SQL Server

When Should You Hire a Consultant for Amazon RDS?

Powered By Somebody Else’s Database on Somebody Else’s Computer You’re hosting your SQL Server databases in Amazon RDS, and performance has been getting slower over time. You’re not sure if it’s storage IOPs, instance size, SQL Server configuration, queries, or indexes. What’s the easiest way to find out? Ask a few questions: Are you using…
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[Video] Office Hours 2016/04/20 – Now With Transcriptions

SQL Server, Videos
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This week, Brent, Erik, Jessica, Richie, and Tara discuss database modeling tools, how to learn about database corruption, the new cardinality estimator, and the only question that will be on our certification exams. 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. What ERD Tool…
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Breaking News: Query Store in All Editions of SQL Server 2016

Bob Ward talking Query Store at SQL Intersection Onstage at SQL Intersections in Orlando this morning, Bob Ward announced that Query Store will be available in all editions of SQL Server 2016. This is awesome, because Query Store is a fantastic flight data recorder for your query execution plans. It’ll help you troubleshoot parameter sniffing…
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Stats Week: Messin’ With Statistics

SQL Server, Statistics
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If there’s one thing living in Texas has taught me It’s that people are very paranoid that you may Mess With it. Even in Austin, where the citizenry demand weirdness, they are vehemently opposed to any form of Messing, unless it results in mayonnaise-based dipping sauce. Me? I like Messing With stuff. Today we’re going…
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Stats Week: Do Query Predicates Affect Histogram Step Creation?

Auto Create Statistics is your friend It’s not perfect, but 99% of the time I’d rather have imperfect statistics than no statistics. This question struck me as interesting, because the optimizer will totally sniff parameters to compile an initial plan. If you don’t have index statistics, or system statistics already on a column in a…
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Stats Week: Statistics Terminology Cheatsheet

SQL Server
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These things used to confuse me so much Despite having worked at a Market Research company for a while, I know nothing about statistics, other than that project managers have all sorts of disagreeably subjective phrases for describing them. Vast majority, convincing plurality, dwindling minority, et al. Less talky, more picture. When I started getting…
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Looking for a New Challenge? kCura is Hiring a DBA.

SQL Server
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I’m a big kCura Relativity fan – it’s an application that really pushes SQL Server hard, written by people who are a ton of fun to work with. If you’re looking for a challenge in a really cool environment, check out what they’re looking for: A Production Database Administrator with a deep demonstrated knowledge of MS…
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Old and Busted: DBCC Commands in 2016

SQL Server
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I hate DBCC Commands Not what they do, just that the syntax isn’t consistent (do I need quotes around this string or not?), the results are a distraction to get into a usable table, and you need to write absurd loops to perform object-at-a-time data gathering. I’m not talking about running DBCC CHECKDB (necessarily), or…
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I’m on the RunAsRadio Podcast

SQL Server
7 Comments
Pixelated for your pleasure It’s always fun to talk to Richard Campbell about what’s going on, and this time around, it’s SQL Server 2016: Listen to me chat with Richard about what’s coming in vNext. We’re now in the second quarter of the year, and we still don’t have pricing, licensing, or edition/feature lists. Normally,…
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ISNULL vs. COALESCE: What The XML?

SQL Server
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This isn’t about performance If you’re interested in performance tests, you can get in the way back machine and read a couple posts by Adam Machanic here and here. I’m also not talking about the difference between them. There are a million articles about that. They’re obviously different, but how does SQL handle that internally?…
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Happy Fifth Birthday to Us, 50% Off for You.

SQL Server
21 Comments
Five years ago, we turned BrentOzar.com into a consulting and training company. Now look at us. (Well, maybe not too closely, we’re getting a little gray and wrinkly.) To celebrate: Video classes are now 50% off with coupon code HighFive That includes bundles, too, which brings the epic Everything Bundle down to just $449! Two of our…
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Indexes Helping Indexes

Indexing, SQL Server
20 Comments
This post isn’t going to solve any problems for you It was just something I stumbled on that struck me as funny, while working on a demo for something else. Brent didn’t believe it at first, so I thought I’d share with the class. Blog. You, Your Name Here. Hiya! So there I was, creating…
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