Posts by Brent Ozar

Brent Ozar

2452 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.

SQL Server 2016 Standard Edition Now Has Many Enterprise Edition Features.

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Brent Ozar

In-Memory OLTP (Hekaton), Licensing, SQL Server

Starting with today’s release of SQL Server 2016 Service Pack 1, Standard Edition now has a lot more of the features of Enterprise Edition. Here’s the list from Microsoft’s announcement post: Performance features – in-memory OLTP (Hekaton), in-memory columnstore, operational analytics Data warehousing features – partitioning, compression, CDC, database snapshots Some security features – Always Encrypted,…

Why Is This Query Sometimes Fast and Sometimes Slow?

Last Updated May 26, 2020

Brent Ozar

Execution Plans, Parameter Sniffing, SQL Server

You swear you didn’t change anything, but all of a sudden the SQL Server is going doggone slow. What happened? Parameter sniffing might be the problem, and to explain it, let’s see how it works. I’m going to use the StackOverflow database – particularly, the Users table that I demo in How to Think Like the…

Updated First Responder Kit: sp_Blitz, sp_BlitzCache, sp_BlitzIndex

Last Updated November 15, 2016

Brent Ozar

First Responder Kit, SQL Server

These improvements go great with cranberries. The food, not the b – actually, they go pretty well with the band, too. sp_Blitz Improvements #568 – @RichBenner added a check for the default parallelism settings sp_BlitzCache Improvements by @BlitzErik #495 – add warning for indexed views with missing stats #557 – bug fix – don’t alert…

Migrating from SQL Server to MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Aurora

Last Updated November 11, 2016

Brent Ozar

Cloud Computing, SQL Server

I’m getting an increasing number of requests these days that say: “We’re considering migrating our application from SQL Server to a cheaper, easier-to-scale database. Can you help?” Well, kinda: why are you doing it? If you’re doing it to get easier scalability, we start by taking a step back and looking at the performance problems…

Reminder: Rate Your Summit Sessions (and Watch Mine Now!)

Last Updated April 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

#SQLPass

PASS Summit attendees, we need your feedback. The greatest gift you can give back to your volunteer speakers is your comments to help them get better. Ratings are good – but what we really like is constructive comments. Don’t be polite – if you hated a session (mine included!), say why. Presenters really want to get better,…

Silent Demo: The Plan Cache

Last Updated November 16, 2017

Brent Ozar

Execution Plans, sp_BlitzCache, Videos

Shhh, and pay close attention. In 76 seconds, I’ll teach you something intriguing about the way SQL Server caches execution plans:

My How to Think Like the Engine Class is Now Free – and Open Source

Last Updated April 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

#SQLPass, SQL Server

You’re a developer or a DBA, and you’re comfortable writing queries to get the data you need. You’re much less comfortable trying to design the right indexes for your database server. You’ve never had a formal database internals class, and you don’t really have the patience to read a book on it – but you…

Announcing our 2017 SQL Server Training Scholarship Winners

Last Updated October 15, 2016

Brent Ozar

SQL Server

We’re serious about the heart thing. Right now, all over the world, people are using SQL Server to make the world a better place. Sadly, most of these teams are underfunded, understaffed, and undertrained. They’re doing the best they can with the limited resources they have available, just trying to make a difference. No, actually making a…

First Responder Kit Update: sp_BlitzCache Catches Cursors, Scalar Functions, and More

Last Updated October 23, 2016

Brent Ozar

First Responder Kit

Every time we take on a client for our SQL Critical Care®, the very first thing we do is run the First Responder Kit scripts: sp_Blitz to get a health check, sp_BlitzFirst to check their wait stats, sp_BlitzIndex to look at their indexes, and sp_BlitzCache to see the most resource-intensive queries. Very often, these scripts surface…

Thoughts About the #SQLSummit Day 1 Keynote

Last Updated February 12, 2017

Brent Ozar

#SQLPass

Quentin Clark I’ll be honest, dear reader: I usually hate the holy hell out of the Summit day 1 keynote. As an example, check out the last keynote I liveblogged – go to the bottom and then read up. (Sorry, I won’t do that style again.) It was awful, one of the worst two hours…

