New Free Webcasts for November and December 2017

I’ve Just Scheduled a Whole Batch o’ Free Webcasts!

Webcasts are held on Thursdays at 9 AM Pacific / noon Eastern / 4 pm UTC.

Here’s the upcoming slate of topics:

• Oct 5 – RCSI and Snapshot Isolation
• Oct 19 – Pressure Testing Memory
• Oct 26 – What’s REALLY in That Index?
• Nov 9 – Filtered Columnstore Indexes
• Nov 16 – Defragging: Reorg or Rebuild?
• Nov 30 – In-Memory Indexes & Isolation
• Dec 7 – Indexing for Windowing Functions
• Dec 14 – Serializable & Repeatable Read

I can’t wait to put together these presentations, and I hope to see you on Thursdays!

Continue reading

SSMS Shortcuts & Secrets - Live Webcast Edition (video)

Last week, I had a great time giving a webcast for the terrific DBA Fundamentals Virtual Chapter. If you like free online training, check them out and sign up for future events.

Continue reading

Shortcut Update: Toggling Intellisense in SSMS

I like to use the keyboard whenever I can in SQL Server Management Studio. It’s not always easy to remember every shortcut though– especially when those shortcuts change!

Since around the SQL Server 2012 era, you’ve been able to switch Intellisense on or  off on SSMS with the shortcut chord: CTRL + Q, CTRL + I. I remembered this as “Control Quacky Intellisense.”

Continue reading

Running SQL Server in a Docker Container on a Mac

A user recently asked me what a good use case might be to run SQL Server on Linux in a Docker container.

Continue reading

The COMPRESS() TSQL Function in SQL Server 2016+

One cool little feature in SQL Server 2016 is COMPRESS(). It’s a TSQL function available in all editions that shrinks down data using the GZIP algorithm (documentation).

Continue reading

IF Statement Branching and Parameter Sniffing

It can be tricky to remember that SQL Server doesn’t short circuit on IF statements in stored procedures. Even when you know this, sometimes it’s hard to recognize the impacts.

Continue reading

How to Enable the Debug Channel in Extended Events for the Query Thread Profile XEvent in SQL Sever 2014+

Microsoft recently gave us a more lightweight way to trace data related to execution plan performance. As of SQL Server 2014 SP2, you can trace the query_thread_profile Extended Event.

Continue reading