SQL Server Archives - Page 3 of 41 - Brent Ozar Unlimited®

SQL Server 2022 Release Date: November 16, 2022

November 16, 2022

Microsoft released SQL Server 2022 today, November 16, 2022.

The footnotes indicate:
SQL Server 2022 free editions (Developer edition, Express edition) are available to download starting today. SQL Server 2022 paid editions (Enterprise edition, Standard edition) will be available in Volume Licensing (Enterprise Agreement, Enterprise Agreement Subscriptions) customers starting today, which represents the majority of SQL Server customers. Customers purchasing via CSP, OEM, and SPLA can begin purchasing SQL Server 2022 in January 2023.
Learn more about what's new in SQL Server 2022.

Office Hours: Read This, Watch This Edition

November 11, 2022

This week, a lot of the questions you posted at https://pollgab.com/room/brento just need pointers to resources at other places. Welcome to the Read This, Watch This series of answers.

Don't Blame Anthony: Our developers prefer writing TSQL queries directly in their .NET code rather than writing sprocs and calling them. What are the pros / cons to this approach?

Performance Tuning

PSPO: How SQL Server 2022 Tries to Fix Parameter Sniffing

August 25, 2022

Parameter sniffing is a notorious problem for Microsoft SQL Server because it tries to reuse execution plans, which doesn't work out well for widely varying parameters. Here's a primer for the basics about how it happens. SQL Server 2022 introduces a new feature called Parameter Sensitive Plan optimization. I'm not really sure why Microsoft capitalized…

What’s New in SQL Server 2022 Release Candidate 0: Undocumented Stuff

August 24, 2022

Microsoft has an official list of what's new in 2022 overall, but here I'm specifically focusing on system objects that might be interesting to script developers like you and I, dear reader. New stored procedure sp_get_table_card_est_and_avg_col_len - I assume the "card" refers to statistics and cardinality, not Hallmark. SQL Server has historically struggled with memory…

How to Install SQL Server 2022 Release Candidate 0

August 24, 2022

SQL Server 2014's end of support date is coming in less than two years: July 9, 2024. I know that sounds far-off right now, but consider the work you have to do between now and then: Pick a new version to migrate to Set up development SQL Servers for that new version Start developing &…

Pour One Out for Distributed Replay. It’s Deprecated in SQL Server 2022.

June 21, 2022

I love how Microsoft treats deprecated and discontinued features in SQL Server.

No, seriously. I give Microsoft a lot of sarcasm and lip around here, but Microsoft takes serious care to make it easy to upgrade versions without worrying about your application breaking. If you disagree, hear me out for a minute.
"Discontinued" means it's dead and removed.
The Books Online page for discontinued database engine functionality is pretty doggone short. There have only been a few things deprecated in the last several years:

Performance Tuning

SQL Server 2022 Tells You Why A Query Can’t Go Parallel.

June 7, 2022

Until 2022, when a query couldn't go parallel, all we got was a really cryptic note in the execution plan properties saying NonParallelPlanReason = CouldNotGenerateValidParallelPlan.

But starting with SQL Server 2022, even when I'm running under older compatibility levels:
[crayon-6a81a696677fb120941336/]
The execution plan gives me way more details:

The Top Feature Requests for SQL Server

May 5, 2022

If you want to get a look at where Microsoft SQL Server is heading in the future, it helps to get an idea of what users are repeatedly asking for. Here's a quick rundown of the top requests from feedback.azure.com as voted by the people who cared enough to log in and upvote 'em:

Big Data Clusters: Out of Aces

February 25, 2022

When this feature was announced in 2018, I wrote: <sarcasm> It’s like linked servers, but since they don’t perform well, we need to scale out across containers. </sarcasm> I just didn't get it, and I continued: I like that Microsoft is making a risky bet, planting a flag where nobody else is, saying, “We’re going…

The SQL Server Posts You Read the Most in 2021

December 23, 2021

I think of my blog posts in a few different categories:

Posts that will only be read at the moment they're published (like upcoming webcasts, humorous stuff, and career advice)
Posts that will show up in search history over time and continue to be evergreen (like how a feature works)
Posts that provoke discussion and interactivity (like asking you a question or running a contest)

SQL Server 2022 Slogan Contest Winners

November 16, 2021

Last week, I challenged y'all to come up with slogans for SQL Server 2022.

I have to confess that when I came up with the idea for that blog post, I thought y'all would take it seriously. I thought you'd come up with ideas that were meant to show off Microsoft's hard work.

Is Microsoft SQL Server 2022 a Big Release?

November 11, 2021

Normally when y'all post questions here on Pollgab, I let 'em pile up and I eventually do an Office Hours webcast where I talk through my answers. I check in on the list every couple of days just out of curiosity, though, and one of 'em jumped right out at me. The question, posed by…

Contest: SQL Server 2022 Needs a Slogan.

November 9, 2021

Now that Microsoft has announced that SQL Server 2022 is coming, it's time for us to talk about a shameful truth:

SQL Server doesn't sell itself.

What’s New in SQL Server 2022

November 2, 2021

Today at Microsoft Ignite, Microsoft started dropping new details on the next version of SQL Server, 2022. Here's a 13-minute video from Bob Ward explaining and demoing some of the new features:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncF-zFzBDAY&list=PLXtHYVsvn_b8PGzuyLOpvmKaMO6SQ0SI0

Get Ready: SQL Server 2016 Mainstream Support Ends in One Week.

July 6, 2021

Who am I kidding? You're not really going to get ready, but let's talk about this anyway.

SQL Server 2016 mainstream support ends Tuesday, July 13, 2021.

Performance Tuning

What’s the Buggiest Feature in SQL Server?

May 6, 2021

Not the one you like the least, or the one that requires the most work.

What's the one that you can't use because it's just flat out busted?

If You Could Only Say One Thing About Writing Good Queries…

May 4, 2021

If you could give just one piece of advice about writing good queries, what would it be?

I asked Twitter yesterday because I wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything in a new training course I'm working on, and the replies were fantastic. Here were some of my favorites:

Your Top 10 Ideas for SQL Server

April 13, 2021

You've submitted thousands of bug reports and feature requests at feedback.azure.com, and here's what you've voted as the top 10 requests right now:

#10: MIN/MAX as non-aggregate functions. PostgreSQL and Oracle have the GREATEST/LEAST functions that work like COALESCE, allowing you to pass in a list of values and get the top or lowest. Sounds nifty.

Production DBA

Where I See Databases Going in the Next 10 Years

March 18, 2021

This month, to mark the 20th anniversary of BrentOzar.com, I’m stepping back and looking at the big picture rather than blogging about database problems & solutions like I usually do.

I'm going to generalize a little by decade here to keep things simple.

It’s Been Decades. Why Don’t Databases Manage Themselves Yet?

March 17, 2021

This month, to mark the 20th anniversary of BrentOzar.com, I'm stepping back and looking at the big picture rather than blogging about database problems & solutions like I usually do.

When I started working with databases, we had to: