Posts by Kendra Little

Kendra Little

167 posts

My goal is for you to understand your SQL Server’s behavior– and learn how to change it. When I’m not figuring out the solutions to your database problems, you’ll find me at user group meetings in Portland, Oregon. I also love to draw.

SQL Server 2012 SP3 Adds Memory Grant and Performance Features

Last Updated January 8, 2019

Kendra Little

Memory Grants, SQL Server

New ways to measure your queries SQL Server 2012 SP3 has just been freshly released! Not only does this release contain bug fixes, it also contains a slew of performance tuning related features. Many of these features are about memory grants. This is NOT the memory used in the buffer pool/ data cache by the…

Interviewing: How to Test TSQL Writing Skills

Last Updated November 2, 2015

Kendra Little

SQL Server

“Sure, I write great queries!” We sometimes help clients interview DBAs and Developers for their team. Requirements vary depending by position, but sometimes it’s important to test a candidate’s TSQL skills. While I can test candidates thoroughly on strategies for TSQL (when they’d use certain constructs, the pros and cons of various approaches), if what…

My Favorite Moments from the 2015 PASS Summit WIT Lunch

Last Updated February 12, 2017

Kendra Little

#SQLPass

The speakers are great, but the audience is great, too! One of the great things about the SQLPASS Summit is the annual Women in Technology lunch. Not only does the lunch feature an interesting presentation, but you get to talk to men and women at your table about diversity, how to build better teams, and how…

Training Plan for a SysAdmin to Manage Availability Groups

Last Updated April 9, 2017

Kendra Little

Always On Availability Groups

How hard is it for a systems administrator who’s used to running SQL Server on Windows Clusters to tackle Availability Groups? Our example system administrator knows a bit of TSQL and their way around Management Studio, but is pretty new to performance tuning. Well, it might be harder than you think. First, let’s look at…

Does Creating an Indexed View Require Exclusive Locks on an Underlying Table?

Last Updated May 16, 2019

Kendra Little

Indexing, Locking, Blocking, and Isolation Levels, SQL Server

An interesting question came up in our SQL Server Performance Tuning course in Chicago: when creating an indexed view, does it require an exclusive lock on the underlying table or tables? Let’s test it out with a simple indexed view run against a non-production environment. (AKA, a VM on my laptop running SQL Server 2014.)…

Need to Migrate or Upgrade SQL Server? Register for our upcoming webcast!

Last Updated October 16, 2015

Kendra Little

SQL Server

Change is exciting, and a little scary, too. If you’re looking to upgrade or migrate your SQL Server, head on over to our events page and get registered for our upcoming free webcast on Thursday, Oct 15 at 10:00AM Central, 11:00AM Eastern. SQL Server Migration Checklist (Sponsored by Veeam) It’s time to upgrade your SQL…

Filtered Indexes and IS NOT NULL

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Kendra Little

Indexing, SQL Server

Filtered indexes can be tricky. Just getting your queries to use the filtered index can be a real pain. Parameterization may mean it’s “unsafe” to use the filtered index. The optimizer might want the filtered column in your key or include column list when it doesn’t seem like it should have to be there. The…

We’re Hiring: SQL Server Triage Specialist (Remote Position)

Last Updated October 10, 2015

Kendra Little

SQL Server

It’s time to grow our consulting team! We’re looking for a SQL Server Triage Specialist. This is a new position with a whole new job description: the position is as much about communicating with clients as it is about SQL Server. I’d tell you about the job, but I’m really excited for you to read about it…

Why is This Partitioned Query Slower?

Last Updated June 11, 2019

Kendra Little

Execution Plans, Partitioning

It’s tempting to think that table partitioning will improve query performance. After all, it’s an Enterprise Edition feature– it must have a lot of magic, right? Table partitioning does have magic for the right situations. It shines when you want to add a large amount of data to a table or remove a large amount…

Bieber Decisions: The Top 5 Mistakes DBAs Regret Later

Last Updated August 19, 2015

Kendra Little

SQL Server

5. Turning on auto-shrink It might make disk space alerts go away for a minute, but it can cause lots of problems. 4. Enabling xp_cmdshell and giving the SQL Server account administrative rights in Windows Young DBAs often do this to try to get a quick fix in place to manage backup files. Later on,…

