SQL Server Is Slow – Part 2 of 4(?)
The 10-Minute Outside-In Triage Don’t Blame SQL First It’s 9:05 AM and your helpdesk lights up: “The SQL Server is down. Nothing works.” By 9:07, everyone is staring at...
2025-09-24
24 reads
Kevin3NF
- Interests: Cycling, family, sci-fi, DBA stuff
SQL Server Failover Cluster Instances
Old Reliable Still Matters If you’ve been around SQL Server for a while, you’ve heard of Failover Cluster Instances (FCIs). They’ve been part of SQL’s high availability toolbox since...
2025-09-19 (first published: 2025-09-03)
210 reads
SQL Server Log Shipping: The Tried and True of DR
It’s not glamorous, but it works In a world where shiny new HA/DR features get all the press, there’s one SQL Server technology that just keeps doing its job....
2025-09-15 (first published: 2025-08-27)
217 reads
SQL Server Availability Groups
Flexibility and Scale at the Database Level When SQL Server 2012 introduced Availability Groups (AGs), they changed the HA/DR game. Unlike Failover Cluster Instances (FCIs), which protect the whole...
2025-09-10
23 reads
SQL Server I/O Bottlenecks: It’s Not Always the Disk’s Fault
“SQL Server is slow.” We’ve all heard it. But that doesn’t always mean SQL Server is the problem. And “slow” means nothing without context and ability to verify. More...
2025-08-27 (first published: 2025-08-06)
503 reads
SQL Server Backups: The Basics
If you’re responsible for a SQL Server instance, you need working, consistent backups. Not just a .bak file here and there, but a plan that runs automatically and covers...
2025-08-20
30 reads
SQL Server Maintenance Plans
If you’re a DBA, sysadmin, IT manager, or Accidental DBA, you’ve probably seen SQL Server’s built-in Maintenance Plans. They live right there in SSMS under the “Management” node, quietly...
2025-08-15 (first published: 2025-07-30)
426 reads
DBCC CHECKDB: Just Because It’s Quiet Doesn’t Mean It’s Safe
Corruption isn’t a “maybe someday” problem – what you need to do now. Stop. Don’t panic. You just ran DBCC CHECKDB for the first time in a while (or...
2025-08-13
23 reads
SQL Server Post-Install Configurations
The SQL Server installer has gotten better: tempdb configuration, MAXDOP, and even max memory can now be configured during setup. But don’t be fooled: there’s still a post-install checklist...
2025-07-23
69 reads
SQL Server Database Compatibility Levels
Why You Shouldn’t Overlook This Quiet but Critical SQL Server Setting If you’ve ever upgraded a SQL Server instance and something just broke in your application, chances are...
2025-07-16
455 reads
Blogs
AI: Blog a Day – Day 8: RAG – Retrieval Augmented Generation
By Vinay Thakur
RAG — Retrieval Augmented Generation. we have covered so far — embeddings, vectors, vector...
AI: Blog a Day – Day 7: Vector and Vector Databases
By Vinay Thakur
Continuing from Day 6 we learned Embeddings, Semantic Search and Checks, on Day 7...
AI: Blog a Day – Day 6: Embeddings – How AI Understands
By Vinay Thakur
Continuing from Day 5 where we covered notebooks, HuggingFace and fine tuning AI now...
Forums
Not Just an Upgrade
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Restoring On Top I
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Designing Delta Tables with Liquid Clustering: Real-World Patterns for Data Engineers
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Designing Delta Tables with Liquid...
Question of the Day
Restoring On Top I
I am doing development work on a database and want to keep a backup so I can reset my database. I make some changes and want to restore over top of my changes. When I run this code, what happens?
USE Master BACKUP DATABASE DNRTest TO DISK = 'dnrtest.bak' GO USE DNRTest GO CREATE TABLE MyTest(myid INT) GO USE master RESTORE DATABASE DNRTest FROM DISK = 'dnrtest.bak' WITH REPLACESee possible answers