First Responder Kit

Every April I think about this girl I grew up with named April who smelled like Cheez-Wiz. She died tragically in a home for the blind on Taco Tuesday. Special thanks to @jeffrosenberg , @mrthomsmith , @rwhoward for contributing this month. Your complimentary oxygen is now available. The rest of you can go download the First…

sp_BlitzCache Tip: Cutting Through Heavy Dynamic SQL Use

March 17, 2017

First Responder Kit, sp_BlitzCache, T-SQL

dba, development, performance tuning, sp_BlitzCache, sql server

It keeps me up at night Out of the box, sp_BlitzCache will give you enough stuff to work on in your server’s plan cache to last a month of leap days. This is great for most people, but if you use a ton of dynamic SQL in stored procedures, it can make things difficult. What’s…

sp_DatabaseRestore: Open Source Database Restore Stored Procedure

March 7, 2017

Tara Kizer

Backup and Recovery, First Responder Kit

Welcome to the sp_DatabaseRestore documentation page. We were looking for a script that restores a database including the transaction log chain using the backup files in a folder. We also wanted it to be able to continue applying transaction log backups. In other words, we were looking for a custom Log Shipping solution. We could…

Crappy Missing Index Requests

February 21, 2017

Execution Plans, Indexing, sp_BlitzIndex

When you’re tuning queries It’s sort of a relief when the first time you get your hands on it, you get the plan and there’s a missing index request. Even if it’s not a super high-value one, something in there is crying for help. Where there’s smoke, there’s a bingo parlor. But does adding missing…

A Tourist’s Guide to the sp_Blitz Source Code, Part 1: The Big Picture

February 9, 2017

First Responder Kit, sp_Blitz

sp_blitz

sp_Blitz is our open source free SQL Server health check script. From a really high level, here’s what it does: Create #BlitzResult, a temp table to hold its output Check something on your SQL Server, and if it’s found, insert a row into #BlitzResult Check something else, and insert a row if it’s found Do that…

First Responder Kit Updates: So Many Updates, Brent Quit

January 27, 2017

dba, development, sp_blitz, sp_BlitzCache, sp_BlitzFirst, sp_blitzindex

I got 128 GB of RAM just to develop sp_BlitzCache with! Also, thanks to @RichBenner @BrentOzar and @douglane for code, and @LitKnd and @HenrikStaunPoulsen for great ideas! Grab the newly updated First Responder Kit, and here’s what’s in it: sp_Blitz Improvements #677 Finally! A bug that isn’t ours! Microsoft forget to let SE clean up…

Analyzing Temporary Stored Procedures with sp_BlitzCache

January 24, 2017

First Responder Kit, sp_BlitzCache, TempDB

All the cool kids Know that when you’re trying to figure out why a stored procedure is slow sometimes, you should use a temporary stored procedure instead of pulling the code out and running it ad hoc. We frequently point people to Erland Sommarskog’s “Slow in the Application, Fast in SSMS“, because it’s an excellent…

Things I Would Love to Put In sp_BlitzCache

December 14, 2016

Execution Plans, First Responder Kit, SQL Server

dba, development, performance tuning, sp_BlitzCache, sql server

This is my favorite script to work on Getting stuff to work sp_BlitzCache is so rewarding because XML querying is so ridiculous. I wish Mikael Eriksson would write a book already; it’d make my life a whole lot easier. Along the way, I see a lot of things that I would love to warn people…

First Responder Kit Updates: New Checks Across the Board

December 13, 2016

First Responder Kit

It’s the December to Remember Script Event, and we’ve got updates to everything. Shout out to our contributors this month: @BlitzErik, @RichBenner, @runamuk0, @SQLMonger, and @BrentOzar. Grab the newly updated First Responder Kit, and here’s what’s in it: sp_Blitz Improvements #591 – add check for 2016 Standard installed without Service Pack 1 (coded by @RichBenner) #615…

