Posts by Brent Ozar

Brent Ozar

2782 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.

Building SQL ConstantCare®: Updating ConstantCare.exe

Last Updated August 24, 2018

Brent Ozar

SQL ConstantCare

When we started designing SQL ConstantCare® (back before we had a name for it), I listed out the main components at the beginning of the design doc: The beginning of a giant to-do list The collector (which later became ConstantCare.exe) was the only piece that would run client-side. I wanted to keep end user support…

DBAs Need a Jump Box or Jump Server.

Last Updated August 13, 2018

Brent Ozar

Processes and Practices

Every now and then, you’re going to need to run a query that takes a long time. You’re going to want to make sure that it succeeds and that you can see the full output – even if your workstation disconnects – or maybe you want to check the status from home later. You’re going…

It’s Time to Improve DBCC CHECKDB.

Last Updated August 13, 2018

Brent Ozar

CHECKDB and Corruption

Microsoft has been resting on Paul Randal’s laurels for far too long. From 1999 to 2007, Paul poured his heart and soul into rewriting SQL Server’s code to check for and repair database corruption. (For more about his illustrious career, read his bio and enjoy the infectious enthusiasm in his bio photo.) Paul did great…

Building SQL ConstantCare®: Now Free for Consulting Customers

Last Updated August 13, 2018

Brent Ozar

SQL ConstantCare

We’re kinda like an emergency room for SQL Server: we specialize in a 3-day SQL Critical Care® where we work side by side with you, talking about your database pains, showing you the root cause, and then teaching you how to get permanent pain relief. That works really well, and we’ve kinda got it down…

A Presenter’s Guide to the Stack Overflow Database

Last Updated August 8, 2018

Brent Ozar

Stack Overflow

The place that saves your job You present on SQL Server topics at user groups and conferences, and you’ve been wondering how to get started with the Stack Overflow public database. Here’s a quick list of things to know. For stable demos, use StackOverflow2010. This smaller 10GB database has data from the first years of…

How Trace Flag 2335 Affects Memory Grants

Last Updated January 8, 2019

Brent Ozar

Memory Grants, SQL Server

This trace flag is documented in KB #2413549, which says, “Using large amounts of memory can result in an inefficient plan in SQL Server.” The details are a little light, so let’s run a quick experiment with: SQL Server 2017 CU 8 (14.0.3029.16) VM with 4 cores, 32GB RAM, max memory set to 28GB Stack Overflow…

The First 3 Things I Look At on a SQL Server

Last Updated July 20, 2018

Brent Ozar

Processes and Practices

1. Are backups and CHECKDB being done? Before I step out on the wire, I want to know if there’s a safety net. If there’s a recoverability risk, I don’t stop here – I keep looking because the rest of the answers affect the safety net we’re going to put in place. “10TB of data…

How to Check for Non-Existence of Rows

Last Updated July 20, 2018

Brent Ozar

Execution Plans, T-SQL

You’re writing a query, and you wanna check to see if rows exist in a table. I’m using the free Stack Overflow database, and I wanna find all of the users who have not left a comment. The tables involved are: In dbo.Users, the Id field uniquely identifies a user. In dbo.Comments, there’s a UserId field…

A Visual Guide to Choosing an Index Type

Last Updated July 20, 2018

Brent Ozar

Indexing

Warning: I’m about to overly simplify a whole lot of topics to make things easy. Armchair architects, warm up your flamethrowers. Your table has rows and columns kinda like a spreadsheet: In most applications, your users care about all of the rows, and all of the columns. However, they put certain columns in the where…

Two Important Differences Between SQL Server and PostgreSQL

Last Updated August 6, 2018

Brent Ozar

PostgreSQL

SQL ConstantCare® uses PostgreSQL as a back end – specifically, AWS RDS Aurora – so I’ve spent a lot of time writing Postgres queries lately. Here are some of the things I’ve noticed that are different. CTEs are optimization fences. In SQL Server, if you write this query: Transact-SQL With AllPosts AS (SELECT * FROM StackOverflow.dbo.Posts)…

