Posts by Brent Ozar

Brent Ozar

2446 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.

Announcing Dell DBA Days 2016: The SQL

Last Updated July 19, 2016

Brent Ozar

SQL Server

This August, we’re goin’ back to Texas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHv_4tHs0i0 Last year, we flew the team out to Round Rock, Dell’s HQ, and ran all kinds of SQL Server experiments in their hardware labs. We broadcasted a whole bunch of webcasts live on the net for you to watch and see what we learned. This year, we’re…

Well, That Sucked: Laying Off Half the Company

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Brent Ozar

Company News, SQL Server

Company retreat, 2016 I always wanna be honest with you, dear reader, and let you see how running a lil’ consulting shop goes. It’s been fun sharing a lot of our happy growing moments along the way. This one, though, is a lot less fun to share. Yesterday, we had to let go of Angie, Doug,…

New SQL Server First Responder Kit for 2016-07

Last Updated July 15, 2016

Brent Ozar

First Responder Kit, SQL Server

SQL Server 2012 SP3, 2014 SP2, and 2016 users are going to find a lot of stuff to love in here. The new per-query memory grants fields in the plan cache are exposed in sp_BlitzCache, and sp_BlitzFirst also shows memory grants for live running queries in @ExpertMode = 1. Here’s the details: sp_BlitzCache v3.1: Show…

Can Adding an Index Make SQL Server 2016…Worse?

Last Updated April 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

Execution Plans, SQL Server

Using the StackOverflow database, let’s check out Krock’s query. He’s a competitive fella, and he’s looking to find users who signed up for StackOverflow after he did, but who have a higher reputation than he does. I’m going to simplify the query a little here: Transact-SQL SELECT me.Id, u.Id FROM dbo.Users me JOIN dbo.Users u on…

New Course: Statistics – SQL Server’s Guessing Game

Last Updated April 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

SQL Server

Closed captioned for your statistical pleasure You have to make queries go faster, and you suspect that outdated or inaccurate statistics are hurting your execution plans. Doug Lane is here to help with his new video course, Statistics: SQL Server’s Guessing Game. It’s phenomenally detailed – every single person on our team learned stuff from…

The Top 10 Feature Requests for SQL Server on Connect.Microsoft.com

Last Updated July 2, 2016

Brent Ozar

SQL Server

When a man loves a woman very much, he goes to Connect.Microsoft.com and upvotes her feature requests. I was curious to see what requests were resonating the most with folks, so I went through the list of feature requests sorted by votes: 1. Please fix the “String or binary data would be truncated” message to give…

Breaking News: 2016 Query Store cleanup doesn’t work on Standard or Express Editions

Last Updated September 21, 2017

Brent Ozar

Breaking News, First Responder Kit, Query Store (QDS), SQL Server

If you’re using SQL Server 2016’s awesome new feature, Query Store, there’s a new bug with automatic cleanup. Books Online explains: Automatic data cleanup fails on editions other than Enterprise and Developer. Consequently, space used by the Query Store will grow over time until configured limit is reached, if data is not purged manually. If…

Screenshot Interview Question: “What would you do if you saw this?”

Last Updated February 14, 2017

Brent Ozar

Interviewing

In this week’s episode of our screenshot interview series, you’re applying for a database professional position who will be on call. You’re not necessarily the DBA, but you’re a member of the team on rotation. While you’re on call, you get an email from the help desk asking if there’s a problem on the production data…

First Responder Kit Updated, and sp_AskBrent is now sp_BlitzFirst

Last Updated October 5, 2020

Brent Ozar

First Responder Kit, SQL Server

We’ve released the first fully open source version of our SQL Server First Responder Kit: sp_Blitz, sp_BlitzCache, sp_BlitzIndex, sp_BlitzRS, sp_BlitzTrace, and the newest member: the newly renamed sp_BlitzFirst. I wanted to rename sp_BlitzFirst because as an open source project, it’s going to have more than just my own answers as to why your SQL Server…

30,000 Comments

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Brent Ozar

Blogging, SQL Server

It feels kinda arbitrary, but it’s a champagne moment: Thanks to everybody who’s ever stopped by, left a comment, and taken part in the discussions. (An extra-special thanks to folks who even addressed us by the right names, and didn’t call everybody else here Brent, hahaha.) I started this thing over a decade ago, but you,…

We’re Renaming sp_BlitzFirst. What Should the New Name Be?

