Silent Demo: The Plan Cache
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Shhh, and pay close attention. In 76 seconds, I’ll teach you something intriguing about the way SQL Server caches execution plans:
Read MoreFirst Responder Kit
First Responder Kit Update: sp_BlitzCache Catches Cursors, Scalar Functions, and More
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…
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Updated First Responder Kit: sp_Blitz markdown output, sp_BlitzIndex statistics checks
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…
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What To Do If sp_BlitzFirst Warns About High Compilations
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…
Read MoreLearn to Use sp_Blitz, sp_BlitzCache, sp_BlitzFirst, and sp_BlitzIndex with These Tutorial Videos
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_BlitzCache to Find Slow Queries How to Use…
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First Responder Kit 2016-09: sp_Blitz, sp_BlitzCache, sp_BlitzIndex Improvements
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…
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Query Tuning Week: How to Run sp_BlitzCache on a Single Query
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…
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Memory Grants Added to sp_BlitzCache and sp_BlitzFirst
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…
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Where Do Missing Index Requests Come From?
Be honest, here You don’t care about most indexing problems. Duplicates, Borderline Duplicates, Unused, Wide, Non-aligned Partitions… All you’re here for are the Missing Indexes. Wham, bam, your query finishes in less than a second, ma’am. Take this quarter, go downtown and have a rat gnaw that thing off your face. And I get it.…
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How to Contribute Code to the SQL Server First Responder Kit (Github)
So you’d like to fix a bug or contribute code to the First Responder Kit, but you’re new to Github. Let’s get started. 1. Open a new issue on Github. Go to the Github issues list for this repo, and start a new issue. Here’s the example that I’m going to work on today: Example…
Read MoreNew SQL Server First Responder Kit for 2016-07
SQL Server 2012 SP3, 2014 SP2, and 2016 users are going to find a lot of stuff to love in here. The new per-query memory grants fields in the plan cache are exposed in sp_BlitzCache, and sp_BlitzFirst also shows memory grants for live running queries in @ExpertMode = 1. Here’s the details: sp_BlitzCache v3.1: Show…
Read MoreBreaking News: 2016 Query Store cleanup doesn’t work on Standard or Express Editions
If you’re using SQL Server 2016’s awesome new feature, Query Store, there’s a new bug with automatic cleanup. Books Online explains: Automatic data cleanup fails on editions other than Enterprise and Developer. Consequently, space used by the Query Store will grow over time until configured limit is reached, if data is not purged manually. If…
Read MoreFirst Responder Kit Updated, and sp_AskBrent is now sp_BlitzFirst
We’ve released the first fully open source version of our SQL Server First Responder Kit: sp_Blitz, sp_BlitzCache, sp_BlitzIndex, sp_BlitzRS, sp_BlitzTrace, and the newest member: the newly renamed sp_BlitzFirst. I wanted to rename sp_BlitzFirst because as an open source project, it’s going to have more than just my own answers as to why your SQL Server…
Read MoreWe’re Renaming sp_BlitzFirst. What Should the New Name Be?
Yesterday we announced that we’re open sourcing our free SQL Server scripts, and one of those is sp_BlitzFirst. I originally named it that because it had a funny magic-8-ball type feature: if you pass in a question as a parameter, it gives you an answer like “Outlook not so good, Access even worse.” Cute, but now…
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sp_Blitz v51: @IgnorePrioritiesAbove = 50 gets you a daily briefing
You have a monitoring tool, but you’ve set up an email rule to dump all the alerts into a folder. You’re not particularly proud of that, but it is what it is. You’re just tired of the spam. Group query in the registered servers list But when you get in in the morning, you want…
Read MoreAnnouncing sp_BlitzIndex® v3.0, sp_Blitz® v48, More
Lots of fun stuff out this week: sp_BlitzIndex® v3.0 adds prioritized, streamlined results. We see so many index design disasters, and we know you have a limited amount of time. Doug Lane put a ton of work into focusing the output on the most important issues, things that are easy-to-fix and will have an immediate performance improvement, and…
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Using sp_BlitzCache™ Advanced Features
sp_BlitzCache is a fantastic tool for finding the worst queries in your SQL Server. Did you know that it has a number of advanced options available to you? These options can help you dig into your worst queries, slice and dice the data, and get back exactly what you need, without wading through hundreds of results.…
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Why You Shouldn’t Use SQL Server’s Activity Monitor
I love free tools. I also love analyzing SQL Server’s wait statistics. But I’m not a fan of Activity Monitor, a free tool in SQL Server Management studio, which helps you look at wait stats. Activity Monitor just doesn’t give you the whole truth. I fired up a workload with HammerDB against a test SQL Server 2014 instance.…
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New sp_Blitz® v35 Checks for Unsupported and Dangerous SQL Server Builds
News broke recently of a dangerous data loss bug in SQL Server 2012 and 2014, and Aaron Bertrand explained which patch levels are affected. It’s kinda tricky, and I’m afraid most people aren’t even going to know about the bug – let alone whether or not they’re on a bad version. I added build number checking into…
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Introducing sp_BlitzCache®
Finding the worst queries in SQL Server is easy, right? You just query one of the dm_exec_* DMVs, bring in the SQL text and the execution plan, and then you spend hours looking at execution plans trying to figure out what’s wrong in the query, much less how to fix it. All that’s changing – we’re introducing sp_BlitzCache®.…
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