You can’t do everything with a columnstore index – but SQL Server’s optimizer can get pretty creative so it can use a columnstore index in ways you might not expect.
Deadlock graphs are incredibly helpful for figuring out why queries are getting automatically killed off by SQL Server.
I’m a big fan of the built-in Blocked Process Report in SQL Server. It’s come in handy for troubleshooting blocking situations for me many times.
One of the coolest things to come to SQL Server Management Studio in a long time might be hard to see at first: it’s tucked away in the Properties Window.
But once you see it, it might just be something that you use all the time.
You need to release schema changes while the SQL Server is in use. Learn why code generation tools write odd scripts and how to stay sane amid rapid releases in this 28 minute video… or scroll down to read a summary.
In many environments, it’s useful to know exactly when an index was created or modified.
Did that last code release help performance, or hurt it? It’s really helpful to know exactly when the code was deployed to prove that your change made something better. Or that you might need to roll it back.
It takes a little preparation to track changes to your indexes, but it’s easy to implement.
Short answer: the SQL Server optimizer will know that the table was truncated, but statistics might not update when you expect.
For the long answer, let’s walk through an example using the WideWorldImporters sample database.
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