Search Results for “execution plan”

How to Start Conversations With Your Favorite Authors at Conferences

Last Updated October 12, 2014

How it feels to say the exact wrong thing. It can be a tricky to introduce yourself to people at conferences when you read their blogs and watch their presentations and videos. You feel like you know them, but they don’t know you yet. What the heck do you say? So you take a deep…

Announcing kCura Relativity 9, Data Grid, Elasticsearch, and SQL Server

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

kCura Relativity, SQL Server

Today at Relativity Fest in Chicago, kCura Relativity 9 introduces the option to move some text storage out of Microsoft SQL Server and into kCura’s new Data Grid, a tool built atop the open source Elasticsearch. Is kCura abandoning SQL Server? No, but understanding what’s going on will help you be a better database administrator and developer.…

Candidates for Caching

Last Updated September 1, 2014

Doug Lane

sp_BlitzRS® Result: Candidates for Caching Caching can help alleviate traffic on your Report Server and improve performance during heavy load windows. Caching is like having some commuters leave for work a half-hour early, hang out at the coffee shop next to their building, then walk to work when it’s time to clock in. This is a…

Performance Tuning SQL Server Transactional Replication: A Checklist

Last Updated September 14, 2018

Kendra Little

Replication

Swim faster! SQL Server transactional replication is a blessing and a curse. It’s a great developer tool that lets you scale out data to multiple servers, even using Standard Edition. But as your business picks up, your datasets get larger, and your customers grow more demanding, replication can start to fall behind. You need to…

Unparameterized Queries

Last Updated July 15, 2014

Jeremiah Peschka

sp_BlitzCache™ Result: Unparameterized Queries One or more queries are effectively being run as if they were unparameterized which can lead to unpredictable execution times. This can be caused by applying functions to parameters or by using OPTIMIZE FOR UNKNOWN. Whatever the reason, this can cause problems for SQL Server. This is effectively the opposite of parameter sniffing –…

Five SQL Server Settings to Change

Last Updated July 24, 2019

Jeremiah Peschka

Configuration Settings

129

SQL Server ships with sane defaults, right? Well, sort of. SQL Server ships with pretty sane defaults for a single CPU socket server or for a development work station. Honestly, the defaults are good enough for many things, but there are a few gotchas. Changing these settings is quick, relatively painless, and can result in…

What is the CXPACKET Wait Type, and How Do You Reduce It?

Last Updated August 13, 2021

Brent Ozar

SQL Server, Wait Stats

120

When you query sys.dm_os_wait_stats, or check your waits with sp_Blitz® or sp_BlitzFirst®, one of your biggest wait types is probably CXPACKET. Let’s talk about what’s really going on. Our SQL Server Stand-In: a Class. Who wants to help me scan the sales table? Pretend that you’re a schoolteacher in a classroom with a couple dozen students.…

You Need This One Skill to Succeed in IT

Last Updated July 12, 2013

Jes Schultz

Consulting

The ability to program in five languages, including one machine-level? Not it. Project management skills, up to and including a PMP certification? Not that either. Excellent oral and written communication skills, as noted on every job description ever? That doesn’t hurt, but can be learned. All of the best IT professionals I have worked with…

If there's such a thing as Data Science, why not Data Sauce?

3 Steps to Finding Your Secret Sauce

Last Updated May 13, 2014

Kendra Little

SQL Server

If there’s such a thing as Data Science, why not Data Sauce? It’s difficult to define why some things are wildly successful in a sea of forgettable products. Some recipes have a mysterious umami that comes from a subtle dash or two of magical sauce. In business and technology there’s an indefinable edge that sets…

sp_Blitz® Documentation

Last Updated April 9, 2015

Brent Ozar

sp_Blitz® Documentation Please don’t use your SQL Server as a print queue for sp_Blitz® documentation. sp_Blitz® is a free SQL Server health check stored procedure that looks for a lot of common health and performance issues. If you just use the default parameters, you’ll get a prioritized list of problems, but by tweaking the input…

7 Things Developers Should Know About SQL Server

Last Updated April 3, 2022

Brent Ozar

Development, SQL Server

163

Hi. I’m a former developer who’s moved into database administration, and here’s what I wish somebody would have told me when I got started. 7. SQL functions rarely perform well. Good developers like to reuse code by putting it into functions, and then calling those functions from multiple places. That’s a great practice in the…

Potential Problems with Partitioning

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Jeremiah Peschka

Partitioning, SQL Server

Getting started with table partitioning is difficult; there are many decisions to make after you’ve decided to partition data. Correctly configuring partitioning is critical to the long term performance and stability of the database from both a querying and data modification standpoint. There are three key considerations that database architects should devote time to before…

Triggers Found on Tables

Last Updated April 9, 2015

Brent Ozar

Blitz Result: Triggers Found on Tables Some triggers are fine. Some triggers are… not. Lemme start out by saying we don’t have a problem with triggers in general. Triggers can be an easy, bulletproof way to enforce business logic in the database tier. Unfortunately, triggers don’t always scale well – especially when we try to perform…

The Difficulty with Deadlocks

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Jeremiah Peschka

Locking, Blocking, and Isolation Levels

Deadlocks can kill an application’s performance. Users will complain about the app being slow or broken. Developers will ask the DBA to fix the problem, DBAs will push the problem back on developers. The next thing you know, the office looks like Lord of the Flies. What is a Deadlock? A deadlock occurs when two…

Wait Stats

Last Updated November 15, 2017

Brent Ozar

Using Wait Stats to Find Why SQL Server is Slow Forget page life expectancy, buffer cache hit ratio, and disk queue length – those antiquated stats worked great for Grandpa, but it’s time to find an easier way to tune. Whenever SQL Server is running queries, it’s tracking how much time it spends waiting on…

Sex Panther: 60% of the time, it works every time.

5 Things SQL Server Should Truncate

Last Updated May 12, 2010

Brent Ozar

Paul Randal (Blog – @PaulRandal) nailed a blog post to the church wall entitled, “What 5 things should SQL Server get rid of?” His choices included auto-shrink, putting databases in full recovery by default, GUIDs as clustered indexes, and more. He tagged me, and I knew right away what I’d say. 5. IntelliSense restrictions on…

Long live the DBA

Last Updated September 5, 2009

Brent Ozar

Jason Massie (aka StatisticsIO.com) wrote a blog post this week called The Death of the DBA. He talks about why the coming cloud computing craze creates career chaos. I have the exact opposite opinion: I can’t wait for databases to move toward the cloud because it makes database administrators even more vital. Reason #1: Cloud…

Search Results for “execution plan”

Hi! I’m Brent Ozar.