How to Check Performance on a New SQL Server

Last Updated July 20, 2018

Brent Ozar

Processes and Practices, Production Database Administration

So you just built a brand new SQL Server, and before you go live, you wanna check to see if it’s going to perform as well as your existing server. The easy way: test your maintenance jobs I’m just asking for the chance to test it, that’s all It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3:…

How I Configure SQL Server Management Studio

Last Updated August 2, 2018

Brent Ozar

SQL Server Management Studio

Ever go into Tools-Options? SSMS has a stunning number of options these days. Here are some of my favorites: Documents options On the Documents options, I uncheck “Check for consistent line endings on load” because I constantly get scripts with all kinds of wacko line endings. That warning is a pain in the butt. On…

Database DevOps Featuring Microsoft SSDT

New Classes: Dashboard in a Day, Database DevOps, tSQLt, SQL Server Internals, and Avoiding NOLOCK

Last Updated July 27, 2018

Brent Ozar

Company News

We’ve got a few new goodies, and they’re 50% off for a limited time! Dashboard in a Day – A hands-on workshop using Power BI to rapidly produce great looking interactive reports and dashboards. Your instructor, Microsoft MVP Steph Locke, has a decade of BI and data science experience. Learn more and register. Database DevOps Featuring…

[Video] “Actual” Execution Plans Lie for Branching Queries

Last Updated July 20, 2018

Brent Ozar

Execution Plans

In which I show why you can’t trust “actual” execution plans for branching stored procedures, and you’re better off using sp_BlitzCache to figure out what branches you need to tune: Demo code: Transact-SQL CREATE TABLE dbo.TableA (ID INT); CREATE TABLE dbo.TableB (ID INT); CREATE TABLE dbo.TableC (ID INT); CREATE TABLE dbo.TableD (ID INT); CREATE TABLE…

Building SQL ConstantCare®: What Mentoring Is (and Isn’t)

Last Updated July 19, 2018

Brent Ozar

SQL ConstantCare

When we built SQL ConstantCare® as a mentoring – not monitoring – product, I really meant the word mentoring. A lot of us are loners – the only SQL Server person in the office. Nobody really understands what we’re doing, and … we’re not even sure we understand, either. We were self-taught, and we didn’t…

How to Test Disaster Recovery Before You Go Live

Last Updated July 2, 2018

Brent Ozar

High Availability

When I build a server, success means not touching the server again for 2-3 years. I already have enough crappy, unreliable servers that fall over when someone walks past. I only wanna build good, permanent stuff going forward. So when I build disaster recovery for something, I want to test it 3 ways: Planned failover…

Election Injection

Last Updated July 20, 2018

Brent Ozar

Development

Setting politics aside (Lord knows I’d like to), this ABC 7 Chicago news story covers how Russians hacked the Illinois State Board of Election in 2016: SQL, an acronym for Structured Query Language, is a database programming language. An “SQL injection” is a common piece of cyber-trickery used to illegally gain access to government, financial,…

Announcing “Great Post, Erik” – A Book of Erik’s Best Work

Last Updated August 9, 2019

Brent Ozar

Company News

Erik Darling blogs a lot. Not lightweight stuff, either, but ambitious posts with a lot of demo scripts, screenshots, and detailed explanations about why SQL Server does what it does. So as he approached his 300th blog post, we decided to build a best-of book with his favorites. There’s no new content here: if you’ve…

Building SQL ConstantCare®: What Cloud Hosting Costs

Last Updated December 7, 2019

Brent Ozar

Amazon Web Services (AWS), SQL ConstantCare

In our behind-the-scenes posts about building SQL ConstantCare®, I’ve written about how we picked serverless architecture for the application layer, and how we picked AWS Aurora for the database layer. Hosting costs were a big driving factor in those decisions – so how has that worked out? Presented for your enjoyment, here are our total…

What Do You Want to Learn This Fall?

Last Updated July 16, 2018

Brent Ozar

Company News

New class survey We’re designing a new round of courses for the fall. Let us know what you want to learn in this short survey. After you take it, you get to see the answers, too, so you can learn what other folks wanna learn.