Videos

This week, Erik and Richie discuss whether it’s relevant to specify data in logs in SQL cloud environment, licensing, using canary tables on Availability Groups, how Entity Framework limits tuning, reusing older databases, and more. Here’s the video on YouTube: You can register to attend next week’s Office Hours, or subscribe to our podcast to listen on…

[Video] Office Hours 2018/7/18 (With Transcriptions)

Last Updated July 22, 2018

Pavel Amelishko

This week, Brent, Erik, and Tara discuss their SQL server specialization, CPU-ready time, making SSIS changes globally rather than one at a time, creating an Always On AG farm, Azure managed instances, going from log shipping to Availability Groups, tracking folks that executed queries, moving databases into Availability Groups, an exciting update to SQL Server…

[Video] Office Hours 2018/7/11 (With Transcriptions)

Last Updated July 13, 2018

This week, Brent, Richie, and Erik discuss best account practices for SQL Server, change tracking, disabled indexes, measuring queries to gauge their speed, overcoming issues between Management Studio and integration services, deadlocks and long-running processes, query tuning, and lock escalation. Here’s the video on YouTube: You can register to attend next week’s Office Hours, or subscribe to…

[Video] Office Hours 2018/6/27 (With Transcriptions)

Last Updated July 13, 2018

This week, Brent, Erik, Tara, and Richie discuss using SQL Server 2016 vs 2017 for production environment, reporting, reindexing jobs, Azure vs Amazon, parameter sniffing, creating custom alerts for agent jobs, activity monitor, troubleshooting SQL Server 2014, replication, turning off auto-updating stats on tempdb, and why Brent can’t get a tan. Here’s the video on…

[Video] SSIS Design Patterns: Extract, Load, and Transform – and Save 50% on Training

Last Updated July 2, 2018

This week, we’re sharing Instant Replay videos from our training classes. Last but not least this week, Andy Leonard is talking about the Extract-Load-Transform design pattern in SSIS – different from the old Extract-Transform-Load: That video is from the Instant Replay recordings of Andy’s 2 1/2 day class, Expert SSIS Training. The reviews are great.…

[Video] Interpreting Missing Index Recommendations

Last Updated July 2, 2018

Indexing, Videos

This week, we’re sharing Instant Replay videos from our training classes. Next up is Pinal Dave talking about missing index requests from the dynamic management views. It doesn’t matter whose script you use – they’re all built atop SQL Server’s missing-index DMVs, and they all have the same limitations. Treat the missing index requests the…

[Video] PowerShell Functions and Parameters, and 50% Off Training Classes

Last Updated July 2, 2018

Processes and Practices, Videos

This week, we’re sharing some of the Instant Replay videos from our training classes. First up is Drew Furgiuele talking about PowerShell functions and parameters: That’s module 4.1 of Drew’s PowerShell for Database Administrators class. It’s 2 days of lectures and labs – Drew talks about how to do something, then gives you a challenge for…

[Video] What to Do When SQL Server is Slow

Last Updated June 9, 2018

Monitoring, Videos

Someone comes running in and asks, “Are you doing something on the SQL Server right now? Can you take a look at it? It seems really slow.” It’s one of the most common complaints we get about our databases – and yet, most of us don’t have a written plan with what steps to take,…

[Video] SQL Query Optimization: Why Is It So Hard to Get Right?

Last Updated November 26, 2020

The first paper on cost-based query optimization was published in 1979 by Patricia Selinger from IBM Research. This paper laid the basic framework for optimizing relational queries that is still in place today. While there have been many technical enhancements since 1979, query optimizers still fail to pick the best plan when faced with a…

Why Performance Tuning Needs Expiration Dates

[Video] Why Performance Tuning Wisdom Needs Expiration Dates

Last Updated June 20, 2018

Development, Videos

Several months ago, Erik said something like, “We should do a performance art piece where one person does the talking, while another person does demos that contradicts everything they say.” I thought it was a brilliant idea. We just had to find the right place and time to try it, and find the right topic.…

[Video] Office Hours 2018/6/20 (With Transcriptions)

Last Updated June 25, 2018

This week, Brent, Erik, and Richie discuss using foreign keys in a data warehouse, SQL Server virtualization on Hyper-V clusters, having all of your SQL Server instances under the same active directory account, updating stats, changing job ownership, why you would want to go to SQL Azure, and why they have an issue with replication.…

[Video] Office Hours 2018/6/13 (With Transcriptions)

Last Updated June 17, 2018

This week, Brent and Richie discuss using full-text index, Elasticsearch, server restart issues, sp_blitzfirst, Always On availability groups, issues with users connecting to SQL Server, learning the basics of Python on SQL Server 2017, VMWare Hyper-V configuration issue, and more. Here’s the video on YouTube: You can register to attend next week’s Office Hours, or subscribe to…

[Video] Office Hours 2018/6/6 (With Transcriptions)

Last Updated June 8, 2018

This week, Brent, Erik, Tara, and Richie discuss index maintenance, stats updates, the acquisition of GitHub, using linked servers to move tables across, talking to developers as a DBA, the best cloud option, setting the number of tempdb files, and their favorite SQL Server features. Here’s the video on YouTube: You can register to attend next week’s…

[Video] Office Hours 2018/5/30 (With Transcriptions)

Last Updated June 2, 2018

This week, Brent, Erik, Tara and Richie discuss severity 16 error warning, best way to move databases from SQL 2008 R2 to SQL Server 2014, adding Analysis services to a cluster, taking to higher management, deadlocks in a transaction log shipping setup, syncing date between an on-prem and Azure SQL DB server, log backups, renaming…

[Video] Office Hours 2018/5/23 (With Transcriptions)

Last Updated May 26, 2018

This week, Brent, Tara, and Richie discuss relaying SQL Server performance updates to upper management, differential backups in AlwaysOn Availability environment, replication, Troubleshooting THREADPOOL Waits, an acceptable amount of preemptive waits, Postgres, and the technologies Richie is working with these days. Here’s the video on YouTube: You can register to attend next week’s Office Hours, or subscribe…

[Video] Office Hours 2018/5/16 (With Transcriptions)

Last Updated May 20, 2018

This week, Brent, Erik, Tara, and Richie are back in action again to and are discussing sys.dm_db usage stats, Availability Group troubleshooting, ASYNC Network IO issue, reasons for using a contained database, whether you need to add more CPUs if facing THREADPOOL (or is it Deadpool?) waits, auto-tiering tempdb, and query tuning. Here’s the video…

[Video] Office Hours 2018/4/25 (With Transcriptions)

Last Updated May 20, 2018

SQL Server, Videos

This week, Brent, Erik, Tara, and Richie to discuss cloud server disaster recovery, Availability Groups troubleshooting, SQL Server deadlocks, slow tempdb latency, migrating to Azure, SQL Server 2017 gotchas, how to set up your dev environment when looking for a job, best allocation unit size for disks hosting data files and good replacement for linked…

[Video] Office Hours 2018/4/18 (With Transcriptions) with Special Guest Drew Furgiuele

Last Updated April 21, 2018

This week Drew Furgiuele joins Brent and Richie to discuss patching, job interview suggestions, using PowerShell to solve various SQL Server issues, roles and responsibilities of a SQL or a database architect, enabling query store on production servers, SARGability, moving SSRS from the main production server, tempdb issues, Availability Groups troubleshooting, Drew’s upcoming Powershell class,…

[Video] Office Hours 2018/4/11 (With Transcriptions) with Special Guest Edwin M Sarmiento

Last Updated April 17, 2018