There’s a Bug in sys.dm_exec_query_plan_stats.
When you turn on last actual plans in SQL Server 2019 and newer:
[crayon-6a364dbbd6720310015189/]
Category: SQL Server
SQL Server 2016 Support Ends in 90 Days.
On July 14, 2026, Microsoft's extended support ends for SQL Server 2016.
They will offer Extended Security Updates that you can buy for 3 more years, either through Azure or your licensing partner. The price is stunning:
My Wish List for SQL Server Performance Features
There are a lot of shopping days left before Christmas, and even more before the next version of SQL Server ships, so might as well get my wish list over to Santa now so the elves can start working on ignoring them.
My work focuses on performance tuning, so that's what my wish list focuses on, too. They really are wishes, like I-want-a-pony, because I know I'm discussing some stuff that's easy to describe, but really challenging to implement.
SQL Server 2025 CU1 is Off to a Rough Start
SQL Server 2025 Cumulative Update 1 came out last week, and I was kinda confused by the release notes. They described a couple dozen fixed issues, and the list seemed really short for a CU1. However, the more I dug into it, the weirder things got. For example, there were several new DMVs added -…
Known Issues So Far in SQL Server 2025
Whenever a brand spankin' new version of any software comes out, there are bugs, and SQL Server is no exception. This has led to a mentality where folks don't wanna install a new version of SQL Server until the first couple of Cumulative Updates come out, hopefully fixing the first big round of bugs.
So... are there bugs this time around?
SQL Server 2025 Is Out, and Standard Goes Up to 256GB RAM, 32 Cores!
Today marks the official birthday of Microsoft SQL Server 2025. Here's where to download the evaluation version. Here are the top things you wanna consider as you talk to your managers, developers, and end users. The feature differences between 2025 Enterprise and Standard have been revealed, and the news for Standard Edition folks is spectacular:…
I Wish SQL Server Had These Four Innovations.
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…
How to Query JSON Data Quickly in SQL Server, Part 2: SQL Server 2025
SQL Server 2025 and .NET 10 bring several new improvements to storing JSON natively in the database and querying it quickly. On the SQL Server 2025 side, the two big ones are the new native JSON indexes and the new JSON_CONTAINS function. Let's see their improvements in action. On the .NET 10 side, EF 10…
SQL Server 2025 Makes Memory Troubleshooting Easier.
SQL Server 2025 introduces a new sys.dm_os_memory_health_history view to make it easier for meatbags like you and robots like Copilot to know if the SQL Server has been under memory pressure recently.
To show how it works, let's run a bunch of simultaneous high-memory-grant queries in the Stack Overflow database:
[Video] Office Hours in Icy Strait Point, Alaska
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 around with your clicker:
SQL Server 2025 RC0 Is Out with New Preview Features Settings
The release of SQL Server 2025 keeps inching closer. Release Candidate 0 is out now, and here are the release notes. If you're planning on replacing your SQL Server 2016 instances (which go out of support next July) with 2025, now would be a good time to start doing functionality testing. As a reminder, here's my post on how to go live on a new SQL Server version.
What’s New (And Undocumented) in SQL Server 2025 CTP 2.1
As the SQL Server 2025 previews continue to come out, Microsoft is making changes that they're not telling you about. Sometimes these changes never actually go into the final production version, other times they're held exclusively for the cloud, but sometimes - just sometimes - we get a sneak peek of something Microsoft hasn't announced…
SQL Server Reporting Services is Dead. Is SSIS Next?
It's official: SQL Server 2022 was the last release for SSRS.
At SQLBits this week, Microsoft announced that SQL Server 2025 won't include SSRS.
How SQL Server 2025’s Optional Parameter Plan Optimization Works
About three years ago, SQL Server 2022 introduced Parameter-Sensitive Plan Optimization (PSPO). At the time, I explained that it didn't work particularly well, and went so far as to pronounce PSPO in a rather unflattering way. I wouldn't suggest that anyone turn it off - it's fine, just fine - but it isn't powerful enough, and poses serious challenges for monitoring and plan cache analysis.
New Objects in SQL Server 2025 – And Thousands of New Undocumented Feature Flags!
The first public preview of SQL Server 2025 dropped yesterday, and here's what's new under the hood as compared to today's SQL Server 2022 CU19. Forgive me - this is quite a lengthy post, and it's mostly a data dump. There are new stored procedures, extended stored procs, views, feature switches, new columns in existing tables, messages, and more.
T-SQL & Development
T-SQL Has Regex in SQL Server 2025. Don’t Get Too Excited.
Regular expressions are a way of doing complex string searches. They can be really useful, but they have a reputation: they're hard to write, hard to read, and they're even harder to troubleshoot. Once you master 'em, though, they come in handy for very specific situations.
This post isn't about their complexity, though. This post is about Azure SQL DB & SQL Server 2025's regex performance.
What’s Coming in SQL Server 2025, DMV Edition
As we approach the first public releases of SQL Server 2025, it's fun to start spelunking through things Azure SQL DB has today - announced and unannounced - that aren't yet present in the boxed product version of SQL Server. Microsoft staff used to say that Azure SQL DB is "the next version" of the…
Finding Out What Changed in a Cumulative Update
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 themselves.
I’m coming to Jacksonville and Raleigh for SQL Saturday! Register now.
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
The 8 Worst Things Microsoft Ever Did to SQL Server
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…
