SQL Server

I love SQL Server, and I’m excited for the release of 2025. I think the query processing keeps getting better, which means your apps are gonna go faster, with less code changes. The AI stuff is a little fluffy, and I don’t think time will be kind to it, but I totally understand why Microsoft…

For the last couple of months, I’ve been trying to get my on-location Office Hours episodes filmed with an Insta360 so you can pan the camera around to see the sights. Folks, I’ve finally pulled it off! If you watch the video on YouTube (rather than here on the blog), you can move the camera…

Back in May 2001 when I first registered BrentOzar.com, I never would have dreamed how things would go. I couldn’t have imagined that decades later, the site would be home to: Over 3,500 blog posts with over 10,000 comments About 1,000 pages of content A mailing list with about 50,000 active subscribers A First Responder…

Over the last several years, Microsoft has been putting less and less effort into Cumulative Update documentation. We used to get full-blown knowledge base articles about fixes, but these days, we get a collection of footnotes with deceiving hyperlinks that look like they’re going to lead to more information – but they simply lead back to…

I’m coming to Jacksonville, FL on May 2-3 and Raleigh, NC on May 16-17 for SQL Saturdays! In each city, I’m teaching a one-day pre-conference workshop on Friday. Jacksonville Pre-Conference Workshop: Mastering Query Tuning You’ve been working with SQL Server for a few years, and you’re comfortable writing queries and reading execution plans. In this…

Last week I wrote about the 6 best things Microsoft ever did to SQL Server, but now we gotta pull up a chair and discuss the stinkers. To be fair, I excluded anything that’s basically ANSI standard. I’m sorry that you don’t like functions and cursors, but the reality is that Microsoft adds that stuff…

This entire blog post is driven by the #1 feature in this list. I think about the #1 feature a lot, like at least once a week. I think about it so much that I had to stop and think about what other similar great things Microsoft has done over the years, and be thankful for…

One of my favorite uses for AI is to ask it to explain a concept using wildly unusual points of view. Well, we’re going to be seeing various family members and friends for the holidays, and we’ll get endless questions of, “So, what is it that you do?” I figured ChatGPT would be the perfect…

Your app is happily humming along on SQL Server Standard Edition. Things are quiet – too quiet. You’re wondering what you’re missing, and whether you should be on SQL Server Enterprise Edition. Here are 3 warning signs to watch out for. Developers say, “Any downtime is unacceptable.” Sure, everybody loves to say that before they…