the operations…

Updated First Responder Kit and Consultant Toolkit for March 2020

March 25, 2020

Brent Ozar

First Responder Kit Updates

No Comments

In the immortal words of “Orange” Julius Caesar as written by Shake’s peer, “Beware the bugs of March.” It took us 2,064 years, but we’ve finally fixed those bugs, plus added a couple of new features. To get the new version: Download the updated FirstResponderKit.zip Azure Data Studio users with the First Responder Kit extension:…

The First Time I Had to Restore a Database

March 24, 2020

Brent Ozar

Backup and Recovery

Not the exact same time frame, but not that far off. I remember it really clearly. In the mid 1990s, long, long before I went into IT as a career, I was working at a photo studio in Muskegon, Michigan. They specialized in high school class photos, and they did a LOT of ’em. Every morning,…

“Working” From Home? Watch A Bunch of Free SQL Server Videos on YouTube.

March 13, 2020

Brent Ozar

Videos

You’re new at this working from home thing, and you’re trying to put Game of Thrones up on a second monitor while you work? Listen, that’s not gonna play out well. You’re gonna get distracted and you’re not gonna get any work done. Instead, if you’re gonna have something in the background, learn about SQL…

How to Track Performance of Queries That Use RECOMPILE Hints

March 12, 2020

Brent Ozar

Query Store (QDS), sp_BlitzCache

Say we have a stored procedure that has two queries in it – the second query uses a recompile hint, and you might recognize it from my parameter sniffing session: Transact-SQL CREATE OR ALTER PROC dbo.usp_SearchUsers @Reputation INT AS BEGIN /* Query 1, always the same: */ SELECT COUNT(*) FROM dbo.Users; /* Query 2, recompiles…

How COVID-19 Affects Conferences

March 11, 2020

Brent Ozar

Conferences and Classes

SQLBits just postponed their event, and I’m stepping out of SQL Saturday Iceland as well. I’ve had the unusual position of being a conference attendee, speaker, and sponsor, all at different times of my life, so I wanted to do a quick brain dump explaining some of the gotchas involved behind the scenes. Canceling a…

Things to Consider When SQL Server Asks for an Index

March 10, 2020

Brent Ozar

Indexing, SQL ConstantCare

No Comments

One of the things I love about SQL Server is that during query plan compilation, it takes a moment to consider whether an index would help the query you’re running. Regular blog readers will know that I make a lot of jokes about the quality of these recommendations – they’re often incredibly bad – but…

Making TRY_CAST and TRY_CONVERT Queries Faster with Indexed Computed Columns

March 5, 2020

Brent Ozar

Computed columns, Execution Plans, T-SQL

No Comments

I know this is gonna sound crazy, but let’s say you had a table where people stored all kinds of things in one column: dates, integers, file names, sale prices, file names, you name it. And let’s say your application frequently ran a query looking for dates in that column, like this: Transact-SQL SELECT *…

How to Find Cool Questions and Answers on DBA.StackExchange.com

March 4, 2020

Brent Ozar

Stack Overflow Database

No Comments

DBA.StackExchange.com is a Stack Overflow site that’s specifically targeted at database administrators. There tend to be some pretty interesting questions in there – not just for SQL Server, but all kinds of databases – but at the same time, there’s also a lot of noise. To help find fun questions, I use The Power of…

SQL ConstantCare® Population Report: Winter 2020

March 3, 2020

Brent Ozar

SQL ConstantCare

Ever wonder what’s “normal” out there for SQL Server adoption rates, hardware sizes, or numbers of databases? Let’s find out. Our SQL ConstantCare® service lets users send data in about their SQL Servers and get health & performance advice via email. Users can opt in to share their anonymized data to get better recommendations overall.…

That's it, I'm rolling back to SQL Server 6.5

Breaking News: SQL Server 2019 CU2 Breaks Agent.

March 1, 2020

Brent Ozar

Breaking News, SQL Server 2019

That’s it, I’m rolling back to SQL Server 6.5 You reported it here in the comments, and over at SQLServerUpdates, and in this DBA.StackExchange.com question. The official word is in: yep, SQL Server 2019 Cumulative Update 2 breaks Agent jobs on some servers, causing them not to run. That official word is only in that…

Updated First Responder Kit and Consultant Toolkit for February 2020

February 20, 2020

Brent Ozar

First Responder Kit Updates

No Comments

We spent Valentine’s Day removing the bugs from your chocolates. You’re welcome. To get the new version: Download the updated FirstResponderKit.zip Azure Data Studio users with the First Responder Kit extension: ctrl/command+shift+p, First Responder Kit: Import. Download the updated Consultant Toolkit in your account EU customers: check your email for the updated version from Gumroad,…

Interesting Undocumented Tidbits in SQL Server 2019 CU2

February 19, 2020

Brent Ozar

SQL Server 2019

SQL Server 2019 Cumulative Update 2 is out, and Microsoft snuck in a few things that they didn’t mention in the release notes. Contained Availability Groups continue to get new investments. In the lead-up to SQL Server 2019’s release, we got a few presentations at various conferences where Microsoft folks said we’d get the ability…

WHERE GETDATE() BETWEEN StartDate AND COALESCE(CancelDate, EndDate) Is Even Harder to Tune.

February 19, 2020

Brent Ozar

Development, Indexing

In my last post, we started with a memberships table, and each membership had start & end dates. I’m going to create the table and populate it with everyone having an active membership – their StartDate is the same as their Stack Overflow account creation date, and their EndDate is around a year or two…