The Easiest Way to Restore Transaction Logs to A Point In Time (Spoiler: Use AmazonRDS)

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Kendra Little

Amazon Web Services (AWS), SQL Server

… is to use a SQL Server where a robot does it for you! Let’s take a look at how you can do this in AmazonRDS’s hosted SQL Server these days. Normally, restoring transaction logs is super tedious. You’ve got to restore all the files in the right order, for every single database. Even if…

Creating a branch in the GitHub client for Windows

Pull Request 101 for DBAs Using GitHub

Last Updated July 10, 2015

Kendra Little

SQL Server

I’ve worked with source control quite a bit over the years — everything from ye olde Visual Source Safe to Subversion to TFS. I even supported the Source Depot system at Microsoft as an engineer for a year back in the day! These days I don’t use source control a ton. We keep repositories of…

Replication Won’t Refresh Your Dev and Pre-Production Environments

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Kendra Little

Development, Replication

It’s almost like the real thing, except it’s totally different. At first glance, SQL Server’s transactional replication seems like it’s useful for moving data around in all sorts of situations: it works in Standard Edition, it’s not synchronous, and you can have multiple subscribers. Why People Want Replication to Test and Pre-Production Environments Setting up…

Why Zero Data Loss in SQL Server is Harder Than You Think

Last Updated April 9, 2017

Kendra Little

Architecture, High Availability

But Kendra, it can’t be that hard… after all, we have synchronous modes in Database Mirroring and Availability Groups, right? Synchronous Commit doesn’t mean “zero data loss” When we think about limiting data loss, the first thing we think of is a technology that lets us reduce points of failure. If every transaction must be…

The Nine Circles of Developer Hell

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Kendra Little

Humor

Commit message: Duck! Everyone’s code is terrible. But exactly how terrible is yours? First Circle: Code Limbo We can’t say this is good code, but for the most part nobody notices it. Second Circle: Code Lust Cool function, bro! Third Circle: Gluttonous Code There’s always one simple piece of logic that’s been written hundreds of…

What Permissions does QUERYTRACEON Need?

Last Updated May 28, 2015

Kendra Little

SQL Server

The QUERYTRACEON hint can be particularly useful for testing the new cardinality estimator in SQL Server 2014 on individual queries using Trace Flag 2312, if your database is still using compatibility level 110: Transact-SQL SELECT ClosedDate, Id FROM dbo.Posts WHERE LastActivityDate > '2013-09-05 11:57:38.690' OPTION (QUERYTRACEON 2312); GO 12345 SELECT ClosedDate, IdFROM dbo.PostsWHERE LastActivityDate > '2013-09-05…

New Free Quizzes: Indexing, Query Writing, and More

Last Updated June 8, 2015

Kendra Little

SQL Server

Quiz time! Want to test your knowledge on indexes and query tuning in SQL Server? Curious how your query tuning style compares to others? Looking to have a little fun? Interested in a coupon code? Your Monday just got better. Check out our new free online quizzes right now: Test your SQL Server indexing prowess…

When does a Query Get Trivial Optimization?

Last Updated May 26, 2020

Kendra Little

Execution Plans, Parameter Sniffing

We had some great questions about trivial execution plans in SQL Server in our Advanced Querying and Indexing class a few weeks ago. Here’s a little glimpse into what we talked about. For really simple queries, SQL Server can use “trivial optimization”. If there’s a very limited number of ways to run the query, why do a…

Who’s Backing Up That Database?

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Kendra Little

Backup and Recovery

A question came up on Twitter recently– how you can you figure out where a rogue backup is coming from? I’ve run into this question with clients before. In an enterprise environment where backup tools come and go, it’s not unusual to find backups being run by some mysterious account. By the way, when’s the…

Contest: Write the Scariest DBA Sentence (10 words or less)

Last Updated February 12, 2017

Kendra Little

Humor

1283

Warm up your keyboard, it’s time for a contest. The challenge: Write the creepiest sentence you can come up with. You get 10 words max. An example to get you started: Oh, I’m sure someone set up the backups. The rules: Enter as often as you like (here on the blog, in the comments for…