Blogs

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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Should I Automate my Windows Updates for SQL Server? (Dear SQL DBA Episode 10)

Your boss wants you to automate patching for your SQL Servers. Is that a good idea? How far should you take it? Find out a DBAs perspective.

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Why an Upgrade can Cause Performance Regressions (Dear SQL DBA Episode 9)

You finally got approval to move to new hardware and a fresher version of SQL Server. After months of work,  you do the migration and then… performance gets worse. What can cause this, and what do you look for?

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Free Poster: Cat DBA Says Not Right Meow

You’ve got 99 problems, and the request coming in ain’t one.

Maybe you need to channel your inner Cat DBA, just for a moment.

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Coming to SQL Saturday Portland? Plan a Vacation, too!

SQL Saturday Oregon will be held on Oct 22, 2016 this year– the weekend before the SQL PASS Summit.

As a Portlander, I love it when people come visit my town! Please consider taking a few extra days to enjoy checking out PDX before or after the event.

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MAXDOP of Confusion (Dear SQL DBA Episode 8)

Learn how to configure the Max Degree of Parallelism and Cost Threshold for Parallelism settings in SQL Server - and how SQL Server 2014 SP2 and SQL Server 2016 change the way that SQL Server automatically configures some SQL Servers with lots of cores.

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How to Level Up Your DBA Career (Dear SQL DBA)

You’re a Junior or mid-level Database Administrator with no obvious career path. How do you grow the right skills to level up your DBA career?

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