When there's a performance emergency, a lot of us perform the same manual tasks over and over. We run sp_BlitzWho or sp_WhoIsActive, look for blocking, long-running or out-of-control queries, and kill them. I'm going to build a new sp_kill for the First Responder Kit to make that easier, faster, and safer, and I want your…
If you're the kind of person who likes to learn on the go, my training provider Teachable just updated their apps.
Now, both the Android and iOS apps let you download classes ahead of time and watch 'em disconnected.
I threw in the towel on my workday at 3PM when everything started going wrong in the Ozar home office, so I switched to answering your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7-Bq9qmDX8
Back in March 2025 when Microsoft first announced that REGEX support was coming to SQL Server 2025 and Azure SQL DB, I gave it a quick test, and the performance was horrific. It was bad in 3 different ways:
The CPU usage was terrible, burning 60 seconds of CPU time to check a few million rows
It refused to use an index
The cardinality estimation was terrible, hard-coded to 30% of the table
It's the perfect time of year in Las Vegas when we can chill outside by the fire, enjoy a glass of wine, and go through your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esMYx_mbfqo
First off, I understand if you read the headline and you have a knee-jerk reaction. I totally understand that there are a lot of people out there who hate AI, and believe me, I hate most uses of it. Lots of its advice can be misleading at best, and absolute garbage at worst. However, if…
In last week's Query Exercise, I challenged you to play some code golf to generate big spills with tiny T-SQL.
Today, I'm going to walk you through my thought process - the initial attempts I tried and failed with, and the discoveries I made along the way, because I think it makes for fun storytelling.
This quarter's release includes new checks for SQL Server 2025's new memory pressure warnings, Azure SQL DB's operations in progress, accurate CPU usage on Docker containers, warnings about not using partitioned statistics where appropriate, and much more. If you'd like to thank me for my work in maintaining the First Responder Kit, the best way…
Ever wonder how big your database estate is compared to others? Whether you've got more servers, more databases, more workloads, or more problems?
Well, if you're one of my SQL ConstantCare® customers, check your email: our first set of badges just went out!
Nah, not necessarily. SQL Server's query optimizer behavior keeps changing with every freakin' version. Let's illustrate it with a simple query against the Stack Overflow Users table:
[crayon-6af418c17fe76163142794/]
When I was testing SQL Server 2025's new ability to limit TempDB usage with Resource Governor, I wrote a few fun diabolical demos. One of them was to generate giant spills to TempDB, quickly.
When you're looking at an actual (not estimated) query plan, and you see a yellow exclamation point on a sort operator, that means:
Today marks the official birthday of Microsoft SQL Server 2025. Here's where to download the evaluation version. Here are the top things you wanna consider as you talk to your managers, developers, and end users. The feature differences between 2025 Enterprise and Standard have been revealed, and the news for Standard Edition folks is spectacular:…
I love SQL Server, and I'm excited for the release of 2025. I think the query processing keeps getting better, which means your apps are gonna go faster, with less code changes. The AI stuff is a little fluffy, and I don't think time will be kind to it, but I totally understand why Microsoft…
SQL Server 2025 and .NET 10 bring several new improvements to storing JSON natively in the database and querying it quickly. On the SQL Server 2025 side, the two big ones are the new native JSON indexes and the new JSON_CONTAINS function. Let's see their improvements in action. On the .NET 10 side, EF 10…
Before SQL Server 2025, if you want to store JSON data in Microsoft SQL Server or Azure SQL DB, and you want fast queries, the easiest way is to:
Store the data in an NVARCHAR(MAX) column (because the native JSON datatype didn't arrive until SQL Server 2025)
Add a computed column for the specific JSON keys we'll want to query quickly
Index those keys
Query it using the JSON_VALUE function
My cruise ship took a detour to Honduras to avoid the hurricane. Let's hang out on the beach and go through your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD7FnCRzJL8
This Office Hours episode comes to you from Virgin Voyages' newest cruise ship, the Brilliant Lady, sailing through the Western Caribbean. We were originally scheduled to do the Eastern Caribbean, but Tropical Storm Melissa had other ideas, so they reworked our itinerary at the last minute.
Let's take your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento:
In this quarter's update of our SQL ConstantCare® population report, showing how quickly (or slowly) folks adopt new versions of SQL Server, the data is very similar to last quarter:
SQL Server 2025: exactly 1 server being monitored, heh. God bless y'all for giving it a shot this early.
SQL Server 2022: 25%, up from 24% last quarter
SQL Server 2019: 43%, was 45%
SQL Server 2017: 10%, was 11%
SQL Server 2016: 13%, was 12%
SQL Server 2014: 5%, same as last quarter
SQL Server 2012 & prior: 1%, same
Azure SQL DB and Managed Instances: 2%, same
Short story: what the title says.
This is especially problematic for folks who merge multiple databases onto the same server. All it takes is one badly-behaving application to leave its transactions open, and suddenly it causes the rest of the databases to run TempDB out of space. That app's transaction might not even be changing anything, and it might have never caused problems for that application before - but once it shares a TempDB with other apps, it causes cascading problems.
Let's hang out in the backyard - as recently seen on Zillow Gone Wild - and take your top-voted questions from https://PollGab.com/room/brento.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKd30ILb7ys
