Posts by Brent Ozar

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Brent Ozar

Brent Ozar

2186 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.

[Video] Office Hours: Professional Development Edition

Last Updated May 31, 2022

Brent Ozar

Videos

I spent an entire video just talking about 3 questions y’all posted to https://pollgab.com/room/brento because these were pretty big-picture and important. I know it sounds goofy and sentimental, but I genuinely care about y’all’s careers, and I want you to work as little as practical in order to spend as much time with your loved…

Who’s Hiring in the Database Community? June 2022 Edition

Last Updated August 1, 2022

Brent Ozar

Who's Hiring

Is your company hiring for a database position as of June 2022? 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…

Office Hours Speed Round: Text Edition

Last Updated May 31, 2022

Brent Ozar

Production Database Administration

Some questions that come in at https://pollgab.com/room/brento have such straightforward answers that I don’t need to cover them on video. It’s time for a rapid-fire speed round: Q: Uncle Buck: Is there a good way to tell if a given include column for a NC index is being used at all? No. Q: Steve E:…

I’m teaching Mastering Parameter Sniffing at the PASS Summit!

Last Updated May 25, 2022

Brent Ozar

#SQLPass

At the PASS Data Community Summit in Seattle on November 12th, I’m teaching a one-day pre-conference workshop. This year, the Summit is a hybrid event: you can either attend in-person in Seattle, or online via live streaming. If you attend online, PASS is recording the live stream, and you’ll be able to re-watch it during the…

Breaking News: SQL 2019 CU16 Changes Backup Formats, Can Break Log Shipping.

Last Updated May 25, 2022

Brent Ozar

Backup and Recovery, Breaking News

The newest Cumulative Update for SQL Server 2019 has this gem in the release notes: It’s not a known issue, it’s an improvement This is a massive problem if: You have databases encrypted with TDE You take backups WITH COMPRESSION (which has a history of bugs already), or you have the server’s default compression option…

Designing a Data Model for Gender and Sexuality (Oh And Also, I’m Pansexual)

Last Updated June 17, 2022

Brent Ozar

Personal

360

These days, BrentOzar.com mostly focuses on the Microsoft data platform. However, you and I have a relationship, dear reader, so I just need to talk about some personal stuff today. Lemme get two things out of the way first: I’m pansexual, and From a data modeling perspective, that’s different from bisexuality I totally understand if…

Never been to a SQL Server training class? Let’s fix that.

Last Updated May 22, 2022

Brent Ozar

Company News

You love learning from me. You’ve attended some of my free online streams, read my blog posts, and you use the First Responder Kit. You enjoy my laid-back, humorous approach to sharing what I’ve learned over the years. You love live classes. You’ve tried watching recordings or stepping through demos yourself, but…you just can’t block…

[Video] Office Hours: Cabo Balcony Edition

Last Updated May 15, 2022

Brent Ozar

Videos

Post your questions at https://pollgab.com/room/brento and upvote the questions you’d like to see me discuss. The light balance on this video is all over the place, getting brighter and darker constantly, so you might wanna leave this one playing in the background and just listen to it rather than watch. Here’s what we covered: 00:00…

[Video] Office Hours: Cabo Pool Edition

Last Updated May 15, 2022

Brent Ozar

Videos

You posted SQL Server questions and upvoted the ones you’d like to see at https://pollgab.com/room/brento, and before the Cabo Clasico finals start for the day, I sat by the pool to talk through ’em: Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Introductions 00:53 Neil: Does putting up a giant monitor on the wall with SQL Server info…

I’m Speaking at the PASS Data Community Summit This Year!

