Matthew McGiffen DBA

Why Does Everyone Have More Friends Than You?

• by Matthew McGiffen

• Matthew McGiffen DBA

No, the answer isn’t because you’re a DBA. This isn’t a technical post about databases, but rather a discussion of a statistical paradox that I read about recently. Statistics...

2019-10-01

20 reads

Instantaneous Transaction Rollback with SQL 2019

• by Matthew McGiffen

• Matthew McGiffen DBA

If you’ve read about the Accelerated Database Recovery feature in SQL Server 2019 you could be forgiven for thinking it’s just about speeding up database recovery time in case...

2019-10-09 (first published: 2019-09-25)

589 reads

Check Query Progress with Live Query Stats

• by Matthew McGiffen

• Matthew McGiffen DBA

This is something I touched on back in 2017 a little after the Live Query Statistics feature was introduced with SQL 2016, but I was using the functionality this...

2019-09-26 (first published: 2019-09-18)

511 reads

SQL Server Wishlist

• by Matthew McGiffen

• Matthew McGiffen DBA

This month for T-SQL Tuesday Kevin Chant asks us what our fantasy SQL feature would be. https://www.kevinrchant.com/2019/09/03/t-sql-tuesday-118-your-fantasy-sql-feature/ I think it’s appropriate to give a shout-out to Microsoft at this...

2019-09-11

55 reads

The 99 Flavours of SQL Server are all Vanilla

• by Matthew McGiffen

• Matthew McGiffen DBA

There are so many options for running SQL Server now. It can feel a little intimidating.  You’ve spent years gaining experience with SQL running on Windows Server. On bare...

2019-09-03 (first published: 2019-08-22)

465 reads

Query Store stores dates as UTC

• by Matthew McGiffen

• Matthew McGiffen DBA

One of the powerful aspects of Query Store is the ability to directly query the DMVs for details of historical executions and performance. A key view for this is...

2019-09-04 (first published: 2019-08-21)

201 reads

Find queries with high memory grants – using Query Store

• by Matthew McGiffen

• Matthew McGiffen DBA

I had a server that looked like it had been suffering from memory contention. I wanted to see what queries were being run that had high memory requirements. The...

2019-08-14 (first published: 2019-07-31)

547 reads

Adding a Column with a Default Constraint

• by Matthew McGiffen

• Matthew McGiffen DBA

Last week a question came up about adding a column to a table, and giving that column a default constraint. Would that default value be assigned to all existing...

2019-07-24 (first published: 2019-07-16)

381 reads

T-SQL Tuesday #114 Puzzle Party – Roundup

• by Matthew McGiffen

• Matthew McGiffen DBA

Here’s my round-up for this month’s T-SQL Tuesday. Thanks to everyone who contributed last week. It was great reading your posts and seeing the different ways you interpreted the...

2019-05-21

74 reads

T-SQL Tuesday #114 – Puzzle Party

• by Matthew McGiffen

• Matthew McGiffen DBA

A few years back I started running regular SQL workshops in my workplace. Teaching beginners the basics of querying databases with SQL, as well as more advanced topics for...

2019-05-07

84 reads