Posts by Brent Ozar

Updated First Responder Kit and Consultant Toolkit for November 2025

First Responder Kit Updates
0
This quarter’s release includes new checks for SQL Server 2025’s new memory pressure warnings, Azure SQL DB’s operations in progress, accurate CPU usage on Docker containers, warnings about not using partitioned statistics where appropriate, and much more. If you’d like to thank me for my work in maintaining the First Responder Kit, the best way…
Read More
SQL ConstantCare Badges (cropped)

The First SQL ConstantCare Badges Just Went Out

SQL ConstantCare
6 Comments
Ever wonder how big your database estate is compared to others? Whether you’ve got more servers, more databases, more workloads, or more problems? Well, if you’re one of my SQL ConstantCare® customers, check your email: our first set of badges just went out! With SQL ConstantCare®, your SQL Servers send us diagnostic data once per…
Read More
Accurate estimates

Functions in the WHERE Clause Are Bad… Right?

Statistics
11 Comments
Nah, not necessarily. SQL Server’s query optimizer behavior keeps changing with every freakin’ version. Let’s illustrate it with a simple query against the Stack Overflow Users table: Transact-SQL CREATE INDEX Location ON dbo.Users(Location); GO SELECT COUNT(*) FROM dbo.Users WHERE Location = N'Ahmadabad, India' OPTION (RECOMPILE); 12345 CREATE INDEX Location ON dbo.Users(Location);GOSELECT COUNT(*) FROM dbo.Users    WHERE Location…
Read More
Fundamentals of TempDB

T-SQL Query Exercise: Generate Big Spills

Query Exercises
18 Comments
When I was testing SQL Server 2025’s new ability to limit TempDB usage with Resource Governor, I wrote a few fun diabolical demos. One of them was to generate giant spills to TempDB, quickly. When you’re looking at an actual (not estimated) query plan, and you see a yellow exclamation point on a sort operator,…
Read More

[Video] Office Hours in Roatan, Honduras

Videos
0
My cruise ship took a detour to Honduras to avoid the hurricane. Let’s hang out on the beach and go through your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento. Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Start 00:58 Dopinder: What is your opinion of the Github copilot support in SSMS 22? Is this more beneficial for the DBA or Data…
Read More
Office Hours Offshore

[Video] Office Hours at Sea

Videos
1 Comment
This Office Hours episode comes to you from Virgin Voyages’ newest cruise ship, the Brilliant Lady, sailing through the Western Caribbean. We were originally scheduled to do the Eastern Caribbean, but Tropical Storm Melissa had other ideas, so they reworked our itinerary at the last minute. Let’s take your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento: Here’s what…
Read More

[Video] Office Hours in My Backyard

Videos
2 Comments
Let’s hang out in the backyard – as recently seen on Zillow Gone Wild – and take your top-voted questions from https://PollGab.com/room/brento. Here’s what we covered: 01:09 AussieDBA: I was saddened to hear of the passing of Andrew Clarke, who surely had the best pseudonym in the SQL industry, Phil Factor. His articles were some…
Read More
Autogrowth disabled

TempDB Filling Up? Try Resource Governor.

TempDB
5 Comments
TempDB is one of the banes of my existence. Anybody, anybody who can query your server can run a denial-of-service attack in a matter of seconds just by filling it up with a simple query: Transact-SQL DROP TABLE IF EXISTS #big_problem; CREATE TABLE #big_problem (filler VARCHAR(8000)); WHILE 1 = 1 INSERT INTO #big_problem SELECT REPLICATE('X', 8000)…
Read More