Processes and Practices

The Ebb and Flow of AI

Last Updated December 23, 2024

It’s the end of the year. Everybody’s coasting and looking back. Let’s kick our heels up, get comfortable, and talk big picture industry stuff. You and me, our weirdo jobs involve: Databases – which is already unusual, and most people you run into on the street have never heard of it, even though it touches…

What’s In Your Development Database? The Answer: Production Data.

Last Updated October 14, 2024

Brent Ozar

Processes and Practices

Are your developers working with live production data, completely made-up synthetic data, or something in between? I posted a poll here on the blog and on a few of my social media feeds, and here were the results: Note that the numbers can add up to more than 100% because folks could mark multiple choices…

Poll: What’s In Your Development Database?

Last Updated October 14, 2024

Brent Ozar

Processes and Practices

When your developers work on new queries or testing complaints about existing queries, what database are they working on? I put together an anonymous one-question poll that only takes a few seconds to respond. Let me know! I’ll follow up with a blog post about the responses.

About Half Of You Don’t Have Your Databases Under Control.

Last Updated August 25, 2024

Brent Ozar

Processes and Practices

I ran a poll over on LinkedIn to find out if people have 100% of their databases under some kind of source control or version control. I broke the answers up into two sets, developers and non-developers, because I had a hunch that the developers’ answers would be very different than the rest, and indeed…

There’s a 6-Month Statute of Limitations on “The Last Person.”

Last Updated May 23, 2024

Brent Ozar

Processes and Practices

“The last person must have set it up that way.” “The last person wrote that code.” “The last person just didn’t configure it right.” You can use that excuse for 6 months. For six months, you’re allowed to get up to speed on the company’s politics, the intricacies of the app, and the responsibilities of…

What Was the Worst Database Decision You Ever Made?

Last Updated June 16, 2020

Brent Ozar

Processes and Practices

101

I’m not talking about “oops” mistakes. I’m talking about things you decided to do on purpose, and then deeply regretted later. Me personally, my biggest database regret was that time almost twenty years ago when I ran a Profiler trace from my desktop computer. My very slow desktop computer. Which was connected to production over…

Performance Tuning Means 3 Things

Last Updated January 8, 2020

Brent Ozar

Processes and Practices

Managing what requests are made Managing the efficiency of each request Managing the hardware capacity available to satisfy requests And that’s it. In the grand scheme of things, those are the only 3 knobs you get. Oh sure, from the outside, performance tuning looks more complicated than that, but at the end of the day,…

What was the first SQL Server concept that stumped you?

Last Updated February 25, 2019

Brent Ozar

Processes and Practices

What’s the first thing you remember struggling with on SQL Server? Your first memory of, “Dang, I just can’t figure this out,” and then you had a Eureka moment later when it was so much more clear?” I asked folks on Twitter, and the answers were great, so I had to round ’em up here…

Where do I file bugs and feature requests for Microsoft Data Platform products?

Last Updated March 17, 2022

Brent Ozar

Processes and Practices

It’s not just you: it’s hard for all of us to figure out where to go when we find a bug or want to add a feature. Here’s a quick rundown: Azure Data Studio – open an issue in the Github repo. While you open an issue, Github helps by searching the existing issues as you’re…

10 Database Tasks That Sound Easy, But Aren’t

Last Updated January 31, 2019

Brent Ozar

Processes and Practices

All of these are doable with scripts, tools, and/or elbow grease, mind you – they’re just not as easy as they sound at first glance until you know about the existence of those scripts, tools, and/or free people waiting around with spare elbow grease. “Go through the log and find out who ran this query.” “Apps sometimes…

The 2018 Blog Posts You Read the Most

Last Updated December 22, 2018

Brent Ozar

Processes and Practices

Here are the 2018 blog posts you visited the most: 10. What’s New in SQL Server 2019 CTP 2.1: Faster Functions – We’re excited about a lot of stuff in 2019, but this is by far and away the winner. 9. How to Check Performance on a New SQL Server – Start with the easy…

What Were Your Game-Changing Discoveries in SQL?

Last Updated August 29, 2018

Brent Ozar

Processes and Practices

If you like learning random tips & tricks, there’s a great discussion going on in Reddit: What are your game-changing discoveries in SQL? I’m only going to give away the first one just to get you started: if you need to repeatedly comment and un-comment groups of code, do this: Transact-SQL -- /* First line.…

DBAs Need a Jump Box or Jump Server.

Last Updated August 13, 2018

Brent Ozar

Processes and Practices

Every now and then, you’re going to need to run a query that takes a long time. You’re going to want to make sure that it succeeds and that you can see the full output – even if your workstation disconnects – or maybe you want to check the status from home later. You’re going…

The First 3 Things I Look At on a SQL Server

Last Updated July 20, 2018

Brent Ozar

Processes and Practices

1. Are backups and CHECKDB being done? Before I step out on the wire, I want to know if there’s a safety net. If there’s a recoverability risk, I don’t stop here – I keep looking because the rest of the answers affect the safety net we’re going to put in place. “10TB of data…

How to Check Performance on a New SQL Server

Last Updated July 20, 2018

Brent Ozar

Processes and Practices, Production Database Administration

So you just built a brand new SQL Server, and before you go live, you wanna check to see if it’s going to perform as well as your existing server. The easy way: test your maintenance jobs I’m just asking for the chance to test it, that’s all It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3:…

[Video] PowerShell Functions and Parameters, and 50% Off Training Classes

Last Updated July 2, 2018

Brent Ozar

Processes and Practices, Videos

This week, we’re sharing some of the Instant Replay videos from our training classes. First up is Drew Furgiuele talking about PowerShell functions and parameters: That’s module 4.1 of Drew’s PowerShell for Database Administrators class. It’s 2 days of lectures and labs – Drew talks about how to do something, then gives you a challenge for…

Is Your Database Databasic?

Last Updated May 30, 2018

Erik Darling

Processes and Practices

Pumpkin Spice When I’m looking at someone’s server, it’s easy to tell the kind of care it’s been under. We’ve written a lot about servers that have gotten the wrong kind of care. You know, no backups, no checkdb, but someone managed to turn auto create stats off for every database, and enable affinity masking.…

“Full Stack” Means “Part Time” – or Why DBAs Might Wanna Learn DevOps

Last Updated March 6, 2018

Brent Ozar

Processes and Practices, Production Database Administration

Long before the “full stack developer” phrase became fashionable, us early developers did exactly that. We didn’t do any of these full time, mind you – full stack doesn’t mean full time. Here’s a grid I use to explain the work involved in building and troubleshooting database apps: Full Stack, Part Time Developers start from the…

Scripting Tip: Start With Crediting Your Source

Last Updated January 25, 2018

Brent Ozar

Processes and Practices

In the course of your career, you’re going to accumulate a folder of scripts to do various tasks. There’s one really, really important lesson you need to learn as early as possible. In a comment, include a link to the original source. If you started from someone else’s script – whether it’s open source or…

Automating Complacency

Last Updated January 5, 2018

Erik Darling

Processes and Practices, Professional Development

There’s no Latin word for Robot I’m all for automation, especially when it comes to the boring stuff. As awesome as the automation routines we have for that are, I still see people messing it up. Right now, there’s no Clippy/HAL mashup glaring at you, telling you that what you’re doing is a bad idea.…