Blogs

Attempting to Force a Narrow Plan on an Update with Query Store

When you force a plan with Query Store, you may not get what you expect. Here’s an example.

Continue reading

Kalen Delaney and Inspiration for Adventure

This post is part of TSQL Tuesday, a monthly blog party. You’re welcome to join in this party: if you’d like email notifications of future topics, here’s how to set them up.

This month’s topic is “Folks Who Have Made a Difference”, by Ewald Cress.

Continue reading

The Case of the Weirdly Long COLUMNSTORE_BUILD_THROTTLE Wait

A funny thing happened on the way to my filtered nonclustered columnstore demo recently…

It was taking forever to create my demo index.

Continue reading

Things I Learned from Speaker Idol 2017 at the SQL PASS Summit

I was lucky enough to serve as a judge for the Speaker Idol competition at the SQL PASS Summit conference this year. One of the great thing about watching presentations and giving feedback on them is that you learn a lot about speaking by watching sessions and crafting your feedback.

Continue reading

I Thought I Was An Introvert. Turns Out I Was Anxious as #@*] (Dear SQL DBA Episode 53)

In this week’s episode, I’m not answering a reader’s question. Instead, I’m talking about my personal experience with anxiety.

This episode touches on on healthcare, religion, and squishy emotions – and there’s at least one curse word. I don’t talk tech in this episode. (Don’t worry, there’s more of that coming in future weeks.)

Continue reading

SQL PASS Summit 2017 Day 2 - Keynote Notes and Ideas

This morning, Dr Rimma Nehme tells us the story of the birth of Azure Cosmos DB, a global, scale-out database system.

Continue reading

SQL PASS Summit 2017: Day 1 Keynote Thoughts and Memories

Whee! It’s the first day of the main SQL PASS Summit conference and I made it to the keynote early for the first time ever. The hype says we’re going to see some great presenters this morning.

Continue reading

Locked Pages, Working Set, and Private Bytes

One of the great things about writing presentations is that it spurs you to “clean up” your definitions. When it comes to writing a slide about something, I ask myself, “Do I really know what that is?” I check my assumptions, and clarify how I think about something.

This week I was working with SQL Server memory settings, and I “cleaned up” my understanding of the following definitions.

Continue reading

My Two Sessions at the SQL PASS Summit 2017

PASS Summit sessions have been scheduled, and I’m excited to be giving two sessions this year AND helping judge Speaker Idol!

I’m looking forward to teaching, learning a ton, and connecting with lots of people who love working with data.

Continue reading

The Death of SQL Server Service Packs

SQL Server Service Packs are going away, starting with SQL Server 2017. I talk about why I think this is a good thing, and discuss Cumulative Updates, Service Packs, and the process of updating SQL Server.

Continue reading