This entire blog post is driven by the #1 feature in this list. I think about the #1 feature a lot, like at least once a week. I think about it so much that I had to stop and think about what other similar great things Microsoft has done over the years, and be thankful for what a nice platform this is to work with. Let's go through 6 of my favorite Microsoft decisions.
One of my favorite uses for AI is to ask it to explain a concept using wildly unusual points of view.
Well, we're going to be seeing various family members and friends for the holidays, and we'll get endless questions of, "So, what is it that you do?" I figured ChatGPT would be the perfect source for answers.
Your app is happily humming along on SQL Server Standard Edition. Things are quiet - too quiet. You're wondering what you're missing, and whether you should be on SQL Server Enterprise Edition. Here are 3 warning signs to watch out for.
Developers say, "Any downtime is unacceptable."
Today at Microsoft Ignite, Microsoft announced SQL Server 2025. The biggest new features focus on AI and bringing the latest Azure SQL DB features down to your own servers. Here are the top features: Call AI services like ChatGPT directly from T-SQL - using T-SQL commands and sp_invoke_external_rest_endpoint Vector searches, a native vector data type,…
I'm in Seattle this week for the PASS Data Community Summit. Before the pre-conference sessions started, I sat down to take your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqKEvcJ3hlU
I don't get it. I've given this feature one chance after another, and every time, it takes a smoke break rather than showing up for work.
The latest instance involved the recent Query Exercise where you were challenged to fix a computed column's performance. In the comments, some folks noted that performance of the query was actually great on old compat levels, like SQL Server 2008, and that it only sucked on newer compat levels like 2016 and later.
Every year, Stack Overflow runs a developer survey about technology, work, community, and more. This year's results include 65,437 responses from developers around the world. The results are biased towards the kinds of developers who use Stack Overflow - 76% of the respondents reported that they have a Stack Overflow account. I would guess that…
Historically, Microsoft publicly announces the next version of SQL Server about a year before it ships. For example:
November 2, 2021, Microsoft announced the private preview of SQL Server 2022.
About 6 months later, on May 24, 2022, they announced the public preview.
About 12 months after the private preview announcement, on November 16, 2022, SQL Server 2022 was generally available.
The short story: SQL Server 2019 continues its utter domination of the Microsoft data platform landscape this quarter.
The long story: ever wonder how fast people are adopting new versions of SQL Server, or what’s “normal” out there for SQL Server adoption rates? Let’s find out in the winter 2023 version of our SQL ConstantCare® population report.
At least once a month, a client has The Postgres Conversation™ with me.
It happens at the end of a consulting engagement, after we've talked about the work that the team needs to do in order to meet their performance objectives.
Sometimes when people post questions at https://pollgab.com/room/brento, the answer is just a link, nothing more, nothing less. It doesn't make sense for me to rehash something that's been covered really well online, and I want to link 'em to the best resource possible. Petr: Huge slowdown of basic queries when using a partitioned table (Partition_Key…
Hey, you! You look smart. Here are highly-upvoted questions that fellow readers submitted at https://pollgab.com/room/brento that I don't have answers for. If you'd like to jump into the comments, you can reference questions by number with your answers. Time to show off your brains! Kansas4444 asks: Hi Brent, do you have any advice on calculating…
While on a road trip, Richie stopped by a used bookstore (or would that be used book store?) and made an amusing observation about the relative value of different SQL Server books. I just had to go look at Amazon for some research.
I'm listing prices below, but keep in mind that when you click, the prices and inventory may have changed.
<sigh> Okay, so, the last few Cumulative Updates have had known issues around broken remote queries using the generic ODBC connector and errors with contained availability groups, but I couldn't really care less about those. If you use those features, I give you bombastic side eye anyway.
However, in the last few days, two more known issues have surfaced.
Six months ago today, Microsoft announced that SQL Server 2022 was ready.
Except it wasn't.
It's May 2023, and believe it or not, some of the flagship features in Microsoft's latest version still aren't ready for prime time yet. Good news, though: there are a few things that genuinely make your life easier with minimal work required on your part.
Forget rewriting code, though - in this session, I'll show what to turn on to determine:
You're planning to migrate to a new version of SQL Server, and you want your databases to be faster after the migration. This is NOT a blog post about how to migrate - that's the same as it's been for a long time. Go build the new 2025 servers, and use log shipping or database…
I'm running into something that I'm having a hard time believing.
A client was hitting CPU issues during load testing, and they swore all things were equal between their SQL Server 2016 and 2019 environments. The 2019 box was having CPU pressure issues that didn't show up on the 2016 box. I've played this game before, and every time, the root cause has been different configurations between the two servers.
Twenty years ago this month (next Wednesday to be exact), sysadmins and database administrators started noticing extremely high network traffic related to problems with their SQL Servers.
The SQL Slammer worm was infecting Microsoft SQL Servers.
To follow along, you'll need:
An Apple Mac with an Apple Silicon processor (M1, M2, etc - not an Intel or AMD CPU)
Azure Data Studio
Docker Desktop 4.25 or newer
An Internet connection
