Blogs

Warning Signs That You Have a SQL Server Backup Problem

Warning Signs That You Have a SQL Server Backup Problem

on February 9, 2016 • 3 min read

Your backups seem fine. They weren’t failing, the last time you checked. But trouble may be lurking.

Here’s the top 5 warning signs I’ve seen that backups haven’t been thought through.

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Why ROWLOCK Hints Can Make Queries Slower and Blocking Worse in SQL Server

Why ROWLOCK Hints Can Make Queries Slower and Blocking Worse in SQL Server

on February 4, 2016 • 7 min read

Sometimes when SQL Server gets slow, developers and DBAs find that the problem is blocking. After lots of work to identify the query or queries which are the blockers, frequently one idea is to add ROWLOCK hints to the queries to solve the problem or to disable PAGE locks on the table. This often backfires - here’s why.

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Sliding Window Table Partitioning: What to Decide Before You Automate

Sliding Window Table Partitioning: What to Decide Before You Automate

on February 2, 2016 • 5 min read

Sliding-Window-Partitioning

Before you do all the work to map out a complex sliding window table partitioning scheme for your SQL Server tables, here’s the top five questions I’d think through carefully:

1) Do You Need Table Partitioning?

Some folks think they need partitioning for performance– but it really shines as a data management feature. Just because you’ve got tables with millions of rows in them doesn’t necessarily mean that partitioning will make queries faster. Make sure you’ve worked through traditional indexing and query re-writes first. Partitioning is lots of work, so don’t skip this question.

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How to Check if an Index Exists on a Table in SQL Server

How to Check if an Index Exists on a Table in SQL Server

on January 28, 2016 • 5 min read

Category: indexing

It seems like this should be easy. But it’s not.

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How to Fix Lopsided Partitioned Tables

How to Fix Lopsided Partitioned Tables

on January 26, 2016 • 6 min read

Over the years I’ve gotten lots of emails and questions from students that start like this:

Help! My partitioned table has the wrong data in a partition! It’s lopsided. I started trying to fix it, but…

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Does Query Store Regressed Queries View Catch Nasty Parameter Sniffing?

Does Query Store Regressed Queries View Catch Nasty Parameter Sniffing?

on January 21, 2016 • 7 min read

SQL Server 2016’s new Query Store feature has an option that looks for “regressed” query plans.

But does it catch “bad” parameter sniffing?

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How to Find Missing Index Requests in Query Store

How to Find Missing Index Requests in Query Store

on January 19, 2016 • 6 min read

SQL Server 2016’s new Query Store feature makes it easier than ever for DBAs and developers to identify the most important queries to tune– and perhaps apply a quick fix by pinning an execution plan.

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