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.

Not Everything Should be Automated

Last Updated April 30, 2015

Kendra Little

SQL Server

How did I ever get this to work???? Some people hate repetition. They want to avoid manual tasks at all costs. I used to be part of the cult of automation. I thought that everything should be made efficient. Why should I do something twice, if I can figure out how to do it once and…

How to See Recent Autogrowth Events on Databases in SQL Server

Last Updated April 30, 2015

Kendra Little

SQL Server

There are a few little gems built into SQL Server Management Studio that are easy to forget, but they sure can come in handy. I sometimes generate a little formatted report of recent growths for a database, and how long they took. It’s really easy, and it’s built right in. Here’s how: Right click on a…

Staging Data: Locking Danger with ALTER SCHEMA TRANSFER

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Kendra Little

Locking, Blocking, and Isolation Levels, SQL Server

Developers have struggled with a problem for a long time: how do I load up a new table, then quickly switch it in and replace it, to make it visible to users? There’s a few different approaches to reloading data and switching it in, and unfortunately most of them have big problems involving locking. One…

Basic VMware and Hyper-V Terminology for the SQL Server DBA

Last Updated July 13, 2017

Kendra Little

Virtualization

SQL Server DBAs often need to work with virtualization– and frequently need to work with multiple virtualization platforms. Many platforms have similar features, but they often have different names, and it’s hard to remember what everything’s called. I’ve got a little cheat sheet for you for two of the platforms! (No offense, Xen fans, please…

Should You Be a SQL Server DBA? (video)

Last Updated April 23, 2015

Kendra Little

SQL Server

Have you ever wondered if you should be a SQL Server Database Administrator? If you think this might be the right career path for you, watch this video and take our quiz! Got limited time or need to restart the quiz? No problem, we’ve got a table of contents with time indicators below. “Should You…

Are Index ‘Included’ Columns in Your Multi-Column Statistics?

Last Updated July 13, 2017

Kendra Little

Indexing, SQL Server

Internals Cat populates the density vector When you create an index in SQL Server with multiple columns, behind the scenes it creates a related multi-column statistic for the index. This statistic gives SQL Server some information about the relationship between the columns that it can use for row estimates when running queries. But what if…

When is a Hyper-V Virtual Machine Not Really a Virtual Machine?

Last Updated April 17, 2015

Kendra Little

SQL Server

Former Sysadmins When you set up a Windows Server, you might be tempted to add a bunch of roles, just in case you want to use them in the future. Don’t do it: things can get weird. If you add the Hyper-V role to Windows Server 2012 and higher, it changes some things about how…

Can DBCC SHRINKFILE Cause Blocking in SQL Server?

Last Updated January 11, 2018

Kendra Little

Locking, Blocking, and Isolation Levels, SQL Server

It sure can. The lock risks of shrinking data files in SQL Server aren’t very well documented. Many people have written about shrinking files being a bad regular practice— and that’s totally true. But sometimes you may need to run a one-time operation if you’ve been able to clear out or archive a lot of…

Is Your SAN Administrator Out to Get You?

Last Updated April 1, 2015

Kendra Little

SQL Server

WE WANT RAID 10!!!! DBAs often complain about SAN Administrators. “You can’t trust them.” I’ve seen established DBAs write publicly that they resort to lying about how SQL Server works to get what they want from a SAN Administrator. That’s pretty toxic. Other DBAs start to think it’s normal to have a terrible relationship with your SAN…

Find Corrupted Indexed Views with DBCC CHECKDB

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Kendra Little

CHECKDB and Corruption, SQL Server

If you’ve got indexed views, or are thinking of using them, this is important. First, go read the blog post, “An Indexed View Bug with Scalar Aggregates” by Paul White. It will take a minute, but it’s important to understand. Paul shows a scenario where the data in a certain kind of indexed view can…

Foreign Keys in SQL Server (video)

