Posts by Brent Ozar

Columnstore Indexes

Every weekday during the month of October, one of the modules from my Fundamentals classes will be absolutely free to watch. But you gotta watch it that day – you snooze, you lose. For this week’s Fundamentals of Columnstore class, you don’t have hands-on labs, and you’re not meant to follow along with the demos. Columnstore…

Office Hours: One-Word Answers Edition

Last Updated October 13, 2022

Some of the questions y’all post at https://pollgab.com/room/brento are pretty straightforward. Let’s get ‘er done. LetTheDbaHandleIt: My friend needs to track who has accessed what data. This is easy at OS and app level, but how can my friend verify that those who have direct DB access are not snooping on data inappropriately? e.g. payroll or…

[Video] Office Hours Live: Ask Me Anything

Last Updated October 3, 2022

Got a question for me? Post your questions at https://pollgab.com/room/brento and upvote the ones you’d like to see me discuss. Before heading to NYC for vacation, I recorded a live Office Hours on my Twitch channel. Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Start 04:40 neil: are there any ‘band aids’ a DBA can apply for a…

#tsql2sday: Start Your Dynamic SQL with a Comment.

Last Updated October 7, 2022

T-SQL

When you write dynamic SQL, start like this: CREATE OR ALTER PROC dbo.MyProc AS BEGIN DECLARE @StringToExecute NVARCHAR(4000); SET @StringToExecute = N'SELECT /* MyProc */ '; ... 12345 CREATE OR ALTER PROC dbo.MyProc ASBEGIN DECLARE @StringToExecute NVARCHAR(4000); SET @StringToExecute = N'SELECT /* MyProc */ '; ... Right after the SELECT (or INSERT or UPDATE or whatever),…

This Week, Fundamentals of Query Tuning Classes are Free!

Last Updated October 9, 2022

Execution Plans

Every weekday during the month of October, one of the modules from my Fundamentals classes will be absolutely free to watch. But you gotta watch it that day – you snooze, you lose. This week is Fundamentals of Query Tuning. Last week’s class had hands-on labs you had to follow, but this week’s doesn’t. You’re welcome…

[Video] Office Hours Silent Edition

Last Updated September 29, 2022

Okay, I, uh, forgot to unmute the microphone for this one: So here are the answers in text form instead. <sigh> Thank goodness it was a speed round! Mike: When Brent Ozar’s certification exams for SQL Server will be available? Looking forward to having exams like “Fundamentals of QT”, “Mastering Server Tuning” etc, so you…

Who’s Hiring in the Microsoft Data Platform Community? October 2022 Edition

Last Updated September 18, 2022

Who's Hiring

Is your company hiring for a database position as of October 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…

Erik Darling’s Month of Free Tools Training

Last Updated October 3, 2022

Over the past month (plus or minus a couple days), Erik Darling churned out dozens of posts to show how he uses different SQL Server Community Tools that are free and open source to troubleshoot SQL Server issues. You should read all of them. I did. (I also shamelessly copy/pasted this intro, plus the below,…

October is Free Fundamentals Month – And The Training Starts Now.

Last Updated October 8, 2022

Indexing

Every weekday during the month of October, one of the modules from my Fundamentals classes will be absolutely free to watch. But you gotta watch it that day – you snooze, you lose. This week is Fundamentals of Index Tuning. To follow along with the labs this week & next week, you’ll need SQL Server 2017…

[Video] Office Hours: Ask Me Anything at the Mediterranean Sea

Last Updated September 28, 2022

On the last day of my Israel trip, I went through the highly upvoted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento and answered ’em, standing in front of the beach. Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Start 00:37 AllThePartyPeople: On our server, MAXDOP=1 (not my choice); we had a poor performing SP call (called as dynamic SQL; again not my choice);…

Vegas Home Office Tour

Last Updated September 28, 2022

Home Office

I’ve been teaching online from home for years, and you’d probably think my office would keep growing and growing – but actually, my setup has gotten a lot smaller since the last time I blogged about it. I don’t really need space in order to work, and I kinda wanna incentivize myself to get out of the…

Free Live Webcast: Why is One Query Sometimes Slow and Sometimes Fast?

Last Updated September 28, 2022

SQL Server

Sometimes the exact same query goes slow out of nowhere. Your current fix is to update statistics, rebuild indexes, or restart the SQL Server. It works, but you don’t know why. The single most common reason is parameter sniffing. SQL Server “sniffs” the first set of parameters for a query, builds an execution plan for…

Buckle Up: October is Free Fundamentals Month!

Last Updated October 7, 2022

Company News

How about some completely free SQL Server training? Every weekday during the month of October, one of the modules from my Fundamentals classes will be absolutely free to watch. But you gotta watch it that day – you snooze, you lose. To prep, block out a 30-minute window on your calendar, right now. Put a label…

[Video] Office Hours: Six-Minute Speed Round

Last Updated September 19, 2022

The morning after the Data TLV Summit in Tel Aviv, I stood out on the balcony and answered a few of your questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento, rapid-fire style: Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Intros 00:47 cyrpl: Hi Brent from PEI, Canada. A support person told me today that when creating a table, an ID column…

[Video] Office Hours in Tel Aviv, Israel

Last Updated September 19, 2022

Before speaking at the Data TLV Summit, I sat by the Mediterranean Sea and discussed the top-voted questions you posted at https://pollgab.com/room/brento. Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Start 00:55 Manikandan GS: As postgres being one among the RDBMS lane, do you think postgres is having more features and flexibility compared to MS-SQL Server? 02:46 PaginationWoo!:…

New Online Class: Running SQL Server in AWS and Azure

Last Updated October 4, 2022

Cloud Computing

You’re used to managing your own SQL Servers in VMs, but now they’re asking you to work with the cloud. You’re already comfortable installing, backing up, and performance tuning “regular” SQL Servers, and you just need to catch up with what’s different about the cloud. You don’t want hype – you just want honest opinions…

Office Hours: Gif Reactions Edition

Last Updated September 17, 2022

Some of the questions y’all post at https://pollgab.com/room/brento are open-and-shut cases. I was going to do a one-word-answers edition, but I think this is even better: gifs. GI Joe DBA: Thoughts about IT professionals Unionizing? IT professionals are in demand. Because of our demand, should we use this leverage to unionize, raise the bar, force…

Most DBAs Say They’re Encrypting Personally Identifiable Data. Most.

Last Updated September 11, 2022

Despite the continuous stream of data breaches, ransomware, and GDPR violations, some companies still aren’t encrypting personally identifiable information (PII) inside our databases or backups. I see this all the time when working with clients, but I can’t exactly talk about that or give numbers, so I decided to take a highly unscientific poll on…

[Video] Office Hours: Ask Me Anything About SQL Server and Azure

Last Updated September 11, 2022

Got questions about the Microsoft data platform? Post ’em at https://pollgab.com/room/brento and upvote the ones you’d like to see me cover. Today’s episode finds me in my home office in Vegas: 00:00 Intros 02:10 GeorgeDAX: Hello Brent, I’m a dealing with a huge sales table which contains around 500 columns with 50m rows. Business asks…

Community Tools Month: Using sp_WhoIsActive to Catch ASYNC_NETWORK_IO

Last Updated September 11, 2022