The Scary DBA

Extended Events and Azure SQL Database

• by Grant Fritchey

• The Scary DBA

Knowledge of how your system behaves is vital to better control, maintain, and grow the system. While Azure provides all sorts of wonderful assistance within Azure SQL Database, you’re...

2021-04-19

5 reads

A Year of “Good Morning!”

• by Grant Fritchey

• The Scary DBA

Just a little over a year ago, I started posting a “Good Morning!” tweet on Twitter every work day. I’ve kept it up for over a year and I’d...

2021-04-06

88 reads

Extended Events: Embrace the XML

• by Grant Fritchey

• The Scary DBA

While XML is, without a doubt, a giant pain in the bottom, sometimes, the best way to deal with Extended Events is to simply embrace the XML. Now, I...

2021-04-12 (first published: 2021-04-05)

200 reads

Extended Events: Avoid the XML

• by Grant Fritchey

• The Scary DBA

One story I hear over and over goes like this: I tried setting up Extended Events, but then I saw the output was XML so I stopped. Look, I...

2021-04-08 (first published: 2021-03-29)

330 reads

Query Store as an Upgrade Tool

• by Grant Fritchey

• The Scary DBA

There are a lot of uses for Query Store, but one of the most interesting is as an upgrade tool. We all know that upgrades in SQL Server can...

2021-03-29 (first published: 2021-03-22)

300 reads

Apologies

• by Grant Fritchey

• The Scary DBA

Hello all! I wanted to apologize to you. I haven’t been keeping up with the blog well at all over the last couple of months. I have simply been...

2021-03-15

19 reads

Learning A Little Oracle

• by Grant Fritchey

• The Scary DBA

As part of my job, I’ve been tasked with doing some of my work in Oracle, so I’m learning Oracle. Allow me to share a little of my pain...

2021-02-19 (first published: 2021-02-15)

321 reads

SELECT * Hurts Performance, Badly

• by Grant Fritchey

• The Scary DBA

Quite a few years ago, I wrote a post about SELECT * and performance. That post had a bit of a click-bait title (freely admitted). I wrote the post...

2021-02-01 (first published: 2021-01-25)

664 reads

Getting Started Reading Execution Plans: Highest Cost Operator

• by Grant Fritchey

• The Scary DBA

Reading execution plans in SQL Server is just hard. There’s a lot to learn and understand. I previously outlined the basics I use to get started when I’m looking...

2020-12-22 (first published: 2020-12-14)

472 reads

Why Aren’t You Automating Database Deployments?

• by Grant Fritchey

• The Scary DBA

Building out processes and mechanisms for automated code deployments and testing can be quite a lot of work and isn’t easy. Now, try the same thing with data, and...

2020-12-03 (first published: 2020-11-23)

497 reads