Posts by Brent Ozar

Brent Ozar

2453 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.

Contest: Guess the SQL Server 2019 Release Date

Last Updated November 5, 2019

Brent Ozar

SQL Server 2019

592

When will Microsoft officially release SQL Server 2019 for download? The dust is just barely starting to settle on the 2017 box, so it’s time to guess the next one. Leave one – and only one – comment here in YYYY/MM/DD format with your release date guess. If you leave multiple comments, only the first/earliest…

Book Review: Database Reliability Engineering by Campbell & Majors

Last Updated December 9, 2018

Brent Ozar

Production Database Administration

Database Reliability Engineering – good buy When you see the cover of Database Reliability Engineering, the first question you’re probably gonna ask is, “Wait – how is this different from database administration?” And I’ve got good news: that’s the very first thing @LaineVCampbell and Charity Majors (@MipsyTipsy) cover in the preface. “…for a long long…

How to Move TempDB to Another Drive & Folder

Last Updated November 4, 2020

Brent Ozar

TempDB

Every time I have to do this, I Google for a script. I might as well write my own and put it here so at least I find myself in the Google results: Transact-SQL SELECT 'ALTER DATABASE tempdb MODIFY FILE (NAME = [' + f.name + '],' + ' FILENAME = ''Z:\MSSQL\DATA\' + f.name +…

How to Track SQL Server Changes with sp_BlitzFirst

Last Updated November 22, 2017

Brent Ozar

First Responder Kit

In the First Responder Kit’s Power BI Dashboard, there’s a Quick Diagnosis results area where sp_BlitzFirst takes a guess at why your SQL Server was slow – or in this case, why it suddenly got faster: Logging your work in sp_BlitzFirst’s Quick Diagnosis results (click to zoom) In this case, wait times were bad, and…

Announcing the Free First Responder Kit Power BI Dashboard

Last Updated November 14, 2017

Brent Ozar

First Responder Kit

What the heck is going on inside your SQL Server? Why’s it so slow? I wrote sp_BlitzFirst to answer that question, but that only works right now. You have to be standing in front of your computer to do diagnostics when the problem strikes. So now, you can run sp_BlitzFirst, have it log data to a…

Updated Stack Overflow Database Dump Importer v1.4

Last Updated November 17, 2017

Brent Ozar

Stack Overflow Database

The nice folks at Stack Overflow publish their entire data set (data included) in XML format. It’s tons of fun for demos, but you need a way to get it into a relational database. The Stack Overflow Data Dump Importer (SODDI) makes this point-and-click easy. Just download the latest release, install it, download the XML exports, and…

Free Upcoming Webcasts: Query Store, R, AGs, Encryption, Security, and More

Last Updated November 14, 2017

Brent Ozar

GroupBy Conference

Here’s the lineup for the next free GroupBy online conference: Friday, December 1: 8:00 AM Eastern – Query Store and Query Optimization on SQL Server 2017 by Dean Savovi? 9:00 – Elegant T-SQL Solutions for Real World Problems by Matan Yungman 10:30 – SQL Server R Services in SQL 2016 by Chris Hyde 12:30 – SQL Server Health Checks…

We’re Coming to London! Announcing Our SQL Bits Pre-Con.

Last Updated November 17, 2017

Brent Ozar

Company News

Going to SQL Bits in London this year? Join me & Erik Darling on Wednesday at our all-day pre-con session, Expert Performance Tuning for SQL Server 2016 & 2017. Here’s the abstract: Your job is making SQL Server go faster, but you haven’t been to a performance tuning class since 2016 came out. You’ve heard…

#TSQL2sday: Brad McGehee Made a Difference in My Career.

Last Updated November 8, 2017

Brent Ozar

T-SQL

For this month’s T-SQL Tuesday, Ewald asked who’s made a difference in our careers. When I first got started out in SQL Server, all I had was books and Books Online. Back then, neither of them were particularly well-indexed, nor were they up to date. Then I found a web site that turned things around.…

How to Test Your Corruption Alerts

Last Updated November 8, 2017

Brent Ozar

CHECKDB and Corruption

You’ve been such a good database administrator. You followed the setup checklist in our First Responder Kit. You ran sp_Blitz. You set up email alerts for common issues. You run CHECKDB as frequently as practical – weekly, or maybe even daily. But you just assume it’s all working. There’s an easy way to test: go…

