Posts by Brent Ozar

On a sunny Saturday afternoon, I made myself a highball and went through your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento. Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Start 00:57 jrl: Do you have any advice about communicating effectively in a fully remote workplace where all discussion is centered around a messaging platform like Slack or Teams? The company I…

You probably don't wanna hire these two.

Your SQL Server Needs Spring Cleaning, Too.

Last Updated April 6, 2025

Indexing

First things first: pick up that filthy keyboard, take it over to the trash can, turn it upside down, and give it a good, vigorous shake. Next, go to your biggest SQL Server and run: Transact-SQL EXEC sp_BlitzIndex @GetAllDatabases = 1, @Mode = 2, @SortOrder = 'rows'; 12 EXEC sp_BlitzIndex @GetAllDatabases = 1, @Mode = 2,…

Updated First Responder Kit and Consultant Toolkit for April 2025

Last Updated April 14, 2025

First Responder Kit Updates

This quarter’s release contains a few advanced warnings & tools, like table input for sp_BlitzLock, new warnings about paused resumable index operations that will be deleted automatically by SQL Server 2022, and a new option to maintain carriage returns and line feeds in sp_BlitzCache’s output. Wanna watch me use it? Take the free class. To…

The Waitlist is Open Now for My SQLBits Workshop!

Last Updated April 13, 2025

SQLBits

I’m excited to return to London for SQLBits again this year! I’ve written about why SQLBits is my favorite conference, and it’s hard to believe it’s been over a decade since I wrote that post. I still feel the same way about Bits – it’s fun, different, and unafraid to run big experiments. This year,…

[Video] Office Hours in North Bay, Canada

Last Updated April 6, 2025

Every year, Aaron Bertrand runs a curling tournament up in scenic North Bay where he grew up. I joined in this year, and before the tournament, sat on the shores of Lake Napissing to answer your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento. Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Start 01:25 MyTeaGotCold: Kendra Little’s recent article on the decline…

Tap Tap Tap – Short, Silent SQL Server Tutorials

Last Updated April 7, 2025

One of the things I love about TikTok is that it exposes me to wildly new video ideas like this: @tiipititap ? original sound – tiipititap There’s a whole genre of videos in that style – people using tapping plastic pointer fingers on a grainy screen with no voiceover. One sub-genre (like the video above)…

Free Webcast: Avoiding Deadlocks by Query Tuning

Last Updated April 7, 2025

Deadlocks used to scare me. I’d get the alert from a monitoring tool, and I’d look around to see if anyone was watching me. If the coast was clear, I’d… delete the notification. Deadlocks were a mystery to me because I didn’t know how I was supposed to fix them. Sometimes the same queries could…

Free Webcast Tomorrow: Fundamentals of Columnstore

Last Updated April 6, 2025

It’s time for SQL Server Spring Training! I’m teaching 60-90 minutes of my most popular classes for free over the next few months. Tomorrow I’m teaching Fundamentals of Columnstore, and we’re going to be covering the internals of how SQL Server and Azure SQL DB store data in columnstore indexes. You’ll learn why people think it’s…

[Video] Office Hours in My Vegas Backyard

Last Updated March 16, 2025

I’m doing a lot of travel this month, but I took a break in my Vegas backyard to go through the top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento. Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Start 00:29 Nick H: I’m a new starter at an organisation who have lots of rules, one of which is that the use of Intellisense…

Fundamentals Week 2025 is Coming This Month! Get Your Tickets Now.

Last Updated February 28, 2025

Conferences and Classes

You’ve attended some of my free online streams, read my blog posts, and you use the First Responder Kit. You enjoy my laid-back, humorous approach to sharing what I’ve learned over the years. You love live classes. You’ve tried watching recordings or stepping through demos yourself, but…you just can’t block out the time, and you…

What’s New in SQL Server 2025

Last Updated April 1, 2025

Humor

This year’s release of Microsoft’s enterprise-grade relational database focuses on the most highly requested features from customers. Highlights include: Tooling support for SSMS like adding the debugger back in and executing the query where your cursor is on Production DBA enhancements like the ability to restore a single table from backup, and automatic background corruption checks…

Free Webcast Tomorrow: Fundamentals of TempDB

Last Updated March 23, 2025

It’s time for SQL Server Spring Training! I’m teaching 60-90 minutes of my most popular classes for free over the next few months. Tomorrow I’m teaching Fundamentals of TempDB, and we’re going to be covering temp table statistics, execution plans, and plan reuse. There’s a lot more to cover in TempDB, like table variables, memory-optimized…

[Video] Office Hours: Back in the Home Office

Last Updated March 6, 2025

I’m back home after a 2-week Iceland vacation. Let’s catch up with your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento. Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Start 02:04 Suresh: Hi Brent . Question about 128 GB memory limit for SQL server standard edition.If I set ‘Max SQL Server Memory’ to 228 GB on a 256 GB VM , SQL…

Query Exercise Answer: Finding Email Addresses

Last Updated March 20, 2025

Query Exercise Answers

For this week’s Query Exercise, your mission had two parts: Do a first pass search through the Users table looking for columns where people had snuck in email addresses where they didn’t belong Write a more high-quality query to identify exactly which rows we needed to handle I wrote the challenge that way because in database…

Why Your Azure SQL DB Hyperscale Bill is Higher Than You’d Expect

Last Updated March 23, 2025

Azure SQL DB, Hyperscale

tl;dr: if you use Azure SQL DB Hyperscale’s auto-scaling, it’s probably not cutting your bill down because like SQL Server, Hyperscale doesn’t automatically relinquish memory, and it’ll be up to you to manually manage your own memory if you wanna cut your bill. Now for the long story. Microsoft’s Azure SQL DB Hyperscale has an…

[Video] Office Hours: Waiting for the Hot Tub to Fill

Last Updated March 5, 2025

While waiting for my Husavik hot tub to fill up, I took your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento. Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Start 01:28 1440×1080: always on with 2 nodes 1db, readable secondary. I’ve optimized both nodes to a point where the primary can withstand both workloads.i want to downgrade licensing from enterprise to standard.…

T-SQL Has Regex in SQL Server 2025. Don’t Get Too Excited.

Last Updated December 10, 2025

SQL Server 2025, T-SQL

Regular expressions are a way of doing complex string searches. They can be really useful, but they have a reputation: they’re hard to write, hard to read, and they’re even harder to troubleshoot. Once you master ’em, though, they come in handy for very specific situations. This post isn’t about their complexity, though. This post…

Query Exercise: Looking for Email Addresses

Last Updated March 15, 2025

Query Exercises

“They put their password WHERE?!?” Personally identifiable information (PII) is freakin’ everywhere. When companies first start looking to identify and lock down their data, they think it’s going to be as easy as identifying common columns like EmailAddress, DateOfBirth, SocialSecurityNumber, and so forth. They think, “We’ll just encrypt those columns and we’ll be fine.” Ho…

Free Webcast Tomorrow: Fundamentals of Query Tuning

Last Updated February 14, 2025

It’s time for SQL Server Spring Training! I’m teaching 60-90 minutes of my most popular classes for free over the next few months. Tomorrow I’m doing Fundamentals of Query Tuning. It’s for folks who are comfortable writing queries to get the data they want, but wildly uncomfortable reading query plans and trying to explain why queries…

What’s Coming in SQL Server 2025, DMV Edition

Last Updated March 5, 2025