Bad News, DBAs, We Are All Developers Now

I sometimes joke that I’m a Junior Developer and a Principal Database Administrator, which is why I have a Staff level title. I’m not sure it’s a joke anymore, though.

I’m still an OLTP database specialist, but increasingly I’m also a programmer who commits code in multiple languages. I own pull requests that I ship in a release process, following all the same rules and patterns as other developers. My PRs feature unit tests, integration tests, feature flags, the whole shebang.

Tech roles, including DBA roles, are changing rapidly due to AI coding advances. Don’t use AI to write production SQL code without incredibly heavy review and revisions, but do use it to accelerate shipping your improvements to SQL code.

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Adaptive Joins and Memory Grants in SQL Server

Adaptive joins let the optimizer choose between a Hash Join and a Nested Loop join at runtime, which can be fantastic for performance when row count estimates are variable. Recently, when Erik Darling taught two days on TSQL at PASS Community Data Summit, a student asked why a query plan where an adaptive join used a Nested Loop at runtime ended up with a large memory grant anyway.

I didn’t remember the answer to this, but the great thing about co-teaching is that Erik did: adaptive joins always start executing as Hash Joins, which means they have to get memory grants upfront. Even if the query ultimately switches to a Nested Loop at runtime, that memory grant was already allocated. This has real implications for memory usage, especially in high-concurrency environments.

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Carrying Baggage Through Query Plans: Why Wide Queries Get Heavy

I see this pattern repeatedly: a “wide” query that returns many columns and less than 100k rows runs slowly. SQL Server gets slow when it drags large amounts of baggage through the entire query plan, like a solo traveler struggling with massive suitcases in an airport instead of picking them up close to their destination.

SQL Server often minimizes data access by grabbing all the columns it needs early in query execution, then doing joins and filters. This means presentation columns get picked up early.

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Testing SQL Server 2025 Resource Governor tempdb Limits with a Query that Spills a Terabyte

SQL Server 2025 introduces a new Resource Governor capability to manage tempdb usage, along with making Resource Governor available in Standard Edition.

I wondered: can Resource Governor’s new tempdb feature help contain queries that don’t use temporary tables, but which spill massive amounts of data to tempdb? The docs say yes, but I always like to get hands-on experience when I can.

I’ve got an awful query that spills like a soft-serve machine choosing violence. Let’s test drive the new tempdb governance features in SQL Server 2025.

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How to Trace Trigger Executions with Query Store and Extended Events

Triggers can be tricky to observe in SQL Server. When you need to understand exactly what a trigger is doing and what it impacts, Query Store and Extended Events both have something to offer, but using them effectively requires navigating some confusing nuances. Query Store tracks query-level executions aggregated by query_id, but has a habit of generating a lot of query_ids with different context settings for triggers. Extended Events can capture trigger module starts and individual statement completions within triggers.

This post walks through setting up both observation methods on a test trigger, then compares what each one shows. You’ll see how Query Store data gets spread across multiple query_ids and context_settings_id values, a variety of ways to trace triggers in XEvents, and why the numbers don’t always match up exactly between traces and Query Store.

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Static Site Improvements: Scheduled Posts, Preview Builds, Robots Writing the CSS

I’ve standardized design, upgraded components, added client-side search, and configured browser caching for this site over the last few weeks. I’ve also adopted a workflow that helps me capture ideas, test changes, and get posts published more easily.

I’m not a web developer, I’m a database nerd. I’m don’t want to be great at CSS. I got this all done with a personal Cursor subscription and an obsessive urge to tag and tidy all my old posts. AI tooling these days makes static websites easier than ever to set up, design, and improve.

If you’re open to AI tooling and want to create a website (or upgrade one you already have), a static site is a great bet.

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Erik Darling and Kendra Little Talk AI, Databases, and SQL Server 2025

Erik Darling joins me on the Dear SQL DBA Podcast to chat about AI tools, why they work better for Python and PowerShell than SQL, and what’s exciting (and what’s not) in SQL Server 2025.

Along the way we describe the ONE THING we always want to configure in Resource Governor, why at least one SQL Server 2025 feature should be backported to 2022, and whether the universe is text files all the way down.

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