This week, Brent, Erik, Tara, and Richie discuss setting up an archive process, CTEs vs temp tables, deadlocks, alternatives to replication, Erik and Brent’s pre-con for this year’s PASS Summit, and more. Here’s the video on YouTube: You can register to attend next week’s Office Hours, or subscribe to our podcast to listen on the go. If…
Facemaking You know when you think you know something, and the obviousness of it makes you all the more confident that you know it? That’s usually the first sign that there’s a giant gotcha waiting for you. And that’s what happened to me over the weekend. The setup I answered a question. And after I…
This week, Brent, Erik, and Richie discuss running SQL Server 2017 CTP on Linux, receive side scaling on servers and VMware, query tuning, nested roles vs. assigning roles to users, hierarchical data type, apps and scripts for automating restores, and learning Azure and AWS. The audio’s kinda rough this week because Brent & Erik were…
Because I always forget stuff like this I have a confession to make, dear readers: I am a horrible VM admin. I’m also not great at networking. When I go to set up a VM to do something like install SQL vNext, I want to be able to talk to it. Why bother? Well, SSMS…
Before you get too excited This isn’t a dive into any of the new automated tuning features of SQL Server 2017. I’m interested in them because Microsoft thinks they can put us out of business with them, but… Fat chance. See, a lot of the automated performance tuning features assume you EVER HAD GOOD PERFORMANCE…
This week, Brent and Richie discuss sp_Blitz Backups, change history tracking, exams and certifications, using Azure for DR-only, which version of SQL server to use for a new DB, adding additional data files, load balancing, trace flag 2371, dealing with reporting services, and much more. Here’s the video on YouTube: You can register to attend next week’s…
This week, Brent, Erik, and Richie discuss disabling telemetry in SQL Server 2016, proper place for log files, Availability Groups, measuring data returned from a single query, whether CHECKDB should be done on tempdb, limiting tempdb usage for each session, transferring large amounts of data from on-prem to the cloud, and Iron Chef spoilers. Here’s…
This week, Erik, Tara, and Richie discuss enforcing password expiration for SA logins, keeping things in sync between servers, development/prototyping missions of on-premise vs. cloud, ways of backing up databases, and more. Here’s the video on YouTube: You can register to attend next week’s Office Hours, or subscribe to our podcast to listen on the go. If…
I love Query Plans No seriously, I love digging into query plans. Even writing XQuery to dig into them in sp_BlitzCache. I was both honored and horrified to take over development of it from Jeremiah. It’s a beast, but it’s my kind of beast. At around 4500 lines of code, when you want to make…
I think I’ve mentioned that the most fun part of new features is testing them with old ideas to see how they react. It occurred to me that if Adaptive Joins didn’t work with APPLY, I might cry. So, here goes nothin’! Cross Simple Cross Apply…ies can use Adaptive Joins, though at first glance there’s…
I know, I know Here we are in 2017, which means we’re about two years away from the next Ska revival effort, if my watch is correct. I hope it isn’t, but since Brent sent it to me with a note that says “please stop blogging” and it starts shocking me every time I open…
But is it faster? Now, I know. There are very few “always” things out there in SQL Server. This is also true for functions. A lot of the time — I might even say most of the time, inline table valued functions are going to be faster that scalar and multi statement table valued functions….
What I don’t want you to take away from this Is that I want you to start using Multi Statement Table Valued Functions all over the place. There are still problems with them. Backed by table variables Lots of hidden I/O cost Number of executions may surprise you One important current limitation (May-ish of 2017)…
This week, Tara and Richie discuss increasing the size of tempdb, splitting database across several files, tracking DML changes to a table, upgrading different versions of service packs, recommendations for improving T-SQL skills, trace flags, replication, Always On Availability Groups, compatibility level of databases, and more… Here’s the video on YouTube: You can register to…
Hot Diggety! After reading an excellent tip by Dmitry Pilugin about the new hint for forcing a parallel plan in SQL Server 2017, I figured I’d test it out on SQL Server 2016’s latest CU to see if it had been back ported yet. Good news! It has. Obviously. That’s the title of the blog…
Warm fuzzies I think this is how my mom would have felt if I went to college. You see, once you stop cargo culting around index fragmentation, and disk queue length, you start to realize which things are actually important to query performance. Things like statistics, and cardinality estimation. And, sure, having the right indexes…
This week, Brent, Tara, and Richie discuss choosing batch sizes, SQL 2017 on Linux, how much memory to leave on the OS for the SQL server, parameter sniffing, allocation unit size of SQL Server, triggers, X-Files, aliens and much more! Here’s the video on YouTube: You can register to attend next week’s Office Hours, or subscribe to…
There’s a famous saying Non-SARGable predicates don’t get missing index requests. And that’s true! But can they also stifle my favorite thing to happen to SQL Server since, well, last week? You betcha!© One Sided I’m going to paste in some queries, each with something non-SARGable. There are two tables involved: Users and Posts. Only…
With new features I really love kicking the tires to see how they work with existing features, and if they fix existing performance troubleshooting scenarios. One issue that I see frequently is with local variables. I’m not going to get into Cardinality Estimator math here, we’re just going to look at Adaptive Join plan choice…
I don’t like it unless it’s brand new When new features drop, not everyone has time to jump on top of them and start looking at stuff. That’s what consultants with nothing better to do are for. I’ve been excited about this feature since talking to The Honorable Joseph Q. Sack, Esq. about it at…
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