Breaking News

Availability Groups Bug with Indexed Views

May 7, 2018

The short story: if you drop an index on an indexed view, queries on the Always On Availability Groups replicas that point to that indexed view will cause memory dumps. The long story: to reproduce – AND DO NOT DO THIS IN PRODUCTION – on the primary, create a couple of tables, an indexed view,…

New SQL Server Management Studio 17.5: It’s Classified

February 15, 2018

Brent Ozar

Breaking News, SQL Server 2017

SQL Server Management Studio 17.5 is out, and new in this release is a SQL Data Discovery & Classification feature. The idea is that it’ll scan your database, identify columns containing potentially sensitive data, and help you become compliant with regulations like PCI, HIPAA, and GDPR. Let’s see how it works on the Stack Overflow…

Breaking News: Using TDE on 2016? Doing Backups? Time to Patch.

September 21, 2017

Brent Ozar

Backup and Recovery, Breaking News

backups, compression, tde

Normally, when you use Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) to secure your database at rest, you can’t get backup compression. Encrypted data basically looks like random data, and random data doesn’t compress well. SQL Server 2016 introduced the ability to compress your TDE databases. Yay! Unfortunately, it has bugs that can leave you unable to restore…

Availability Groups: More Planned Downtime for Less Unplanned Downtime

December 7, 2016

Brent Ozar

Always On Availability Groups, Breaking News, SQL Server

alwayson, patching

I often hear companies say, “We can never ever go down, so we’d like to implement Always On Availability Groups.” Let’s say on January 1, 2016, you rolled out a new Availability Group on SQL Server 2014. It’s the most current version available at the time, and you deploy Service Pack 1, Cumulative Update 4 (released…

Breaking News: 2016 Query Store cleanup doesn’t work on Standard or Express Editions

July 4, 2016

Brent Ozar

Breaking News, First Responder Kit, Query Store (QDS), SQL Server

breaking news

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…

Breaking News, Literally: 2014 SP1 CU6 Breaks NOLOCK

May 26, 2016

Brent Ozar

Breaking News, SQL Server

breaking news

Just announced on the Microsoft Release Services blog, if you run a SELECT query with the NOLOCK hint and your query goes parallel, it can block other queries. This is a bug, and it will be fixed soon, but it is a very big deal for people who think NOLOCK means, uh, NOLOCK. More technical details: While one…

Breaking News, Literally: SQL CLR Support Removed from Azure SQL DB

April 8, 2016

Brent Ozar

Breaking News, Microsoft Azure

In the on-premises, boxed-product version of SQL Server, you can build your own CLR assemblies and call them from your T-SQL code. For years, this feature was missing from Azure SQL DB – Microsoft’s platform-as-a-service database offering – and users voted that they wanted it. In December 2014, Microsoft brought SQL CLR code to Azure SQL…

“Breaking” News: Don’t Install SQL Server 2014 SP1

April 16, 2015

Brent Ozar

Always On Availability Groups, Breaking News, SQL Server

breaking news

Yesterday, Microsoft announced availability of Service Pack 1, saying: As part of our continued commitment to software excellence for our customers, this upgrade is available to all customers with existing SQL Server 2014 deployments via the download links below. Yeah, about that commitment to software excellence. This morning, the download is gone: Notice: The SQL SSIS…

The Hard Truth About Patching SQL Server Availability Groups (Hotfixes, Cumulative Updates, and Service Packs)

February 3, 2015

Kendra Little

Always On Availability Groups, Breaking News

breaking news

Whoa, be careful with that fix As a DBA, you’re responsible for identifying necessary updates to keep your SQL Servers healthy. Your business may have some mandates about the frequency of patches, but even if they don’t, you have a duty to look out for Cumulative Updates, Service Packs, and out of band hotfixes that can prevent…

Urgent AlwaysOn Availability Groups Bug

January 22, 2015

Brent Ozar

Always On Availability Groups, Breaking News, SQL Server

always on, availability groups, breaking news, bug

If you’re using AGs, don’t apply these patches: SQL 2012 SP2 CU3 SQL 2012 SP2 CU4 SQL 2014 CU5 until you read this Microsoft post about a breaking bug. Your AG may stop synchronizing due to blocking between user queries and a system session. The fix is to disable automatic failover, restart the primary, and…