Microsoft Data Platform MVP Award

I’m very pleased, humbled, surprised and overall gleeful to announce I’m awarded the Microsoft Data Platform MVP 2017 Award.

This is...

Compare Execution Plans

Have you ever wanted to compare execution plans from SQL Server Management Studio? Well with the newer version of the...

Speaking at SQL Konferenz 2017

I’m heading back across the Atlantic this February for SQL Konferenz. This is an intimate SQL Server event in Darmstadt...

Changing what SSMS opens on startup

When you open SSMS a connection window automatically comes up. Then once you pick your server, connection type, username and...

SQL Containers and Networking

I recently talked with the guys over at SQL Data Partners on their podcast about SQL Server and containers. It...

Columnstore Indexes – part 97 (“Working with Strings”)

Continuation from the previous 96 parts, the whole series can be found at http://www.nikoport.com/columnstore/.
After many years of using & fighting the...

Availability Group on SQL Server 2016

The Challenge
One of our clients in the gaming industry wanted to set up a high availability solution in their data...

Improve performance by replacing temp tables with memory optimized tables - Part 1

There are many cases where you will be using temp tables, and many of us are trying to seek for...

Write-Host || Cannot invoke this function because the current host does not implement it

Issue: While running powershell in SQL job step, I am getting below error: –
A job step received an error at...

My backup and SLEEP_BPOOL_FLUSH

I noticed that my backup was taking longer than usual. I went to Perfmon to look at some counters, more...