Blogs

Sliding Window Table Partitioning: What to Decide Before You Automate

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

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

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How to Fix Lopsided Partitioned Tables

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?

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

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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3 Things I Wish I Learned Earlier as a SQL Server DBA

Hindsight is everything. I was lucky to be trained by a great team of DBAs back when I first started with SQL Server. But it’s hard to know exactly what you really need to know, particularly as new tools are becoming available.

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Useful Whitepapers for Planning SQL Server Migrations

Planning to move to new hardware for your SQL Server? Techniques like log shipping and database mirroring can be incredibly useful to make the change fast and painless– but you’ve got to pick the right techniques for your environment ahead of time, and know how to do a few things that aren’t in the GUI.

Here are some of my favorite whitepapers and resources to get you going.

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