Coming in SQL Server 2019: Approximate_Count_Distinct

Last Updated April 11, 2019

Brent Ozar

SQL Server 2019

Last week at the PASS Summit in Seattle, Kevin Farlee & Joe Sack ran a vNext demo in the Microsoft booth and dropped a little surprise. SQL Server 2019 will let you trade speed for accuracy. I have had approximately all of the breakfast margaritas They’re working on a new APPROXIMATE_COUNT_DISTINCT. It would work like…

Microsoft’s Query Tuning Announcements from #PASSsummit

Last Updated November 2, 2017

Brent Ozar

Execution Plans

Microsoft’s Joe Sack & Pedro Lopes held a forward-looking session for performance tuners at the PASS Summit and dropped some awesome bombshells. Pedro’s Big Deal: there’s a new CXPACKET wait in town: CXCONSUMER. In the past, when queries went parallel, we couldn’t differentiate harmless waits incurred by the consumer thread (coordinator, or teacher from my…

#PASSsummit Day 2 Keynote: Dr. Rimma Nehme on Azure Cosmos DB

Last Updated November 2, 2017

Brent Ozar

#SQLPass, Microsoft Azure

Dr. Rimma Nehme Summit day 2 keynotes have become special. Over the last few years, Microsoft has dedicated the day 2 keynote to a technical dive into an advanced, future-looking topic. Past examples have included future-looking guidance on Hekaton, columnstore indexes, and how Azure SQL DB protects data. I love Microsoft for doing this. It costs…

#PASSsummit Day 1 Keynote Live Blog

Last Updated November 1, 2017

Brent Ozar

#SQLPass

Good morning, folks, and welcome to our annual live blog of the PASS Summit Day 1 keynote. Open the free live video stream at PASSsummit.com in one browser tab, and then refresh this page every couple/few minutes. I’ll be adding my thoughts at the end of the page, in chronological order, for easier reading later. Today’s…

How to Get Live Query Plans with sp_BlitzWho

Last Updated November 18, 2017

Brent Ozar

Execution Plans, First Responder Kit, sp_BlitzWho, SQL Server 2016

sp_BlitzWho is our open source replacement for sp_who and sp_who2. It has all kinds of really neat-o outputs like how many degrees of parallelism the query is using, how much memory it’s been granted, how long it’s been waiting for memory grants, and much more. If you’re on SQL Server 2016 SP1 or newer, it…

What Is Estimated Subtree Cost? Query Bucks. No, Really.

Last Updated June 3, 2022

Brent Ozar

Execution Plans

When you look at a query plan, SQL Server shows a tooltip with an Estimated Subtree Cost: Estimated Subtree Cost Now I can run all the bad queries I want! A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, it meant the number of seconds it would take to run on one guy’s Dell…

Announcing my new Mastering class series – and registration opens Wednesday.

Last Updated October 14, 2017

Brent Ozar

Company News

We’ve talked about why traditional training sucks, how our all-new series is different, and what our early-access students said. Now it’s time to unveil the new lineup: Always On Availability Groups: The Senior DBA’s Field Guide – Taught by MVP Edwin Sarmiento. 3 days, $2,995. Expert SSIS Training – Taught by BimlHero Andy Leonard. 2 days,…

Here’s what our early-access students said about our new courses.

Last Updated November 2, 2017

Brent Ozar

Company News

While developing my new SQL Server training experiment, I ran an early-access version, and here’s what the students wrote: Doug Gideon: “Amazing! It brought me to a whole new level of understanding of performance tuning. Don’t change a thing. The class was fun and the material was presented in an interesting way. I have taken…

Let’s mix things up with a new way to learn.

Last Updated November 2, 2017

Brent Ozar

Company News

Because learning SQL Server is painful, we’ve been experimenting with new topics, new guest instructors, new ways of talking to other students during class, and much more. In addition to our new live class lineup covering PowerShell, Linux, Always On Availability Groups, SSIS, and analytics, I’ve also got something wildly new. I’ve got a new…

Learning SQL Server is painful.

Last Updated November 6, 2017

Brent Ozar

Company News

Blogs are free, but they’re bite-sized. They’re great when you’ve only got a few minutes, and you wanna learn a single small thing. But they’re not organized in any kind of flow at all – you’re jumping around all over the place, learning random small things. You’re not really mastering a topic start to finish. “Wait…