PasteThePlan Update: See the Most Recently Pasted Plans

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Brent Ozar

Execution Plans, PasteThePlan.com

Just another terrifying query PasteThePlan.com lets you paste in execution plans and get a link to share them with other people. In our company chat room, we get an alert whenever a new plan comes in, and I’m not ashamed to admit that we’re geeky enough that we usually jump straight into it and start…

Searching Strings in SQL Server is Expensive

Last Updated June 25, 2018

Brent Ozar

Execution Plans, Licensing

In the classic spirit of my How to Think Like the Engine class, let’s go take a look at the StackOverflow.Users table and find all the users named Brent. There’s a DisplayName field, and I’m going to be querying that a lot in this blog post, so I’ll go ahead and create an index on…

Updated First Responder Kit: sp_Blitz markdown output, sp_BlitzIndex statistics checks

Last Updated April 25, 2017

Brent Ozar

First Responder Kit, SQL Server

In addition to lots of bug fixes and tweaks, my favorite option is: sp_Blitz @OutputType = ‘markdown’ sp_Blitz @OutputType = ‘markdown’, @CheckServerInfo = 1, @CheckUserDatabaseObjects = 1 See, recently I’ve spent a lot of time looking at Stack questions going, “Man, if I just had the output of sp_Blitz, I bet I could answer that question…

The Problem with Windows Server 2016 Licensing

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

Licensing, SQL Server

Windows Server 2016 Licensing Guide (PDF) Windows Server 2016 is now licensed by the core, but that’s not really the big problem. The bigger problem is buried in the licensing guide (PDF): “A minimum of 16 core licenses is required for each server.” “A minimum of 8 core licenses is required for each physical processor.” When…

Why I Love kCura RelativityOne Even Though I Don’t Use It

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

kCura Relativity, SQL Server

At RelativityFest this week, kCura showed more details about how their upcoming software-as-a-service hosted in Microsoft Azure works. I really like where they’re going with it. Presenting at Relativity Fest 2016 I’ve blogged about Relativity before, especially about how it uses SQL Server, but here’s a quick recap: It hosts legal data (think lawsuits, cases,…

SQL Server Timeouts During Backups and CHECKDB

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Brent Ozar

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Backup and Recovery, CHECKDB and Corruption, Cloud Computing

So you’re hosting your SQL Server in the cloud – say Amazon EC2, Azure VM, or Google Compute Engine – and you’ve noticed that when you’re running a backup or a DBCC CHECKDB, you suffer from extreme performance problems. Queries run slow, and even worse, applications report timeout errors even just trying to connect to…

Applications are Open For Our 2017 Scholarship Program

Last Updated February 12, 2017

Brent Ozar

Company News, SQL Server

That heart means something. Last year, we gave dozens of amazing people a helping hand so they could improve themselves – and the world around them. I was really touched by the heartfelt thanks we got – and yep, tears were shed. (On both sides of the screen.) So it’s time to do it again. You work…

Are You Load Testing for Best Case Scenario, or Worst Case?

Last Updated February 14, 2017

Brent Ozar

Cloud Computing, Load Testing, SQL Server

In preparation for a recent load testing engagement, we started talking about the company’s goals. The DBA said something really insightful: “We want to get to 1,000 page requests per second, which is around 5,000 batch requests per second. We’re testing with all of our caching turned off, because we want to simulate what might…

PasteThePlan.com Winners and Sample Plans

Last Updated April 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

Execution Plans, PasteThePlan.com

When we announced PasteThePlan last week, we wondered what kinds of plans you folks would paste in. Six of you won free Everything Bundles: Ajay Dwivedi Samuel Jones Stefan Gabriel Stephan Schon Steve Armistead Vesa Juvonen But rather than stepping through their plans (which are awesome too), I’m going to show a few bits and…

Announcing PasteThePlan.com: An Easier Way to Share Execution Plans

Last Updated April 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

Company News, PasteThePlan.com, SQL Server

Since the dawn of man, people have struggled with sharing execution plans with each other for performance tuning. Now, it’s easy. First, get yourself a plan: Get the estimated execution plan by hitting control-L or clicking Query, Display Estimated Plan. Right-click on the graphical plan, and click View XML. Copy all of that. Or even…