Blogs

The Death of SQL Server Service Packs

The Death of SQL Server Service Packs

on October 6, 2017 • 8 min read

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.

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IO Patterns for Index Seeks: There May be a Lot of Read Ahead Reads

IO Patterns for Index Seeks: There May be a Lot of Read Ahead Reads

on October 4, 2017 • 4 min read

I received a question recently asking about disk access patterns for index seeks in SQL Server. The question suggested that index seeks would have a random read pattern.

Is this necessarily the case?

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Love and Hate for SSMS

Love and Hate for SSMS

on September 29, 2017 • 15 min read

People have strong feelings about SQL Server Management Studio: they love it AND they hate it. In this week’s episode, I talk about why people have such conflicting feelings about SSMS, and how to work it all out.

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New Free Webcasts for November and December 2017

New Free Webcasts for November and December 2017

By Kendra Little on September 28, 2017 • 1 min read

I’ve Just Scheduled a Whole Batch o’ Free Webcasts!

Webcasts are held on Thursdays at 9 AM Pacific / noon Eastern / 4 pm UTC.

Here’s the upcoming slate of topics:

  • Oct 5 – RCSI and Snapshot Isolation
  • Oct 19 – Pressure Testing Memory
  • Oct 26 – What’s REALLY in That Index?
  • Nov 9 – Filtered Columnstore Indexes
  • Nov 16 – Defragging: Reorg or Rebuild?
  • Nov 30 – In-Memory Indexes & Isolation
  • Dec 7 – Indexing for Windowing Functions
  • Dec 14 – Serializable & Repeatable Read

I can’t wait to put together these presentations, and I hope to see you on Thursdays!

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How Do I Analyze a SQL Server Execution Plan?

How Do I Analyze a SQL Server Execution Plan?

on September 22, 2017 • 22 min read

A query is slow, and you figure out how to collect the query execution plan. Now what?

In this video, I talk “big picture” about what execution plans are, what “cost” is, why to collect “compiled for” values, and the steps I take to analyze execution plans while performance tuning queries.

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The Case of the Rowgroup Deadlock in a Columnstore Index

The Case of the Rowgroup Deadlock in a Columnstore Index

on September 21, 2017 • 3 min read

I came across a fun deadlock when writing demos for my session on the Read Committed isolation level this week. (It’s OK to call it “fun” when it’s not production code, right?)

I was playing around with a nonclustered columnstore index on a disk-based table. Here’s what I was doing:

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Do I Need to Master PowerShell?

Do I Need to Master PowerShell?

By Kendra Little on September 12, 2017 • 8 min read

As a SQL Server DBA, do you need to be a master of PowerShell scripts?

In this 9 minute episode, I talk about how much you need to know about PowerShell, and examples of ways I personally use (and struggle with) PowerShell.

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