The Slow Growing Problems
Not every problem is going to fire off an alert, but it still might be something that you want to track.
2026-06-15
313 reads
Monitoring
Create and Read the Analysis Services Flight Recorder
This article explains how to customize an extended events session in SQL Server Analysis Services for auditing and monitoring
2025-11-05
1,726 reads
How to Measure Replication Latency in SQL Server AlwaysOn Synchronous Availability Groups
Synchronous replicas in SQL Server Availability Groups promise no data loss, but they don’t promise zero delay; under heavy load they can still fall behind. This article shows how to measure and track that hidden replication delay using SQL Server performance counters, so you can see how well your system keeps up during IO‑intensive operations and plan maintenance more safely.
2025-09-17
2025-07-23
6,702 reads
Multiple Monitoring Tools
Steve wonders if it is worth it to use multiple monitoring systems for a database.
2025-06-20
174 reads
What Metrics Do You Collect?
Monitoring and observability are becoming more important in today's 24x7x365 environment for applications. Steve asks what data helps you solve problems today. Tell us what's important to you.
2024-06-28
239 reads
How using a database monitoring tool helps DBAs create value for the whole organization
The rise of cross platform databases which are both on-premises and in the cloud, alongside decreasing customer satisfaction and trust in digital channels, has increased the importance - and value - of enhanced database monitoring. Find out how using a database monitoring tool creates value for the whole organization.
2023-12-08
Scaling Up Monitoring
How do we design a monitoring system? The Amazon Prime team realized they didn't do a good job and changed their architecture.
2023-05-31
232 reads
Metrics and Measures
We need to measure and monitor things to become better, but we need to keep an eye on what the actual goal is from this monitoring.
2023-03-20
180 reads
The Complexity of Metrics
We need to monitor our servers, but individual metrics have more complexity than just setting simple limits for their readings.
2023-02-06 (first published: 2023-01-30)
380 reads
Blogs
Architecting Zero Downtime Deployments–Day of Data Boston
By Steve Jones
Here are the resources for my talk at Day of Data Boston. Slides –...
The Book of Redgate:A Prehistory
By Steve Jones
I’ve covered the values in a number of previous posts on the Book of...
Evidence-bound: what AgentDBA will and won’t link
By Arun Sirpal
When the evidence names the database, it says so. When it doesn’t, it stops....
Forums
Split Large Queries in Athena with a Simple Modulo Trick
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Split Large Queries in Athena...
Finding Trailing Spaces
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Finding Trailing Spaces
Question of the Day
Finding Trailing Spaces
I have some data in a SQL Server 2025 database. It looks like this for the dbo.Customer table:
CustomerID CustomerName PreferredName 1 Steve Steve 2 Andy Andy 3 Brian Brian 4 Allan Allan 5 Devin Devin 6 Steve Steve 7 Sally SallyI want to detect which names have a single trailing space. The CustomerName is a varchar() and the PreferredName is a CHAR(). Does this query detect the problem rows?
SELECT
CustomerID,
CustomerName,
PreferredName
FROM Customer
WHERE CustomerName <> RTRIM(CustomerName)
OR PreferredName <> RTRIM(PreferredName); See possible answers