Blogs

Perks for My SQLPASS Summit Precon: Prevent Fake News in Your Data! Isolation Levels Demystified

I’m proud, giddy, and just plain overly excited to be giving a pre conference session at the SQL PASS Summit in Seattle, Washington on November 5, 2018.

This is going to be a fun, demo-packed day which will teach you skills you can use throughout your career as a developer, database administrator, or data professional.

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Two Free Sessions Next Week: Fighting Bad Data and Deadlocks

I am excited and honored to be giving two free online sessions next week. Both events are sponsored by the fine folks over at Quest Software. Why is That Data Wrong? How Choosing the Wrong Isolation Level Causes Bad Results Tuesday, June 12, Noon Pacific 24 Hours of PASS, Sponsored by Quest Software If you haven’t thought much about isolation levels in SQL Server, chances are your applications can return inconsistent data to your users: data that looks completely wrong.

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Row Width Impact on Version Store Usage under Snapshot Isolation

A question came up in my webcast today on the topic of Snapshot and Read Committed Snapshot Isolation - what impact will enabling these have on my SQL Server instance?

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Code: Fixing a Filtered Index Which is Causing Data Modifications to Fail

This question came up in a webcast recently: if a filtered index is causing data modifications to fail, does disabling the filtered index fix the problem?

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Free Session! DBA vs Deadlock: How to Out-Index a Deadly Blocking Scenario

DBA vs Deadlock: How to Out-Index a Deadly Blocking Scenario June 14, 2018 8:30 AM – 9:30 AM PST <- This is past, but no worries, it was recorded Deadlocks strike fear into the hearts of even seasoned DBAs — but they don’t have to! In this session, you’ll get the code to cause a sample deadlock in SQL Server. You’ll see how to interpret the deadlock graph to find out where the conflict lies, and how to design an index to make the deadlock disappear.

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What is Deferred Name Resolution, and How Can It Go Wrong?

I got a question recently about why a particular bit of code was failing when running.

My first thought: oh, that’s probably related to… whatsitcalled.

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Dear SQL DBA: Dealing With a Lack of Control

This week I discuss a question that I’ve gotten in many forms over the years - a lot of the scenarios are so specific that it’s hard to keep them anonymous, but they can be generalized as a bigger problem: how do I deal with being responsible for things that I can’t fully control?

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Fake News about Auto Parameterization/Simple Parameterization

I saw a question on Twitter today that took me down a little rabbit hole. And when I go down rabbit holes, I like to blog about it! There’s a TLDR at the bottom of this post if you’re short on time.

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Dear SQL DBA: Do DBAs Need a College Degree?

Our question this week comes from a database administrator who’s excited to be on a healthy career path, building their work experience, getting certified, and working with a more experienced mentor.

But they’re worried: will lacking a college degree block their career growth down the line?

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Dear SQL DBA: How Do I Prepare for Certification Exams? (video)

In this episode, I talk about how to strategize for and prepare for Microsoft Certification exams, using the Database Fundamentals exam as an example.

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