Blogs

Auto-Tuning: Automatic Plan Correction is Cleared on Restart

Auto-Tuning: Automatic Plan Correction is Cleared on Restart

The new Enterprise Automatic Tuning feature in SQL Server 2017 may sound intimidating at first – one question I get a lot lately is whether or not there’s a future for DBAs. Will Auto-Tune mean we don’t need any more human tuning?

Well, not anytime super soon.

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Partitioned Tables: Rolling/Rotating/Round-Robining Partitions

Partitioned Tables: Rolling/Rotating/Round-Robining Partitions

By Kendra Little on March 26, 2018 • 3 min read

I recently received a terrific question about options for “rotating” table partitions.

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Why Is My Function Missing From sys.dm_exec_query_stats and Query Store?

Why Is My Function Missing From sys.dm_exec_query_stats and Query Store?

I just spent 90 minutes of my life figuring out a detail about sys.dm_exec_query_stats which I’m pretty sure I figured out five years ago, but didn’t write a blog post about.

Time to write a blog post, so I can save time when I go searching for this in a couple years.

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Adding a Downloadable Calendar Event File to Wordpress without a Plugin

Adding a Downloadable Calendar Event File to Wordpress without a Plugin

By Kendra Little on March 19, 2018 • 5 min read

Let’s say you’ll be doing an event soon – say a Facebook Live event– and you want to create a calendar reminder for folks to download. Lots of us live and die by calendar invites, so this can be helpful to get people to attend.

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New Course:  Why Table Partitioning Does Not Speed Up Query Performance – With One Exception

New Course: Why Table Partitioning Does Not Speed Up Query Performance – With One Exception

By Kendra Little on March 15, 2018 • 1 min read

Table Partitioning is Tricky Business

In this new course you will learn why SQL Server’s table partitioning feature won’t make your queries against disk-based rowstore indexes faster– and may even make them slower.

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The Case of MAX() Requiring an Index Scan, While TOP(1)/ORDER BY  DESC Does Not

The Case of MAX() Requiring an Index Scan, While TOP(1)/ORDER BY DESC Does Not

By Kendra Little on March 14, 2018 • 10 min read

Most of the time in SQL Server, the MAX() function and a TOP(1) ORDER BY DESC will behave very similarly.

If you give them a rowstore index leading on the column in question, they’re generally smart enough to go to the correct end of the index, and – BOOP! – just pluck out the data you need without doing a big scan.

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SQL Server 2026: BAGI Edition (#TSQL2SDAY 100!)

SQL Server 2026: BAGI Edition (#TSQL2SDAY 100!)

By Kendra Little on March 13, 2018 • 3 min read

It’s T-SQL Tuesday’s 8 year birthday (or close enough), and Adam Machanic has challenged us with the question: what will the world be like when T-SQLTuesday turns 16?

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