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Update 2021-05-24: the contest is over, and the winners are here. Let’s have a few laughs this week. In the comments, write a caption for this: Prizes: My favorite caption overall wins a Live Class Season Pass Runners-up get both a Recorded Class Season Pass: Mastering Classes and Recorded Class Season Pass: Fundamentals Classes Honorable…

Query Store is the Flight Data Recorder. It’s Obvious What We Need Next.

Last Updated February 9, 2021

When Microsoft brought out Query Store, they wrote: Similar to an airplane’s flight data recorder, Query Store collects and presents detailed historic information about all queries, greatly simplifying performance forensics by reducing the time to diagnose and resolve issues. I have a straight face under here, for real It certainly works, making it easier for…

What SQL Server Feature Do You Wish Would Go Away?

Last Updated January 21, 2021

I asked a two-part question on Twitter: if you could only remove one feature from SQL, why would it be cursors? If you could only remove one feature from SQL, why would it be cursors? — Brent Ozar (@BrentO) January 20, 2021 The responses were great: Auto-shrink does not agree — Warner Chaves (@warchav) January…

New Music Friday: Killa DBA’s New Release Just Dropped

Last Updated October 23, 2020

Familiar readers will know that I don’t actually do New Music Friday here very often. Okay, ever. I don’t do it ever. Because frankly, nobody writes music about us. Nobody except Homer McEwen, aka Killa DBA (YouTube – @KillaDBA). You may remember him from The SQL Server 2017 Song, and if not, you should go…

Poor Man’s Resource Governor: Database-Scoped Configurations

Last Updated September 26, 2020

Bad Idea Jeans

Let’s say you had report queries that were going wildly parallel, and you wanted to put a stop to it, but you couldn’t afford SQL Server Enterprise Edition. You could do is create databases with different MAXDOP settings: CREATE DATABASE [MAXDOP4] GO USE [MAXDOP4] GO ALTER DATABASE SCOPED CONFIGURATION SET MAXDOP = 4; GO CREATE…

Bad Idea Jeans: Building Big Query Plans

Last Updated June 23, 2020

Bad Idea Jeans

When you build a monitoring tool that sends advice via email, you discover two things: Some people have really, really big execution plans Email servers have reasonable limits on file attachment sizes Add those two things together, and Richie found himself working on a new feature for SQL ConstantCare® that would automatically break up advice…

What Does This Button Do? Wrong Answers Only.

Last Updated March 27, 2020

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One of my favorite memes is Wrong Answers Only, where you show something and people have to answer incorrectly, like this and this and this. So now it’s your turn: you’re in SSMS, you right-click on a database, and go into Tasks: What does that bottom right task do? Wrong answers only.

So, uh, you can, like, draw me in SSMS.

Last Updated November 16, 2019

Adrian Sullivan and Michael J. Swart have way too much time on their hands, because Adrian just posted this T-SQL gist, which draws … me: It uses the spatial results feature in SSMS. My mind is blown. I’m totally going to use that in a demo. Thanks, Adrian! I’m already envisioning all kinds of crazy…

Brace Yourself for These 9 Database Horror Stories

Last Updated June 22, 2019

Last week, I asked for your worst database horror stories. Hoowee, did you deliver. Make yourself a nice cup of cocoa, gather around the campfire, and listen up for these terrible tales. Illustrations courtesy of Swear Trek (not safe for work.) The mistake we’ve all made Russ did an update without a where clause, but…

Contest: What’s Your Worst Database Horror Story?

Last Updated March 25, 2020

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At SQL Intersection in Orlando last week, a few of us were sitting around a table talking shop. One thing led to another, and as so often happens at conferences, we started talking about our worst scars from database misfortunes. That got me thinking – I could kinda bring that fun experience to y’all here…

Pop Quiz: SQL 2000 Bug or SQL 2017 Bug?

Last Updated April 28, 2019

2002: Me and Bailey, mom’s Great Dane When I was thinking about this site’s 17th birthday, I started wondering: back in 2002, what bug might I have been working with in SQL Server? I started reading back to the list of bugs fixed in SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 1, and it hit me…these bugs…

One Hundred Percent CPU

Last Updated September 12, 2018

Raise Your Hand If You’ve ever wanted to play a prank on your co-workers, but just didn’t have a any ideas that didn’t involve exploding Hot Pockets. Now you have something even less safe than molten cheese squirts! A stored procedure that pushes CPUs to 100%. All of’em. Transact-SQL CREATE OR ALTER PROCEDURE dbo._keep_it_100 AS…

300 Blogs And Running

Last Updated June 9, 2018

Why Bother Blogging? I blog primarily because there’s a Certain Kind of Person that irks me to no end. The kind of person who: Withholds information (you wouldn’t understand anyway) Mocks people for not knowing what they know (oh, you silly things) Uses the people they mock to validate their necessity (you’d be lost without…

Stupid T-SQL Tricks

Last Updated May 30, 2018

Bad Idea Jeans, T-SQL

Presented without comment: Transact-SQL CREATE TABLE dbo.[FROM] ([SELECT] INT, [WHERE] INT, [LIKE] INT); GO SELECT [SELECT] FROM [FROM] WHERE [WHERE] LIKE [LIKE]; GO 1234 CREATE TABLE dbo.[FROM] ([SELECT] INT, [WHERE] INT, [LIKE] INT);GOSELECT [SELECT] FROM [FROM] WHERE [WHERE] LIKE [LIKE];GO Next up, can you break up a query with spaces? Yep: Transact-SQL SELECT * FROM…

Stuff People Tell Me Is The Default

Last Updated May 21, 2018

Playing The Odds Assuming that life carries on as usual for a couple more weeks, I’ll have been a consultant here for three years. In that time, I’ve had some really interesting conversations with people, mostly about why things are the way they are on their servers. My favorite response is “isn’t that the default?”,…

Today’s Press Conference Transcript: I’m Running for Database Administrator General

Last Updated May 13, 2018

Thanks for joining me today – I know you reporters are all really busy, and I appreciate you taking the time to attend this press conference. I’d like to start off by formally announcing my candidacy for Database Administrator General. There’s a lot of great candidates out there, but I think it’s time for me…

How To Break SQL Server’s XML Data Collection

Last Updated April 5, 2018

Oh, XML When we first met, it was about 2011. I had to load files full of you into a table. It wasn’t so bad. Seriously. You were well-formed, and didn’t change from file to file. Even using SQL Server 2005, I could take you. Later on, we got really close when I awkwardly started…

[Video] Office Hours 2018/04/01 with guest host Nigel Foulkes-Nock

Last Updated April 1, 2018

Today’s Office Hours is brought to you by NigelDBA.com: Nicely done, @nigelDBA. Nicely done.

Let’s Give The Optimizer A Name

Last Updated February 17, 2018