SQL Server

SQL Server 2008

Yes, literally, extended support ends tomorrow. Take this 2-question poll about the oldest and newest versions you’re running Read the poll results Register for my DBA Fundamentals webcast tomorrow about 2008, and we’ll talk about the poll and the results I’ve got a pretty good idea of what the poll results are going to look…

Poll: what’s in your development database?

Last Updated July 1, 2019

When the developers at your company are working on building an app, where do they work? Production, a development database restored from production, or a development database with made-up contents? One-question poll, and you can watch the live results. I’ll post the results and my thoughts on Friday. I know what I see regularly out…

Setting MAXDOP During SQL Server 2019 Setup

Last Updated May 23, 2019

Just a short note – in SQL Server 2019, the setup process has a new MAXDOP tab: The hyperlink about MAXDOP configuration points here. I did a few quick test installs: 4 cores gave me a MAXDOP 4 8 cores offered MAXDOP 8 12 cores offered MAXDOP 6 Historically, the 0 default meant unlimited cores.…

I’m coming to SQL Saturday Salt Lake City in August!

Last Updated May 9, 2019

I’m coming to Salt Lake City in August for SQLSaturday #887. On Friday, I’ll be teaching a one-day pre-con: Performance Tuning in 21 Demos – You’re a developer or DBA who wants to tune indexes and queries to make your application go faster. You don’t like learning by watching slides or reading white papers – you…

Are your CPU-intensive queries running slowly? Check your VM type.

Last Updated April 28, 2019

When you build a VM for SQL Server in Amazon EC2, Azure VMs, or Google Compute Engine, it’s all too easy to overlook the CPU speeds that you’re getting. Most of the time, it doesn’t really matter because SQL Server isn’t usually CPU-bottlenecked: your queries are doing table scans with 16GB RAM, starving for IO throughput.…

Finding Froid’s Limits: Testing Inlined User-Defined Functions

Last Updated June 25, 2020

Execution Plans, Parameter Sniffing, SQL Server 2019, T-SQL

This week, I’ve been writing about how SQL Server 2019’s bringing a few new features to mitigate parameter sniffing, but they’re more complex than they appear at first glance: adaptive memory grants, air_quote_actual plans, and adaptive joins. Today, let’s talk about another common cause of wildly varying durations for a single query: user-defined functions. Scalar…

1 query, 3 parameters, 3 different plans

Parameter Sniffing in SQL Server 2019: Adaptive Joins

Last Updated May 26, 2020

Adaptive Joins, Parameter Sniffing, SQL Server 2019

So far, I’ve talked about how adaptive memory grants both help and worsen parameter sniffing, and how the new air_quote_actual plans don’t accurately show what happened. But so far, I’ve been using a simple one-table query – let’s see what happens when I add a join and a supporting index: Transact-SQL CREATE INDEX IX_OwnerUserId_Includes ON…

Parameter Sniffing in SQL Server 2019: Air_Quote_Actual Plans

Last Updated May 26, 2020

Execution Plans, Memory Grants, Parameter Sniffing, SQL Server 2019

My last post talked about how parameter sniffing caused 3 problems for a query, and how SQL Server 2019 fixes one of them – kinda – with adaptive memory grants. However, the post finished up by talking about how much harder performance troubleshooting will be on 2019 because your query’s memory grant is based on…

Parameter Sniffing in SQL Server 2019: Adaptive Memory Grants

Last Updated May 26, 2020

Memory Grants, Parameter Sniffing, SQL Server 2019

This week, I’m demoing SQL Server 2019 features that I’m really excited about, and they all center around a theme we all know and love: parameter sniffing. If you haven’t seen me talk about parameter sniffing before, you’ll probably wanna start with this session from SQLDay in Poland. This week, I’m going to be using…

What Are You Going to Do About SQL Server 2008?

Last Updated March 25, 2019

Last week, you used SQL ConstantCare® to analyze 2,396 SQL Servers across a variety of versions: Alas, poor SQL Server 2008 15% (362 instances) of SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 18% (438) SQL Server 2012 27% (650) SQL Server 2014 32% (777) SQL Server 2016 7% (169) SQL Server 2017 That means 15% of…

[Video] Demoing SQL Server 2019’s new Accelerated Database Recovery

Last Updated October 15, 2019

SQL Server 2019, Videos

Wouldn’t it be nice if rollbacks just finished instantly? Wouldn’t you love for startup times to be near-zero even when SQL Server crashed just as someone in the middle of a transaction? How much would you pay for all this? (Well, I’m a little afraid to ask that, since we don’t know yet whether this…

New Objects, Columns, and Messages in SQL Server 2019 CTP 2.3

Last Updated March 3, 2019

Sure, there’s official documentation on what’s new in SQL Server 2019, but Microsoft’s notorious for slipping undocumented stuff in. Sometimes these new features become officially documented in subsequent preview builds, like CTP 2.2’s initial plumbing for Accelerated Database Recovery that went officially public in CTP 2.3, and other times they never see the light of…

SQL Server 2019 Result Set Caching?

Last Updated March 3, 2019

Friday’s new CTP 2.3 added a few new fields to sys.databases: But the highlighted one has me all tingly inside, kinda like the first time I heard Winona Ryders use the word “chainsaw” in a sentence. (Bonus points for readers who get that reference.) I don’t have any answers yet, folks. I just have questions.

The “Guess the Next Release Date” contest continues…

Last Updated March 1, 2019

Back in December 2017, when I posted the Guess the Next SQL Server Release Date Contest, you could leave your guess in the comments for a chance to win a Live Class Season Pass and a Recorded Class Season Pass. Here’s how the guesses so far have gone – and for this quick analysis, I’m only…

How to Think Like the Engine – 2019 Edition

Last Updated January 25, 2019

Indexing, SQL Server, Videos

You’re a developer or a DBA, and you’re comfortable writing queries to get the data you need. You’re much less comfortable trying to design the right indexes for your database server. In this series of videos, you’ll learn how the SQL Server engine looks at your indexes and builds your query results. In 90 minutes…

Which Version of SQL Server Should You Use?

Last Updated November 18, 2025

151

Wait! Before you install that next SQL Server, hold up. Are you sure you’re using the right version? I know, management wants you to stay on an older build, and the vendor says they’ll only support older versions, but now’s your chance to make your case for a newer version – and I’m gonna help…

Fast Food Code

Last Updated January 2, 2019

Erik Darling

Cheap and Easy We’ve all done it. We all know what and where it is, because we’ve probably left a comment for ourselves to go fix it later. It wasn’t me, I swear to myself. Either it was expedient, it seemed to work locally, it was fast on a small amount of data, or we…

38 Blog Posts We Couldn’t Write in 2018

Last Updated December 31, 2018