Last Updated April 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

First Responder Kit, SQL Server

338

Yesterday we announced that we’re open sourcing our free SQL Server scripts, and one of those is sp_BlitzFirst. I originally named it that because it had a funny magic-8-ball type feature: if you pass in a question as a parameter, it gives you an answer like “Outlook not so good, Access even worse.” Cute, but now…

We’re open-sourcing the sp_Blitz* scripts.

Last Updated June 20, 2016

Brent Ozar

SQL Server

We’re proud to announce that our First Responder Kit is now on Github, and it now uses the MIT open source license. What This Means for Users Good news: it’s still free, and now it’ll be updated even more often. If you’re subscribed to update notifications, we’ll still email you monthly when we release new versions. Today, we’re…

Let’s Make a Match: Index Intersection

Last Updated June 16, 2016

Brent Ozar

SQL Server

Most of the time, when you run a query, SQL Server prefers to use just one index on a table to do its dirty work. Let’s query the Users table in the StackOverflow database (I’m using the March 2016 version today), looking for people with a certain reputation score OR a certain number of upvotes: Query…

Questions You Should Ask About the Databases You Manage

Last Updated June 10, 2016

Brent Ozar

SQL Server

First, what data do we have? Do we store any personally identifiable data? Does any of that data include children? Do customers believe that this data will never be seen publicly? Do customers believe that this data will never be seen by your employees? Next, what would happen if this data became public? What would happen…

SSMS 2016: It Just Runs More Awesomely

Last Updated June 3, 2016

Brent Ozar

SQL Server

Step 1: configure SSMS to only show file names on the tabs. Click Tools, Options, Text Editor, Editor Tab and Status Bar, and set all of the tab texts to false except file name. After all, not like all this stuff fits on the tab. Step 1: SSMS tab name configuration Step 2: while you’re…

#DellDBADays 2016: What Would You Do with Unlimited Hardware?

Last Updated April 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

Humor

Last August, we got the team together in person for Dell DBA Days. We ran all kinds of interesting experiments with SQL Server, and shared the results with you via live webcasts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gn43sOLrcVs You can watch our recorded episodes from last year – I’d highly recommend the last one, Watch SQL Server Break and Explode. Erik…

SQL Server 2016 and the Internet: Forced Updates, Phoning Home

Last Updated June 7, 2016

Brent Ozar

SQL Server

SQL Server 2016’s End User License Agreement (EULA) contains a couple of surprises for those who let their SQL Servers connect to the internet. No, I don’t mean where the Internet connects to you – I mean where the SQL Server can reach the internet, like open a web page. Issue #1: You may get updates whether…

Breaking News, Literally: 2014 SP1 CU6 Breaks NOLOCK

Last Updated September 21, 2017

Brent Ozar

Breaking News, SQL Server

Just announced on the Microsoft Release Services blog, if you run a SELECT query with the NOLOCK hint and your query goes parallel, it can block other queries. This is a bug, and it will be fixed soon, but it is a very big deal for people who think NOLOCK means, uh, NOLOCK. More technical details: While one…

sp_Blitz v51: @IgnorePrioritiesAbove = 50 gets you a daily briefing

Last Updated November 16, 2017

Brent Ozar

sp_Blitz

You have a monitoring tool, but you’ve set up an email rule to dump all the alerts into a folder. You’re not particularly proud of that, but it is what it is. You’re just tired of the spam. Group query in the registered servers list But when you get in in the morning, you want…

SQL Interview Question: “Tell me what you see in this screenshot.”

Last Updated May 28, 2016

Brent Ozar

Interviewing, SQL Server

You’re a data professional working with (or at least applying to work with) a company using the StackOverflow database (I’m using the March 2016 version today). Your users are complaining that this stored procedure is slow: usp_GetPostsByOwnerUserId They didn’t give you parameter 26837 – I’m just giving you that so you can see an execution plan.…