Last Updated May 15, 2022

Brent Ozar

#SQLPass

For years, the biggest conference in the Microsoft data platform community has been the PASS Summit. This November 15-18, it’s coming back to the Seattle Convention Center. You can attend in person, or virtually. I’m going to be there in person. It’s not a decision I take lightly – I still get nervous when I…

The 6-Year-Old T-SQL Book That Never Goes Out of Style

Last Updated May 7, 2022

Brent Ozar

T-SQL

You’ve been working with Microsoft SQL Server for yeeears, and you’re pretty confident that you know how to write a query. So when I tell you about a book called T-SQL Fundamentals, you’re all, “nah, man, I got this covered.” You are incorrect. Sure, the first 5 chapters of the book are about 1-2 table…

Office Hours Speed Round: Text Edition

Last Updated May 8, 2022

Brent Ozar

Production Database Administration

I recorded an Office Hours stream answering a bunch of your questions quickly, but…I forgot to turn on my microphone, so the video only had the sound effects: Oops. So here are the questions in text form instead: Q: 22DBA: what performance recommendation you see people give all the time but it actually doesn’t work…

Don’t Treat SQL Like a Programming or Scripting Language.

Last Updated May 10, 2022

Brent Ozar

T-SQL

In a programming language like C# or Java, you tell the computer what to do, in order. Get the customers from California, then get their invoices, then sum the total. SQL, on the other hand, is a declarative language where you declare the shape of your result set: Get the total sales from Californian customers.…

The Top Feature Requests for SQL Server

Last Updated May 5, 2022

Brent Ozar

SQL Server

If you want to get a look at where Microsoft SQL Server is heading in the future, it helps to get an idea of what users are repeatedly asking for. Here’s a quick rundown of the top requests from feedback.azure.com as voted by the people who cared enough to log in and upvote ’em: 10:…

“Index Seek” Doesn’t Mean Much.

Last Updated May 4, 2022

Brent Ozar

Execution Plans

When you see “index seek” on an execution plan, that doesn’t mean SQL Server is jumping to exactly the row you’re looking for. It only means that SQL Server is seeking on the first column of the index. This is especially misleading on indexes where the first column isn’t very selective. To explain, I’ll take…

Who’s Hiring in the Database Community? May 2022 Edition

Last Updated June 1, 2022

Brent Ozar

Who's Hiring

Is your company hiring for a database position as of May 2022? 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…

Office Hours, Text Edition: No-Brainer Questions

Last Updated April 26, 2022

Brent Ozar

Production Database Administration

For my Office Hours streams on my Twitch channel, y’all post questions at PollGab and upvote the ones you’d like to see me discuss on the stream. However, not all questions require a video answer. Here are some simple no-brainer ones: Q: BehindTheScenesDBA: With all its limitations, what do you think about memory-optimized tables? Have you…

[Video] Office Hours: New Las Vegas Home Office Edition

Last Updated April 25, 2022

Brent Ozar

Videos

It’s the first webcast I’ve done from my new Vegas pad. You posted questions at https://pollgab.com/room/brento/ and I discussed the highest-upvoted ones: 00:00 Introductions 02:15 Jim D: Should I use full backups or log shipping for migrations? 03:53 Sev A: What are the top misuses of SQL Server that are better accomplished without SQL Server?…

What DBAs Need to Know About Snapshots

Last Updated April 21, 2022

Brent Ozar

Storage

Snapshots by Polaroid? That’s not right. You’re a DBA responsible for making sure SQL Server databases are online, backed up, corruption-free, and fast. Your databases have gradually grown in size over time, and you’re starting to hit new size issues you haven’t encountered before. Nightly maintenance windows are getting smaller, you’re not able to refresh…

[Video] Office Hours: Last San Diego Balcony Edition

Last Updated April 11, 2022

Brent Ozar

Videos

It’s the last San Diego balcony edition of Office Hours! You posted your questions at https://pollgab.com/room/brento and upvoted the ones you’d like to see. Here’s what we covered this week: 00:00 Introductions 00:50 Steve E: Hi Brent, How are you enjoying the Porsche 944? 01:55 Midwest DBA: Hey Brent, The wife says my DBA oncall…

Posts by Brent Ozar

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