Posts by Brent Ozar

Brent Ozar

1810 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] Watch Brent Write T-SQL

May 25, 2020

Brent Ozar

First Responder Kit, Videos

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This morning I worked on a new check for sp_BlitzFirst to find statistics that were updated in the last 15 minutes, possibly causing plan caching issues and parameter sniffing. I streamed it live, and you can watch. In part 1, the first hour, I write the proof-of-concept query: In part 2, the second hour, I…

[Video] How to Think Like the SQL Server Engine: All-Demo Edition

May 21, 2020

Brent Ozar

How to Think Like the SQL Server Engine, Videos

You’ve heard of my free How to Think Like the Engine class, and maybe you even started watching it, but…it has slides, and you hate slides. Wanna see me do the whole thing in Management Studio, starting with an empty query window and writing the whole thing out from scratch live? This session is for you.…

Parallelism Can Make Queries Perform Worse.

May 20, 2020

Brent Ozar

Execution Plans

While I was building lab queries for my all-new Fundamentals of Parameter Sniffing course – first live one is next week, still time to get in – I ran across a query with delightfully terrible behavior. I’m always torn when I build the hands-on labs. I want to make the challenges easy enough that you…

Can I Offload DBCC CHECKDB To Another Server?

May 19, 2020

Brent Ozar

CHECKDB and Corruption

You want to check for corruption, but you don’t want to slow down your primary production server. In this post, I’m specifically talking about offloading the corruption checking process. I’m not talking about doing corruption checking on both the primary and other servers – that’s wonderful, and if you’re doing that, you should hug yourself. You’re doing…

I’m On the 6 Figure Developer Podcast

May 18, 2020

Brent Ozar

Professional Development

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The 6 Figure Developer podcast with John Callaway, Clayton Hunt, and Jon Ash covers not just technical topics, but career topics so you can learn to leverage that technical knowledge and build a better career for yourself. I’m on Episode 144 talking about career development. We talked about why I sucked so bad at development,…

How I Use Streamlabs OBS for Streaming and Training Classes

May 18, 2020

Brent Ozar

Home Office

I’ve written a lot about the hardware & gear I use for streaming, and now let’s talk about the software side. There are a few thousand words in here. Don’t think that you have to tackle all of this just to get started streaming, dear reader. I’ve been working on my streaming setup for months…

I’m on the TRY/CATCH Podcast

May 16, 2020

Brent Ozar

Professional Development

While on a recent trip out to Farm Credit Services in Omaha, I sat down to talk with FCS’s Natalie Gerdes & Tim Goergen to record an episode of their podcast, TRY/CATCH. You can listen to the podcast here, or hear it on iTunes, Google Play, and Spotify. I talk about how people say you…

[Video] Free DBA Training Month: Patching SQL Server

May 15, 2020

Brent Ozar

Production Database Administration

While you’re stuck inside wondering if you’ll ever be able to attend a user group meeting again, I’m giving you free access to training materials that your boss probably wouldn’t have been nice enough to buy you anyway. So far this week, we’ve covered DBCC CHECKDB, how to set up Ola Hallengren’s maintenance scripts, restoring for…

[Video] The Database Community is Bigger Than It Looks.

May 14, 2020

Brent Ozar

Videos

Right now, in times like this with insane amounts of change, it can feel like you’re alone, especially as a data professional. You’re not. In this 16-minute Twitch live stream, I explain how data professionals can feel so isolated and alone even in a good year, let alone a really challenging year like this.

[Video] Free DBA Training Month: Configuring TempDB, Lock Pages in Memory, and the DAC

May 14, 2020

Brent Ozar

Production Database Administration, TempDB, Videos

[Video] Free DBA Training Month: Restores for Oops Deletes

May 13, 2020

Brent Ozar

Backup and Recovery

While you’re stuck inside wondering if you’ll ever be able to attend a user group meeting again, I’m giving you free access to training materials that your boss probably wouldn’t have been nice enough to buy you anyway. So far this week, we’ve covered DBCC CHECKDB and how to set up Ola Hallengren’s maintenance scripts, and today…

[Video] Free DBA Training Month: Setting Up Alerts and Ola’s Scripts

May 12, 2020

Brent Ozar

Production Database Administration, Videos

While you’re stuck inside wondering if you’ll ever be able to attend a user group meeting again, I’m giving you free access to training materials that your boss probably wouldn’t have been nice enough to buy you anyway. So far this week, we’ve covered DBCC CHECKDB, and today let’s talk about restores. Don’t dilly-dally on…

[Video] Free DBA Training Month: Checking For Corruption

May 11, 2020

Brent Ozar

CHECKDB and Corruption

For the last couple of months, I’ve been giving away all kinds of free online training to help y’all stay busy and raise your skills during the quarantines. March and April were all about performance tuning, so let’s change things up during May and talk about database administration. I’m already doing a bunch of free…

Free Upcoming Live Classes

May 8, 2020

Brent Ozar

Company News

So, we’re still under lockdown, huh? I see. Well, I guess I’ve got no choice but to keep y’all busy. Let’s get together for some free live classes: May 12 (Tues) Noon Eastern: The New Robots in SQL Server 2017 and 2019 – You’ve been hearing about all these robots that are coming to take…

[Video] Updated First Responder Kit and Consultant Toolkit for May 2020

May 7, 2020

Brent Ozar

First Responder Kit Updates

We have quarantined all of the bugs. Many of the bugs. Okay, 7 of the bugs. Hey, we actually added more improvements than we fixed bugs this month! My favorite new things are that sp_BlitzIndex @Mode = 2 now makes it even easier to do disconnected index tuning just purely inside a spreadsheet, and sp_BlitzCache…

No, You Can’t Calculate the Tipping Point with Simple Percentages.

May 7, 2020

Brent Ozar

Indexing

This morning, Greg Gonzalez (who I respect) posted about visualizing the tipping point with Plan Explorer (a product I respect), and he wrote: The tipping point is the threshold at which a query plan will “tip” from seeking a non-covering nonclustered index to scanning the clustered index or heap. The basic formula is: A clustered…

Your Views Aren’t The Problem. Your Code Is.

May 6, 2020

Brent Ozar

T-SQL

“I hate views,” the DBA said. “They kill performance. And nested views are even worse.” Wrong. I’ll prove it. I’m going to use the 50GB StackOverflow2013 database, and I’ll start by creating a couple of indexes on the Users table to help our queries, then create a view on the Users table: Transact-SQL USE StackOverflow2013;…

Announcing Two New Parameter Sniffing Classes

May 5, 2020

Brent Ozar

Company News, Conferences and Classes

During the quarantine downtime, I’m working on a couple of new classes that I think you’re gonna like. Both of them are 100% demos, no slides (other than introductions at the start of the day), complete with hands-on lab assignment challenges for you to solve. They’re both half off this month to celebrate the launch,…

Starter/Good/Great/Bananas Live Streaming Setups

May 4, 2020

Brent Ozar

Home Office

For the next year or two, we’re going to be learning and sharing online rather than in-person. I wanna look and sound as good as my budget (and my face) will allow, so in this post, I’m going to lay out a starter ($220), good ($1,500), and great ($3,000) online video/audio setups and show you…

Free Webcast on Dynamic SQL Pro Tips

May 1, 2020

Brent Ozar

GroupBy Conference, T-SQL

Dynamic SQL is one of the most powerful tools in the database developer’s arsenal. When you need a complex search stored procedure that takes all kinds of parameters (price, category, location, color), dynamic SQL can run extremely quickly by leveraging better indexes. However, when done wrong, it’s extremely painful to troubleshoot. I’ve been working with…