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Use “We” Not “You”. #tsql2sday
For T-SQL Tuesday this month, Louis Davidson suggested we give our past self some advice. I’d tell myself, “Use ‘we’, not ‘you’.” For years, when I gave advice, I’d say things like: “You’re doing A,...
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Announcing Free SQL Server Monitoring.
You already use sp_Blitz and the rest of the free, open source First Responder Kit to give your SQL Servers a health check now and then. But let’s be honest: you don’t do it often enough. You wish you...
View Article[Video] Office Hours in Bulgaria
I went through your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento while in front of the National Gallery for Foreign Art in Sofia. Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Start 03:12 MyTeaGotCold:...
View ArticleUpdated, Larger Stack Overflow Demo Database
Stack Overflow publishes a data dump with all user-contributed content, and it’s a fun set of data to use for demos. I took the 2024-April data dump, and imported it into a Microsoft SQL Server...
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Query Exercise: Fix This Computed Column.
Take any size of the Stack Overflow database and check out the WebsiteUrl column of the Users table: Sometimes it’s null, sometimes it’s an empty string, sometimes it’s populated but the URL isn’t...
View Article[Video] Office Hours in My Backyard
On a pleasantly mild morning, I sat down on the patio and took your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento. Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Start 00:56 MyTeaGotCold: When going in to...
View ArticleToday’s a Good Day to Talk to Your Manager About Disaster Recovery.
Last night, two major IT disasters struck: Microsoft Azure’s Central region went down for about 4 hours. The official post-mortem isn’t out yet, but rumor has it that while decommissioning legacy...
View ArticleAnnouncing New Membership Tiers: Free & Mentoring
I give away a lot of stuff in various places on the internet: videos, scripts, the new free tier of SQL ConstantCare®, and I’ve got more tricks coming soon. But until now, it’s been kind of a hassle...
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Query Exercise Answer: Fixing a Slow Computed Column
In last week’s Query Exercise, we added a user-defined function to the Users table to check whether their WebsiteUrl was valid or not. I noted that even with an index on Reputation, SQL Server 2022...
View Article[Video] Office Hours in a Mexican Hot Tub
While taking a dip in Cabo, I went through your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaHImrIMM6Y Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Start 01:00...
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Thoughts About Stack Overflow’s Annual Developer Survey
Every year, Stack Overflow runs a developer survey about technology, work, community, and more. This year’s results include 65,437 responses from developers around the world. The results are biased...
View ArticleFree Online SQL Server Internals Conference Next Week
The EightKB conference is a free event that focuses on SQL Server internals. You can get the session details and register for the August 8th event at eightkb.online. The session lineup is below, each...
View Article[Video] Office Hours in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico
What a comfy morning to sit down with a breakfast margarita and tackle your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento. Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Start 00:36 DBA_Mufasa: When we...
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Who’s Hiring in the Microsoft Data Platform Community? August 2024 Edition
Is your company hiring for a database position as of August 2024? Do you wanna work with the kinds of people who read this blog? Let’s set up some rapid networking here. If your company is hiring,...
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[Video] I Must Be an Idiot: Automatic Tuning Never Works for Me.
I don’t get it. I’ve given this feature one chance after another, and every time, it takes a smoke break rather than showing up for work. The latest instance involved the recent Query Exercise where...
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Query Exercise: What Makes SELECT TOP 1 or SELECT MAX Different?
These two queries both get the same answer from the Stack Overflow database:SELECT TOP 1 LastAccessDate FROM dbo.Users ORDER BY LastAccessDate DESC; SELECT MAX(LastAccessDate) FROM dbo.Users; But do...
View Article[Video] Office Hours with a Special Guest: Count Distinct
I was busy, so I asked a friend to fill in for me and answer your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento. He did a pretty good job: Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Start 00:52...
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Free DBA Job Interview Q&A Course This Weekend
If you’re facing an upcoming SQL Server DBA job interview, or if you’re a manager who has to interview DBAs, I want to help. This weekend, I’m giving away my DBA Job Interview Questions & Answers...
View ArticleAs a SQL Server DBA, Postgres Backups Surprised Me.
Over the last week, I’ve been working on putting together a Postgres version of the Stack Overflow database, just like the SQL Server one that I’ve distributed for almost a decade now. I’ve worked with...
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SQL ConstantCare® Population Report: Summer 2024 (And Upcoming Gamification...
The short story: SQL Server 2022 finally saw some growth this quarter! Two years after the release, 1 in 10 SQL Servers is finally running the latest version. The long story: ever wonder how fast...
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