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DBA Training Plan 9: My 3 Index Guidelines
In our last episode, we used sp_BlitzIndex @Mode = 2 to get to know the contents of our database, sorted our indexes from biggest to smallest, and started asking questions about leftover backup tables...
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DBA Training Plan 10: Managing Index Fragmentation
In the last episode, we looked at your index designs with the output of sp_BlitzIndex. You might have gotten a little overwhelmed what with all the different warnings (and all the learning resources!)...
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DBA Training Plan 11: The Basics of Executing a Query
Up til now in the DBA Training Plan, we’ve been taking inventory of our servers, making sure the data’s well-protected, and understanding the basics of how the data’s stored in indexes inside those...
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DBA Training Plan 12: What Query Plans Are In Cache?
In the last episode, while talking about the basics of executing queries, I said that SQL Server caches execution plans in memory, reusing them whenever the same query gets executed again. I’ve also...
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Research Paper Week: Plan Stitch: Harnessing the Best of Many Plans
Those of you who follow me on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook know I’m taking most of August off for vacation. Erika and I spent the last couple of weeks in Telluride, had a brief stop in Sacramento...
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Research Paper Week: Query Execution in Column-Oriented Database Systems
This week, I’m sharing some of my favorite papers that I’ve read. Sometimes they’re about future technologies that haven’t shipped yet – and may never ship! Sometimes, like this one, they’re not from...
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Research Paper Week: Automatic Indexing in Azure SQL DB
Before I give you the link to the next research paper in this week’s series, I wanna give you a few questions to think about: If you had to build something to automatically add indexes to SQL Server...
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Research Paper Week: In-Memory Multi-Version Concurrency Control
If you’ve been doing performance tuning for several years, or graduated from my Mastering Server Tuning class, you’ve come across Read Committed Snapshot Isolation, aka RCSI, aka multi-version...
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Research Paper Week: Constant Time Recovery in Azure SQL DB
Let’s finish up Research Paper Week with something we’re all going to need to read over the next year or two. I know, it says Azure SQL DB, but you boxed-product folks will be interested in this one...
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DBA Training Plan 13: Why Do Cached Plans Go Bad?
It’s a little bit of a trick question: what could make a good query plan turn bad? In the last episode, we used sp_BlitzCache to spot the most resource-intensive, longest-running query plans in your...
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Updated First Responder Kit and Consultant Toolkit for August 2019
sp_DatabaseRestore can now restore to Azure blobs and change the database owner after a restore, and everything else gets bug fixes. To get the new version: Download the updated FirstResponderKit.zip...
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DBA Training Plan 14: POP QUIZ!
AH-HA! You didn’t know there would be one of these, did you, hotshot? You’ve been reading along in the series, just smiling and nodding, pretending you’re keeping up, but not really doing the homework....
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DBA Training Plan 15: What’s Your SQL Server Waiting On?
You’re here, dear reader, because you weren’t “classically trained” as a database administrator. You didn’t graduate from the University of Sciencing Computerses with a Master’s of Transactional...
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DBA Training Plan 16: Is It Time to Scale Out?
In our last episode, we found out what your server was waiting on. In the closing remarks, I mentioned that you should find out which queries are causing the problem, and focus your mitigation efforts...
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What Are Your Coworkers Learning Right Now?
Not a poll, no fixed list of answers, just totally open comments. What are the developers, sysadmins, and data professionals on your team learning these days? Any particular topics that they’re really...
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DBA Training Plan 17: Should You Partition Your Tables?
In the last episode, I talked about knowing when it’s time to scale out: identifying when our data is getting to be so large that we have to split it across multiple servers, and I explained why that...
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DBA Training Plan 18: Managing Concurrency
Locking isn’t a problem – queries are gonna lock data. As long as nobody else wants the lock, you can take your sweet time locking it, and it won’t show up as a problem. (That’s one of the many reasons...
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DBA Training Plan 19: The L-Word, Licensing
You’ve gotten through a lot of this training. You’ve tried fixing the problem with indexes, query tuning, and judicious application of various configuration switches. You’ve been watching webcasts and...
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What’s It Like to Have a Live Class Season Pass?
I don’t usually post product reviews here on the blog, but Vadim Kulikov (aka BlondeDBA in Slack) recently finished all of the Mastering classes, and he took the time to write a really detailed review....
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#TSQL2sday: I Just Wish SQL Server Could Restore a Single Object from Backup.
For this month’s T-SQL Tuesday, Kevin Chant asked us to dream up our fantasy SQL Server feature. I’m sure people are gonna ask for flying cars and gene splicing, and that’s awesome. I’m excited to...
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