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Videos

[Video] How to Think Like Clippy (Subtitle: Watch Brent Wear Another Costume)

Last Updated July 27, 2020

Indexing, Videos

Remember Clippy, the Microsoft Office assistant from the late 1990s? He would pop up at the slightest provocation and offer to help you do something – usually completely unrelated to the task you were trying to accomplish. Sadly, the Office team told Clippy that he didn’t make the stack rankings cut, so he relocated over…

Office Hours Podcast

Announcing Saturday & Sunday Office Hours.

Last Updated July 20, 2020

During the quarantines, I’m doing free training. It looks like we’re going to be stuck inside here for another long while, so for the next couple of months, I’m bringing back Office Hours, but on a different schedule. Every Saturday & Sunday morning from 6AM-8AM Pacific (iCal), you can catch me on my Twitch, YouTube, or Facebook…

[Video] How to Find Queries Using OPTION RECOMPILE (And Their Parameters)

Last Updated June 23, 2020

Development, Videos

For years, I hated troubleshooting servers with high CPU usage caused by queries constantly asking for new execution plans. Hated it. SQL Server just doesn’t make it easy to find queries with recompile hints. Then Erik Darling’s sp_HumanEvents came along. And now troubleshooting frequent compilations is as easy as this: Transact-SQL EXEC dbo.sp_HumanEvents @event_type =…

[Video] Top 3 Pitfalls of Managing Your Azure SQL DB Costs

Last Updated June 23, 2020

Azure SQL DB, Videos

You manage servers, not invoices. Your company has started to move their databases into Azure, and they’re asking questions that you’re just not ready to answer. How big does your server need to be when you’re moving an existing database up to the cloud? How are servers measured? How do you measure to know if…

SQL ConstantCare

SQL ConstantCare® Population Report: Spring 2020

Last Updated June 1, 2020

SQL Server Population Report, Videos

Ever wonder what’s “normal” out there for SQL Server adoption rates, hardware sizes, or numbers of databases? Let’s find out in the spring 2020 version of our population report. Our SQL ConstantCare® service lets users send data in about their SQL Servers and get health & performance advice via email. Users can opt in to…

[Video] Watch Brent Write Queries

Last Updated June 23, 2020

This morning, I wanted to write a few new “background noise” queries for my Mastering classes. In those classes, the students run live workloads against the Stack Overflow database and troubleshoot performance issues, and the more of a varied workload I’ve got running, the more realistic it feels. For this session, I specifically wanted to…

[Video] Watch Brent Write T-SQL

Last Updated June 23, 2020

First Responder Kit, Videos

This morning I worked on a new check for sp_BlitzFirst to find statistics that were updated in the last 15 minutes, possibly causing plan caching issues and parameter sniffing. I streamed it live, and you can watch. In part 1, the first hour, I write the proof-of-concept query: In part 2, the second hour, I…

How to Think Like the SQL Server Engine

[Video] How to Think Like the SQL Server Engine: All-Demo Edition

Last Updated May 18, 2020

How to Think Like the SQL Server Engine, Videos

You’ve heard of my free How to Think Like the Engine class, and maybe you even started watching it, but…it has slides, and you hate slides. Wanna see me do the whole thing in Management Studio, starting with an empty query window and writing the whole thing out from scratch live? This session is for you.…

[Video] The Database Community is Bigger Than It Looks.

Last Updated May 14, 2020

Right now, in times like this with insane amounts of change, it can feel like you’re alone, especially as a data professional. You’re not. In this 16-minute Twitch live stream, I explain how data professionals can feel so isolated and alone even in a good year, let alone a really challenging year like this.

[Video] How Can I Measure If My Database Does More Reads Than Writes?

Last Updated April 5, 2020

Production Database Administration, Videos

When someone asks you, “Is this database read-intensive or write-intensive?” you probably look at sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats to measure the file activity – but that isn’t really correct. After all, your users run a lot of queries all day that are simply satisfied from the buffer pool. SQL Server caches your data so it doesn’t have to hit…

[Video] Watch Brent Work on sp_Blitz

Last Updated April 5, 2020

sp_Blitz, Videos

During the quarantines, I’m looking for new ways to help you level up for free. I decided to start live-streaming whenever I’m working on things I can share with you publicly. I wanted to add a new check to sp_Blitz, so I figured I’d do it live on camera while you watch, and talk you…

[Video] What Percent Complete Is That Index Build?

Last Updated March 24, 2020

Index Maintenance, SQL Server 2017, Videos

SQL Server 2017 & newer have a new DMV, sys.index_resumable_operations, that show you the percent_completion for index creations and rebuilds. It works, but…only if the data isn’t changing. But of course your data is changing – that’s the whole point of doing these operations as resumable. If they weren’t changing, we could just let the operations…

“Working” From Home? Watch A Bunch of Free SQL Server Videos on YouTube.

Last Updated March 13, 2020

You’re new at this working from home thing, and you’re trying to put Game of Thrones up on a second monitor while you work? Listen, that’s not gonna play out well. You’re gonna get distracted and you’re not gonna get any work done. Instead, if you’re gonna have something in the background, learn about SQL…

[Video] Watch Brent Tune Queries

Last Updated January 31, 2020

Execution Plans, Videos

Ever wonder somebody else does it? Watch over my shoulder as I spend 9 minutes in PowerPoint explaining the big picture, and then about 40 minutes working on this stored procedure in the StackOverflow2013 database: If you enjoy that, the Watch Brent Tune Queries page has another video and other query examples. Enjoy!

[Video] What’s New in SQL Server 2019

Last Updated June 25, 2020

SQL Server 2019, Videos

We must be getting pretty close to the official release of Microsoft SQL Server 2019. There are less than 80 days left in the year. (Interestingly, it’s been almost 60 days since Release Candidate 1 shipped – that’s unusually long for a delay between builds. Hmm.) With the clock ticking down, now’s a good time…

Help! SQL Server 2008 is Still Here!

[Video] Help! SQL Server 2008 is Still Here!

Last Updated July 9, 2019

SQL Server 2008, Videos

Your company is ignoring the news: SQL Server 2008 and 2008R2 are officially out of support as of today, but nothing’s changing at your company. You still have SQL Server 2008 in production, and you’re a little nervous. How should you approach the conversations with management? Brent Ozar will help: he’s been there too, fighting…

Using Implicit Transactions? You Really Need RCSI.

Last Updated July 8, 2019

Locking, Blocking, and Isolation Levels, Videos

Implicit transactions are a hell of a bad idea in SQL Server: they require you to micromanage your transactions, staying on top of every single thing in code. If you miss just one little DELETE/UPDATE/INSERT operation and don’t commit it quickly enough, you can have a blocking firestorm. The ideal answer is to stop using…

[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…

[Video] How to Capture Baselines with sp_BlitzFirst

Last Updated October 15, 2019

Monitoring, sp_BlitzFirst, Videos

Everybody tells you to capture baselines – but what exactly are you supposed to capture? Which Perfmon counters matter? How do you track which data files are growing, and which ones are slow? How can you track which queries are using the most resources? All you have to do is install the free, open source…

[Video] An Introduction to GitHub for DBAs

Last Updated February 8, 2019

Development, Videos

Distributed source control is really intimidating: branches, pull requests, merges – will somebody just take my code, for crying out loud? Why does it have to be so complicated and involved? I’m with you: I hated GitHub. For years, I struggled with it, but I’ve come to a gradual truce. I’m not a GitHub pro…