Updated First Responder Kit: sp_Blitz, sp_BlitzCache, sp_BlitzIndex

November 15, 2016

These improvements go great with cranberries. The food, not the b – actually, they go pretty well with the band, too. sp_Blitz Improvements #568 – @RichBenner added a check for the default parallelism settings sp_BlitzCache Improvements by @BlitzErik #495 – add warning for indexed views with missing stats #557 – bug fix – don’t alert…

Silent Demo: The Plan Cache

October 31, 2016

Execution Plans, sp_BlitzCache, Videos

Shhh, and pay close attention. In 76 seconds, I’ll teach you something intriguing about the way SQL Server caches execution plans:

First Responder Kit Update: sp_BlitzCache Catches Cursors, Scalar Functions, and More

October 24, 2016

First Responder Kit

Every time we take on a client for our SQL Critical Care®, the very first thing we do is run the First Responder Kit scripts: sp_Blitz to get a health check, sp_BlitzFirst to check their wait stats, sp_BlitzIndex to look at their indexes, and sp_BlitzCache to see the most resource-intensive queries. Very often, these scripts surface…

Updated First Responder Kit: sp_Blitz markdown output, sp_BlitzIndex statistics checks

October 14, 2016

In addition to lots of bug fixes and tweaks, my favorite option is: sp_Blitz @OutputType = ‘markdown’ sp_Blitz @OutputType = ‘markdown’, @CheckServerInfo = 1, @CheckUserDatabaseObjects = 1 See, recently I’ve spent a lot of time looking at Stack questions going, “Man, if I just had the output of sp_Blitz, I bet I could answer that question…

What To Do If sp_BlitzFirst Warns About High Compilations

September 27, 2016

First Responder Kit, sp_BlitzFirst, SQL Server

Compiles Aren’t The Same As Recompiles If you’re seeing high RECOMPILES, this post isn’t for you. We’ll talk about the differences between compiles and recompiles, but not how to troubleshoot recompiles. Recompiles mean one of two obvious things: You have a RECOMPILE hint at the stored procedure or statement level, or SQL found a reason…

Learn to Use sp_Blitz, sp_BlitzCache, sp_BlitzFirst, and sp_BlitzIndex with These Tutorial Videos

September 12, 2016

First Responder Kit, sp_Blitz, sp_BlitzCache, sp_BlitzFirst, sp_BlitzIndex

There have been so many improvements lately to our First Responder Kit scripts that it was time to update our tutorial videos. Each of these is about ten minutes long and shows how to use ’em: How to Use sp_Blitz for a Health Check How to Use sp_BlitzFirst in a Performance Emergency How to Use…

First Responder Kit 2016-09: sp_Blitz, sp_BlitzCache, sp_BlitzIndex Improvements

September 3, 2016

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First, thanks to 5 community volunteers for contributing code this month. In addition to lots of bug fixes, small stuff, and a new Github issue template (thanks, Konstantin Taranov) here’s the big improvements: sp_Blitz Changes @OutputServerName writes output to remote server (Haris Khan) – for years, these stored procs have had an @OutputServerName parameter just waiting to…

Query Tuning Week: How to Run sp_BlitzCache on a Single Query

August 19, 2016

Execution Plans, sp_BlitzCache

The most popular way of using sp_BlitzCache® is to just run it – by default, it shows you the top 10 most CPU-intensive queries that have run on your server recently. Plus, it shows you warnings about each of the queries – if they’re missing indexes, experiencing parameter sniffing issues, running long, running frequently, doing…

Memory Grants Added to sp_BlitzCache and sp_BlitzFirst

August 8, 2016

First Responder Kit, Memory Grants, sp_BlitzCache, sp_BlitzFirst

No Comments

Exciting New Doodads When SP3 for 2012 dropped, we were all super excited by the new query tuning-centric features that were at our disposal. Now all we had to do was get people to install SP3! Great features like this make patching an easier sell. Now with SP2 for 2014 out, a lot of those…

Where Do Missing Index Requests Come From?

July 27, 2016