Dealing with a Fragmented Heap

Just for the record, this happens to be one of my favorite interview questions to ask candidates.

At some point in...

The Performance Impact to Prefix Stored Procedures with sp_

Last week I ran across a blog post by Axel Achten (B|T) that outlined a few reasons why you should...

T-SQL Tuesday - Use Powershell to Restore a Database on a Different Server

T-SQL Tuesday - This month's party is hosted by Wayne Sheffield (blog|twitter), and the topic is about Powershell and how to use...

What is DBCC SHOW_STATISTICS Telling Me About My Data?

Per Books Online, DBCC SHOW_STATISTICS displays current query optimization statistics for a table or indexed view.  Basically it shows you...

How to Remove (Undo) Table Partitioning

I have seen plenty of articles and blog posts out there for how to setup and implement table partitioning, but...

sp_PerformanceCounters - Get a Health Check of SQL Server's Performance

During your career as a DBA, you'll run across articles by SQL experts or other DBAs that just give you...

Exam 70-432 - SQL Server 2008 Implementation and Maintenance

For years, actually more like a decade, I've been saying that I'm going to get certified in SQL Server.  Well...

SQL Server has encountered % occurence(s) of cachestore flush for the % cachestore (part of plan cache) due to some database maintenance or reconfigure operations

Have you seen this type of an informational message in your SQL errorlog before?  If so, then I hope the...

How to Use xp_dirtree to List All Files in a Folder - Part 2

In a previous blog post, I demonstrated how you can use an undocumented stored procedure, master.sys.xp_dirtree, to list all files...

SQL Saturday #143 - Washington, DC

Last week, I attended my very first SQL Saturday event in Washington, DC.  Although I don't live anywhere near Washington,...