Guest Columnist: Grant Fritchey

Every Database Administrator, developer, report writer, and anyone else who writes T-SQL to access SQL Server data, must understand how to read and interpret execution plans. This book leads you right from the basics of capturing plans, through how to interrupt them in their various forms, graphical or XML, and then how to use the information you find there to diagnose the most common causes of poor query performance, and so optimize your SQL queries, and improve your indexing strategy.  Read more...

In this session, Grant Fritchey, Microsoft MVP, drills down into a few of the more obscure monitoring metrics that can give you very precise information about exactly what's happening within your server. He'll also show you how you can use custom metrics to enable these metrics in Red Gate's SQL Monitor.  Read more...

When you're getting spikes of high CPU, it's quite likely it's a rogue query. But how do you find out which query? Grant Fritchey explains, using SQL Monitor.  Read more...

Today we have a guest editorial from Grant Fritchey that might surprise you. Today Grant talks about clustered indexes in your tables.  Read more...

How to use Profiler to generate TSQL scripts that can be modified and automated to run as a server-side trace  Read more...

This book shows how to use of mixture of home-grown scripts, native SQL Server tools, and tools from the Red Gate SQL Toolbelt, to successfully develop database applications in a team environment, and make database development as similar as possible to "normal" development.  Read more...

A guest editorial from Grant Fritchey today talks examines the free advice that is often given in the forums. It's not free consulting and you shouldn't expect that.  Read more...

Today we have a guest editorial from Grant Fritchey that discusses the idea of rules based on certain types of measurements. Are they worth following? Or do we need to develop our own measures.  Read more...

Today we have a guest editorial from Grant Fritchey. The Boy Scouts motto is "be prepared" and most of you probably unconsciously follow that in your daily lives. Why is it that so many of us don't follow through on this same advice with our databases? Grant Fritchey gives a few examples of how you should "be prepared" for a database emergency.  Read more...

What great historical figures would make great DBAs? A guest editorial from Grant Fritchey examines the traits and characteristics we look for in this role and which famous people we might choose and why.  Read more...

Should you buy or build a monitoring system for your SQL Server? Todays' guest editorial from Grant Fritchey talks about the resistance to recommendations that many people seem to have.  Read more...

Need a new laptop bag? MVP Grant Fritchey brings us a review of a large and versatile brief case that's a little different than the rest.  Read more...

Every day, out in the SQL Server forums, the same questions come up again and again: why is this query running slow? Why isn't my index getting used? In order to arrive at the answer you have to ask the same return question in each case: have you looked at the execution plan? Grant Fritchey provides the only dedicated and detailed book on this essential topic.   Read more...

With the GDR release, a whole new set of deployment functionality has become available to VSTS: DB.  Read more...

A description of the things to avoid and do when involved with a beta test.  Read more...

An overview of how to collect data from TSQL into Operations Manager Performance Rules.  Read more...

The trials and tribulations of our first attempt using Virtual Servers  Read more...

In order to support multiple environments, a number of choices, not readily apparent, need to be made. This article outlines one approach that is working.  Read more...

Longtime SQL Server DBA and author Grant Fritchey decided to quiz his developers on how to perform some simple functions in T-SQL. Read about his results and see how you might do in taking his quiz.   Read more...

Testing is an important part of any software development process, but it's a part that many of us skimp on or ignore because of the tedious nature of testing. Longtime author Grant Fritchey has been working with Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals and has written us an article on how you can make your unit testing easier.   Read more...