Last Updated December 29, 2021

Kendra Little

Foreign Keys

Learn the basics of Foreign Keys in SQL Server: trust, join elimination, cascading deletes, and indexing child keys. Limited on time? Check out the Table of Contents below. Table of Contents: 03:46 – Foreign keys change performance 04:12 – Let’s say we have no foreign key 04:41 – This query has a join 05:05 –…

Upgrading to SQL Server 2014: Frequently Asked Questions

Last Updated March 20, 2015

Kendra Little

SQL Server

Can I upgrade an existing instance without migrating? Keep your columns and rows inside the database while you prepare for your upgrade. This is nothing against SQL Server 2014, but I can’t stand in-place upgrades. Over the years I’ve had in-place upgrades work flawlessly on a few instances, and then had an install issue cause…

How to Become an Expert at Anything in SQL Server

Last Updated March 20, 2015

Kendra Little

SQL Server

First, decide what you want to get really good at. Then try to break it in many possible ways and analyze why it broke. I think it’s going to explode The more you break something, the more you’ll understand it. I use this technique all the time. Last year, I encountered a problem with a lack of…

Local Variables vs. Parameterized Stored Procedures in SQL Server (Video)

Last Updated February 23, 2016

Kendra Little

SQL Server

Local variables don’t behave like true parameters in stored procedures in SQL Server. Join Kendra to explore why local variables are so tricky in this free 10 minute video.

How to Tell if You Have a Development Environment

Last Updated February 27, 2015

Kendra Little

SQL Server

Take my three question survey… Brent Says: SQL Server Developer Edition licensing is crazy cheap, and it has no per-core licensing fees. I like taking the oldest server I have with a huge number of cores, something that doesn’t make licensing sense for any other purpose, and throwing Developer Edition on there.

Quiz: Are You the Next Brent Ozar Unlimited Consultant?

Last Updated February 12, 2017

Kendra Little

Company News, Interviewing, SQL Server

Hey SQL Server DBAs — we’re hiring! Here’s a quick five question quiz. Give yourself one point for every ‘yes’: Have you been a database administrator for a few years? Does planning how to keep an application reliable and safe from disasters sound like fun? Do you love helping people make SQL Server go faster? Would you…

Extended Events Sessions: Messing Up Filters

Last Updated February 13, 2015

Kendra Little

SQL Server

Recently, I wanted to play around with the auto_stats event against a test system running SQL Server 2014. I ran through the session setup GUI and added the auto_stats event. I configured it with a filter (predicate) to only show me auto_stats event in a database named AutoStatsTest. There’s a cost to events that may fire frequently and a…

Using “OR” and “IN” with SQL Server’s Filtered Indexes

Last Updated August 22, 2018

Kendra Little

Indexing, SQL Server

You can’t do everything with filtered indexes in SQL Server. For instance, you can’t create the following index: CREATE INDEX IX_Votes_filter ON dbo.Votes (PostId) WHERE (VoteTypeId = 1 OR VoteTypeId = 2); GO 123 CREATE INDEX IX_Votes_filter ON dbo.Votes (PostId) WHERE (VoteTypeId = 1 OR VoteTypeId = 2);GO If you try, you’ll get the error message:…

Measuring Performance Can Slow SQL Server Down

Last Updated January 22, 2015

Kendra Little

SQL Server

I’ve written a terrible query. It might be the worst query in the world. Sure, there are other queries that may be slower, but this query is terrible and elegantly short. The query is gloriously bad for a two reasons: It’s incredibly inefficient in the way it uses a scalar function Observing the query’s performance can make…

Dropping an Offline Database in SQL Server

Last Updated January 22, 2015

Kendra Little

SQL Server

When you drop a database in SQL Server, the files are normally removed from the file system right away. POOF! Hope you had a backup if you ran DROP DATABASE against the wrong instance. However, things are a little different if you take the database offline before you drop it. Consider the following code: Transact-SQL…

Posts by Kendra Little

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