SQL Server Reporting Services is Dead. Is SSIS Next?
It's official: SQL Server 2022 was the last release for SSRS.
At SQLBits this week, Microsoft announced that SQL Server 2025 won't include SSRS.
[Video] Office Hours on the Cruise Ship
I'm on a Med cruise, and I stopped the boat today in Corsica to make sure your questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento got the answers they deserve. I started by mentioning that I'm using a 360 degree camera, but the file size on that video was so huge that I couldn't upload it from the cruise ship, so you just get the 180 version.
Production DBA
[Poll] How Often Do You Run Maintenance Tasks?
How often do you run backups, corruption checking, index maintenance, and statistics updates?
Click here to take the anonymous poll.
[Video] Office Hours at the Barcelona Pavilion
I've always wanted to see the Barcelona Pavilion by Mies van der Rohe, and by happy coincidence, I ended up walking right past it while visiting Barcelona! It's one of the most important beginnings of modern architecture, and I loved it. I brought you along with me and talked through your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento.
Performance Tuning
Query Exercise Answers: Returning Routes in the Right Order
In your most recent Query Exercise challenge, I gave you these two tables:
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[Video] Office Hours in the Detroit Airport
I'm in the Detroit airport today, en route home after a client gig. I've got some time to kill, so let's go through your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yd59N2bWzQ
Performance Tuning
Query Exercise: Return Routes in the Right Order
I'mma be honest with you, dear reader: this query exercise stems from a client problem that I couldn't figure out how to solve in the time constraints that I had, and it drove me crazy. I wanted to put hours into this to figure it out, and I was sure there'd be a fun T-SQL way to do it.
[Video] Office Hours: Recovering from a Cold Edition
While recovering from a nasty cold, I took your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et1mNyC1lIk
Review: SSMS Copilot vs Other AI Tools
I use AI tools constantly in my work, so when the new SSMS v21 came out with Copilot support, I was excited to try it. The short story is that the user interface is fine, and it doesn't feel buggy, but the advice is simply terrible compared to other LLMs due to the prompt Copilot is using. You're better off using tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude directly for now.
How SQL Server 2025’s Optional Parameter Plan Optimization Works
About three years ago, SQL Server 2022 introduced Parameter-Sensitive Plan Optimization (PSPO). At the time, I explained that it didn't work particularly well, and went so far as to pronounce PSPO in a rather unflattering way. I wouldn't suggest that anyone turn it off - it's fine, just fine - but it isn't powerful enough, and poses serious challenges for monitoring and plan cache analysis.
How I Configure SQL Server Management Studio v21
Several years ago, I wrote a post about how I configure older versions of SQL Server Management Studio, but now that SSMS v21 is out, it's time to revisit that post. SSMS v21 is built on the Visual Studio shell, so it's got a lot of cool new tricks. Let's make sure you're using 'em.
New Objects in SQL Server 2025 – And Thousands of New Undocumented Feature Flags!
The first public preview of SQL Server 2025 dropped yesterday, and here's what's new under the hood as compared to today's SQL Server 2022 CU19. Forgive me - this is quite a lengthy post, and it's mostly a data dump. There are new stored procedures, extended stored procs, views, feature switches, new columns in existing tables, messages, and more.
Production DBA
Fabric Is Just Plain Unreliable, and Microsoft’s Hiding It.
Update 2025/07/21: Microsoft heard the complaints, and fixed the reliability added a better status page. Baby steps.
Last week, Microsoft Fabric went down yet again for hours on multiple continents.
[Video] Office Hours at the Hoover Dam
Dam! I took your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento without making any dam or beaver puns. Rather proud of myself for that one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUqIJtps8Y4
Performance Tuning
Predicting When SQL Server Will Hit the CPU Wall
Most of the time, we use wait stats to identify SQL Server's bottleneck and focus on what to tune.
However, let's say you've got a really well-tuned SQL Server where:
SQL ConstantCare Badges
SQL ConstantCare™, our monitoring app that gives you a simple daily email with actionable tasks to make your servers faster and more reliable, is about to start sending out monthly awards! On the first weekday of each month, we'll email the winners with their gold, silver, and bronze badges.
Well, I say badges - some of them are badges of pride and honor, but some are badges of... well, let's just say you'll laugh when you'll put them on the company fridge.
[Video] Office Hours: Speed Round!
Not all of y'all's questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento require long, thought-out answers. Let's do a speed round:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqNE31oR3bY
Performance Tuning
Don’t Let Your Kids Drop ACID.
We're heading towards graduation time.
In just a few short months, your high school kids are going to be packing up their bags and heading off to college. It's a time of adventure and discovery, and the first time they'll be away from your parenting and guiding influences.
[Video] Office Hours: Hot Dog Fingers Edition
I strapped on my Apple Vision Pro, updated its OS, and recaptured my persona with the latest updates, and... it's still pretty weird. Let's go through your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento and have a laugh at my hot dog fingers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLAEqItBnuI
Performance Tuning
SQL Server 2022 Finally Fixed a SQL Server 2008 Query Plan Bug!
For yeeeeeears, when I've explained execution plans, part of my explanation has included the instructions, "Read the plan from right to left, top to bottom, looking for the place where the estimates vs actuals are suddenly way off." Here's an example:
Things seem to be going okay on the query plan until you hit the key lookup, which brought back 13 rows of an estimated 19,452. That would appear to be a pretty doggone bad estimate.
