Hindsight is everything. I was lucky to be trained by a great team of DBAs back when I first started with SQL Server. But it’s hard to know exactly what you really need to know, particularly as new tools are becoming available.
Sometimes we learn things in the wrong order. Or skip a step. If you’re just starting out as a SQL Server DBA, here are three questions that you need to be able to answer at any given time. If you aren’t 100% sure that you can handle these questions at 3 AM when you’ve had a few drinks, it’s time to revisit them.
SQL Server Availability Groups are growing up. SQL Server 2016 adds more features and improvements, and these include options to run SQL Server in different domains, or without a domain.
Execution plans got a cool new piece of diagnostic information in SQL Server 2012 SP3, SQL Server 2014 SP2, and SQL Server 2016: “Number of Rows Read”. In fancy language, this is “better diagnostics” when a query plan has “residual predicate pushdown” (KB 3107397).
Working with table partitioning can be puzzling. Table partitioning isn’t always a slam dunk for performance: heavy testing is needed. But even getting started with the testing can be a bit tricky!
Here’s a (relatively) simple example that walks you through setting up a partitioned table, running a query, and checking if it was able to get partition elimination.
You know how sometimes you learn something, then you start to see it everywhere you look?
This is a super old command, but it still comes in handy when working with SQL Server.
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