Is your company hiring for a database position as of February 2026? Do you wanna work with the kinds of people who read this blog? Let's make a love connection.
If your company is hiring, leave a comment. The rules:
While in the midst of moving my home office into a new room in the house, I stopped to take your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento. About 18.5 minutes into the recording, my camera overheated because I hadn't set up the fan on it yet, hahaha.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNAI__FLlxo
Normally, when SQL Server updates statistics on an object, it invalidates the cached plans that rely on that statistic as well. That's why you'll see recompiles happen after stats updates: SQL Server knows the stats have changed, so it's a good time to build new execution plans based on the changes in the data.
However, updates to system-created stats don't necessarily cause plan recompiles.
Sandra Delany (LinkedIn) wrote a well-thought-out blog post called, "Should a SQL Server DBA Know Windows Clustering?" She's got about 20 years of DBA experience, and she works for Straight Path (a firm I respect) as a consultant. You can probably guess based on her background that yes, she believes you should know how to set up, configure, and troubleshoot Windows clustering. It's a good post, and you should read it.
When I travel, I try to take y'all with me to really pretty or at least interesting locations. On my Tokyo visit last year, I did Office Hours in Akihabara, the electronics & anime shopping hub. Even though I'm not into anime at all and I don't collect that kind of gear, I wanted to see it because it's famous among geeks.
SQL Server 2025 Cumulative Update 1 came out last week, and I was kinda confused by the release notes. They described a couple dozen fixed issues, and the list seemed really short for a CU1. However, the more I dug into it, the weirder things got. For example, there were several new DMVs added -…
A private equity (PE) company recently acquired the majority of Redgate Software, the current owners of the PASS Data Community Summit and SQLServerCentral. Everybody in tech has private equity stories, some good, some terribad. Private equity hands money to companies not out of generosity, but because they believe they can turn it into even more money…
Kyoto feels like a timeless, classic version of historical Japan with quiet tree-lined streets, giant temples, and bubbling brooks. It's the exact opposite of last week's experience in noisy Osaka! Last year, I filmed in Kyoto outside a temple, and this year, I'm at another temple just after New Year's, the time when Japanese folks traditionally go to visit their many gorgeous temples.
It's time for our quarterly update of our SQL ConstantCare® population report, showing how quickly (or slowly) folks adopt new versions of SQL Server. In short, people are replacing SQL Server 2016 and 2017 with 2022!
SQL Server 2025: 0% (but it's 10 servers)
SQL Server 2022: 29%, up from 25% last quarter
SQL Server 2019: 43%, no change
SQL Server 2017: 9%, was 10%
SQL Server 2016: 10%, was 13%
SQL Server 2014 & prior: 6%, no change
Azure SQL DB and Managed Instances: 2%, no change
The results are in! You can download the raw data in Excel for all 10 years and do some slicing and dicing to find out whether you're underpaid, overpaid, or what it looks like for folks who are out there looking for work. This year, I added a couple of new items to the survey…
Some folks are seeing an ad at the top of their SSMS v22, like this one reported in the feedback site:
Today, Microsoft's using this to test ads for an upcoming conference. Interesting that they give deeper discounts to Reddit readers as opposed to SSMS users, but I digress. Tomorrow, they might be pushing SQL Server 2025 upgrades, or Microsoft Fabric, or Copilot, or whatever.
You're busy, so I'll keep this short.
Several months from now, you're gonna have a salary review. Your manager is going to ask what you've been up to, and you're not going to have a lot of great answers. Copilot isn't tracking your successes for you.
This seems like the appropriate first BrentOzar.com blog post in the year 2026, eh?
In the PollGab question queue for Office Hours, MyRobotOverlordAsks asked a question that merited a full blog post answer:
The Dotonbori area of Osaka is like a video game version of Japan: wild, over-the-top neon signs, awesome street food, cool street markets, Kabuki theater on a revolving stage, and more. It's very touristy, but as touristy places go, it's fantastic. Last year when I was here, I filmed Office Hours at the river, but this time around let's go into one of the side streets where the food vendors gather.
Reading is fundamental, and fundamentally, here are the 2025 blog posts that y'all read the most this year. (This list doesn't include the most popular timeless posts overall.)
10. Free Spring Training Webcasts - I've noticed that people have near-zero interest these days in paying to attend live online classes, but they're still really interested in free ones, and they still pay for recorded classes. Weird. I'm guessing that's a Zoom fatigue thing.
I really wanted to film Office Hours on the Great Wall of China, but the instant I got out there, I realized it was a lost cause. That place was SO overwhelming - tons of people, frigid winds, heights, totally overwhelming in every way. So, instead you get a nice peaceful park in downtown Zhengzhou,…
Whenever a brand spankin' new version of any software comes out, there are bugs, and SQL Server is no exception. This has led to a mentality where folks don't wanna install a new version of SQL Server until the first couple of Cumulative Updates come out, hopefully fixing the first big round of bugs.
So... are there bugs this time around?
In this year's data professional salary survey, I added a new response type for folks who are unemployed and looking for data work. The survey is still in progress, but you can view the data as it's coming in, and I wanted to take a few minutes to read through the responses of folks who are unemployed.
I drove the Graffiti Gulf out to The Last Spike (video) outside of Las Vegas and took your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcNJVJ1-XaE
Say you've got a table with an identity column, something that's supposed to start at 1 and go up to a bajillion:
[crayon-6af415f318a1c166939081/]
