Blogs

Estimated vs. Actual Number of Rows in Nested Loop Operators

This is one of those little details that confused me a ton when I was first working with execution plans.

One problem with learning to work with plans is that there’s just SO MUCH to look at. And it’s a bit spread out. So, even when looking at a single tooltip, things can be confusing.

Let’s talk about the nested loop operator, who can be particularly weird to understand.

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Finding Your Voice as a Speaker (Dear SQL DBA Episode 15)

Learn what it’s like to find and develop your voice as a technical speaker in this week’s episode of Dear SQL DBA.

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Do Clustered Index Columns Count Against Max Nonclustered Key Size?

SQL Server 2016 and Azure SQL Database have a lot of little perks. One little thing that changed is that the maximum key size allowed for nonclustered indexes was raised from 900 bytes to 1700 bytes.

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Collect and Baseline Wait Statistics (Dear SQL DBA Episode 14)

What are the best tools to collect and baseline wait statistics? Should you write your own? Watch the 18 minute video or read the episode transcript below.

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Free Poster: tempdb data files in SQL Server

The tempdb database is a strange place in SQL Server.

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Developer Seeks DBA Career (Dear SQL DBA, Episode 13)

A C# developer wants to be a DBA, but is having a hard time landing a job. Should they take a pay cut and go for a Junior level job? Or could there be another path?

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Does Adding NOINDEX Change DBCC CHECKDB with PHYSICAL_ONLY?

The NOINDEX option does change the behavior of DBCC CHECKDB (even if you’re already using PHYSICAL_ONLY). Here’s how the two options compare to one another, and how to see the difference yourself in a simple example.

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Teach Yourself SQL Server Performance Tuning (Dear SQL DBA Episode 12)

You’d love to have a job tuning SQL Servers, but you don’t have an environment to practice in. Here’s how to teach yourself performance tuning and prepare yourself to land and succeed in job interviews.

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SSMS Tips: Templates and Control+Shift+M

Templates are extremely handy for tasks that you need to do repeatedly, but with different parameter values. The coolest part is that once you get the hang of them, you can create your own custom templates.

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Altering an INT Column to a BIGINT (Dear SQL DBA Episode 11)

You need to change an INT column to a BIGINT in a large table. Learn why this schema change can make your transaction log explode, and how to avoid it.

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