Blogs

Will the Cloud Eat My DBA Job? (Dear SQL DBA Episode 31)

Will the Cloud Eat My DBA Job? (Dear SQL DBA Episode 31)

on February 23, 2017

Will cloud services render DBAs obsolete? Does the cloud mean that developers will use less of SQL Server? In this post I talkΒ about the future of database administration and give tips on strategizing your career.

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Understanding avg_total_user_cost and avg_user_impact in Missing Index Requests

Understanding avg_total_user_cost and avg_user_impact in Missing Index Requests

on February 22, 2017

The hardest thing about looking at index requests in SQL Server is understanding what the column names mean.

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Adding Partitions to the Lower End of a Left Based Partition Function

Adding Partitions to the Lower End of a Left Based Partition Function

on February 21, 2017

I recently got a table partitioning question from a reader:

We now need to load some historical data into the table for 2013 so I want to alter the function and schema to add monthly partitions for this. But I can’t work out how to do this using SPLIT? Every example and tutorial I’ve looked at shows how to add new partitions onto the end of a range, not split one in the middle.

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Confused by sp_who2 (Dear SQL DBA Episode 30)

Confused by sp_who2 (Dear SQL DBA Episode 30)

on February 16, 2017

This week’s ‘Dear SQL DBA’ question gets us down to the essentials: how to I tell if a transaction is hanging?

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The Top 3 Mistakes I Made Fighting Blocking

The Top 3 Mistakes I Made Fighting Blocking

on February 16, 2017

At the beginning of the “Troubleshooting Blocking and Deadlocks” course, I mention that it took me a long time to get into using the tools I show in the course.

The tools are all free, and many of them are built into SQL Server.

Update: the course itself is now free, too!

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New online course: Troubleshooting Blocking & Deadlocks for Beginners (Free!)

New online course: Troubleshooting Blocking & Deadlocks for Beginners (Free!)

on February 14, 2017

I made y’all a SQL Server style Valentine’s day present: a new FREE online training course.

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Should I Learn Fulltext Indexing? (Dear SQL DBA Episode 29)

Should I Learn Fulltext Indexing? (Dear SQL DBA Episode 29)

on February 9, 2017

This week’s question is about a longstanding feature in SQL Server that sounds really cool: full-text search. If you’re learning performance tuning, how much time should you invest in researching and learning about full-text indexes?

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