The word ‘statistics’ is awfully confusing in SQL Server
It can mean “statistics” themselves – little objects that describe the distribution of data in columns or indexes to help the optimizer.
Or it can mean “usage statistics” - dynamic management views that let you see how many times an index has been used or requested, how many times a query has been run, that kind of thing.
This week’s ‘Dear SQL DBA’ question gets us down to the essentials: how to I tell if a transaction is hanging?
I’m not always the best at learning to use graphical interfaces. Maybe that’s why I often don’t like them?
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.
If you use SQL Server’s blocked process report or collect deadlock graphs, occasionally you’ll come across things that look like this:
waitresource=“PAGE: 6:3:70133 " waitresource=“KEY: 6:72057594041991168 (ce52f92a058c)”
If you haven’t checked out Microsoft’s new WideWorldImporters sample database for 2016, it’s a pretty cool new little database. The database makes it easy to play around with new 2016 features, and it even ships with some cool little executables to run inserts in the “workload-drivers” folder.
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