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Three Reasons to (Temporarily) Change Max Worker Threads
When you go to the deli, there’s a “take a number” dispenser where you tear off a number and wait for your number to be called. If you walked into a deli and you saw 50 people lined up all waiting...
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Building SQL ConstantCare®: Which Recommendations Do People Mute?
Our SQL ConstantCare® service sends you daily recommendations for specific tasks that will improve your SQL Server’s health and performance. Next to each recommendation, there’s a Mute link that you...
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Can SELECT * Make a Query Go…Faster?!?
Most of the time, you’ll hear advice that you should select as few columns as possible so that SQL Server can do less work. However, one of my clients hit a neat edge case scenario where SELECT *...
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Performance Tuning Means 3 Things
Managing what requests are made Managing the efficiency of each request Managing the hardware capacity available to satisfy requests And that’s it. In the grand scheme of things, those are the only 3...
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Building SQL ConstantCare: Let’s Tune an Index in Postgres.
This week, our SQL ConstantCare® back end services started having some query timeout issues. Hey, we’re database people – we can do this, right? Granted, I work with Microsoft SQL Server most of the...
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Where Should You Tune Queries: Production, Staging, or Development?
The #1 fastest way to tune queries is in the production database, on the production server. I know. Put the knife down. You’re not happy about that, but hear me out: I’m specifically talking about the...
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Cool Query Hints
The SQL Server documentation has a pretty cool list of query hints: Yeah, I surf in dark mode. I’m a dark kinda guy. But wait – what’s that colored box? ENHANCE! I could make jokes here, but … every...
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Updated First Responder Kit and Consultant Toolkit for January 2020
A couple of times a year, I disconnect from the Internet to sit down with a planning book, my Epic Life Quest, and my future task list. I spend time making sure my day-to-day tasks are still...
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Why Database Monitoring Tools Are So Hard to Interpret
SentryOne’s Greg Gonzalez recently published a post about “Why Wait Stats Alone Are Not Enough.” Sure, Greg’s obviously biased towards his own monitoring tool, but his post is really well-written and...
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Building PasteThePlan.com: Removing Comments
PasteThePlan.com We have this PasteThePlan where you can copy/paste the contents of execution plans, and then share the links around the web. You’ve pasted 16,621 plans so far, and I’m always amused to...
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How to Remove Times from Dates in SQL Server
Say that you’ve got a table with a datetime column in it, like the LastAccessDate column in the Stack Overflow Users table: And let’s say you wanna find the users who last accessed the site on...
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Register Now to Watch Brent Tune Queries Tonight (Free)
It’s last-minute, I know, but I’m doing an online user group session for the Pensacola Data Professionals, and you’re welcome to attend online free if you like. It’s tonight at 8PM Eastern, 7PM...
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[Video] Watch Brent Tune Queries
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...
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What Are Soft Deletes, and How Are They Implemented?
Normally when you run a DELETE statement in a database, the data’s gone. With the soft delete design pattern, you add a bit column like IsDeleted, IsActive, or IsArchived to the table, and instead of...
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Wanna Learn How I Use the First Responder Kit?
My newest class, How I Use the First Responder Kit, has been going great – but there’s a catch. I designed this class as a mix of training and consulting, so I’m giving you advice on your server as we...
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Which SQL Server Enterprise Edition Should I Download?
When you’re downloading SQL Server, it’s important to choose Enterprise Core, not Enterprise. The plain “Enterprise” one is limited to just 20 CPU cores. But let’s say you didn’t know that, and you...
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How to Pick a 2020 Microsoft Database Conference
As a consultant and speaker, I’m lucky enough to go to a crazy number of SQL Server conferences. Here’s what I think of each mainstream conference out there – who they’re for, and who they’re not for....
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#TSQL2sday: My Life Hack is an Hourglass. Yes, an Hourglass.
For this month’s T-SQL Tuesday, Jess Pomfret asked for our favorite life hacks. My life hack is a half-hour hourglass. (Halfhourglass?) Seriously, an actual physical object: I keep it on my desk....
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What Should I Submit to the PASS Summit?
Our industry’s biggest conference, the PASS Summit 2020, just opened their pre-conference workshop call for speakers. I’m going to submit a couple of sessions, but I want to hear from you first: if you...
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How to Pass a List of Values Into a Stored Procedure
Say we have a stored procedure that queries the Stack Overflow Users table to find people in a given location. Here’s what the table looks like: And here’s what my starting stored procedure looks...
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