Over the course of this stairway series, we're going to explore in detail the use of Extended Events as a diagnostic data collection tool, to track down causes of poor performance in SQL Server. This first level will start from a point known and familiar to many DBAs, namely the use of SQL Trace to track down and investigate long-running queries.
2021-12-22 (first published: 2015-12-23)
14,291 reads
In this Level, we'll walk through the basics of using the New Session dialog in the UI to create a new event session, define its events, actions and predicates, and establish a target for the session in which to collect the event data.
2021-11-24 (first published: 2016-01-13)
8,330 reads
In the next installment of our stairway to Extended Events, we delve into the Live Data and Target Data Viewers.
2021-02-26 (first published: 2016-05-25)
6,169 reads
It is widely acknowledged within the SQL Server community that baselines represent valuable information that DBAs should capture. Unfortunately, very few companies manage to log and report on this information, and DBAs are then forced to troubleshoot from the hip and scramble to find evidence to prove that the database is not the problem. This article will make a compelling argument for why DBAs must start capturing baseline information, and will create a roadmap for subsequent posts.
2020-06-30 (first published: 2012-11-19)
21,669 reads
If you have not been capturing baselines on your production servers, then today is the day you can start. This article provides scripts, valid for SQL Server 2005 and higher, which anyone can use to capture basic information about a SQL Server instance.
2020-06-30 (first published: 2012-11-27)
37,039 reads
By capturing baseline data, a well-prepared DBA should get a good idea of what potential issues they will face. In this article Erin Stellato looks at Wait Statistics and what they can tell you about your databases.
2020-06-30 (first published: 2013-02-04)
19,870 reads
In this level, we're going to dig a little deeper into the Extended Events engine, its architecture, and fundamental components. It will give you a deeper understanding of why, in general, an Extended Events session is inherently lower in overhead than an equivalent SQL Trace. We'll also investigate how to design our event sessions to minimize any unnecessary overhead during event data collection, even when we need to create relatively complex event sessions to investigate difficult performance problems.
2019-03-26 (first published: 2016-08-17)
4,688 reads
Today we have a guest editorial from Erin Stellato that reminds us that we have had support from many, and it's important to thank them from time to time.
2015-12-04
132 reads
In this article, we'll tackle the topic of monitoring disk space usage. By tracking how much is in use and how much is still available, over time we'll have the data we need for better capacity planning, and can ensure that a database won't ever run out of disk space.
2013-01-23
10,257 reads
Truncate Table Pitfalls Truncating a table can be gloriously fast—and spectacularly dangerous when used carelessly....
You can find all the session materials for the presentation “Indexing for Dummies” that...
By Kevin3NF
Parts 1, 2 and 3 got you to the (SQL) engine room. Now we...
hi, just to get this part out of the way, if my intended target...
Hey All, I'm looking for a free ERD tool. Does anyone have any recommendations?...
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Stairway to Azure SQL Hyperscale...
The new vector datatype in SQL Server 2025 requires a number dimension parameter. What is the maximum number of dimensions supported?
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