Posts by Brent Ozar

SQLBits 2026 is Going Back to Newport, Wales.

SQLBits 2026 is Going Back to Newport, Wales.

SQLBits
7 Comments
SQLBits 2026 will be back at the International Convention Center Wales in Newport on April 22-25, and I’ll be there! Bits was there in 2023, and they’ve got a recap video showing the venue. This location is a little tricky for us Yanks: here’s where it’s at on Google Maps. For international visitors, you’ve got…
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Save $150 on the Summit with Discount Code BRENT25

#SQLPass
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The PASS Data Community Summit is the biggest conference in the Microsoft database industry, and over the last few years, they’ve expanded to cover other databases as well. It’s in Seattle on November 17-21 this year. It costs $2195 for the Weds-Fri general sessions, plus $595 for each pre-conference session on Monday or Tuesday. Register…
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[Video] Office Hours: Docked in Miami Beach

Videos
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On the last day of my Caribbean cruise, as we pull into port in Miami, let’s go through your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento. Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Start 01:45 Sean: How would you approach a task to remove 90% of the data to support lightweight test db servers. I’m thinking of a script with…
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AI is Like Outsourcing. #TSQL2sday

AI
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When you ask data people how they feel about AI, you get pretty rabid, extreme reactions. People either love it or hate it. Set that aside for a second, and let’s zoom out and think about a bigger picture question. What’s it like to work with someone you know, versus a stranger? Known Person Unknown…
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[Video] Office Hours: 15 Answers in 30 Minutes

Videos
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The first few questions from this week’s crop at https://pollgab.com/room/brento are very much about what-problem-are-you-trying-to-solve, but they get more complex from there. Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Start 02:49 My Erik is Strong: Do you suggest any steps after an upgrade to SQL Server 2022 in particular? I mean 2022 features to try, enjoy, or…
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Indexed view execution plan

How to Make Leading Wildcard Searches Fast

Computed columns
11 Comments
99.9% of you are never gonna need this. But let’s say you need to run queries with leading (not trailing) wildcards, like this search for all the different national versions of the Encabulator, each of which has different prefixes depending on which government it’s being sold to: Transact-SQL SELECT * FROM dbo.Parts WHERE PartNumber LIKE…
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[Video] Office Hours: Interview Horror Stories Edition

Videos
3 Comments
Wanna hear about my worst job interviews? I drove up to 8,000 feet where it’s 30 degrees colder than Las Vegas to bring you these answers to your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento. The audio’s a little odd on here because it was really windy, and I had to use noise reduction in post-production. Here’s what…
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it hurts so good, I don't understand

The Query Tuning Trick You Should Use More: Pagination

T-SQL
6 Comments
When I’m tuning queries, the normal answer is to make the query perform better – either via changing the T-SQL, adding hints, or adding indexes so that the data’s better prepared for the query. However, sometimes when I’m looking at the output of sp_BlitzCache, I scroll across to the Average Rows column and double-check that…
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