You could keep a second copy of the database around. That will give you a comparison point. You have to sacrifice storage, but disks are pretty cheap.

Pretty much. Yes.

There are some exceptions. We're still working out how to deal with Azure SQL Database cross-database query setup. A couple of other issues along those very specific lines....

Nope. Just look at the logical reads. That's the amount of memory being used by the query.

It's likely that it's a version thing then, and certainly, likely to be 2014+ since that's when the cardinality estimation engine changed. Funny enough, Pinal's advice is the opposite of...

Thanks for the kind words. Really not doing that much, but thank you.

The easiest way to answer this question is to use Extended Events. The specific event you'd be looking...

It's to do the most efficient locking possible. Depending on what you're doing, a table lock may be more efficient. To be sure about all this, we'd need to gather...

There are lots of tools for doing health checks. I just found this one: https://mitchwheat.com/sqlfrontline/

I'm somewhat aware of this, but I don't have the precise answer. It's some kind of bug or glitch in the optimizer that gets a difference in row counts. I...

Ha! From the "I've burned way too many bridges and finally realize that throwing torches is a bad idea" DBA. I may learn slowly,...

I just can't believe some people. I requested our DBA to gather statistics from sys.dm_exec_procedure_stats in production and store them in a non-production database for analysis without compromising permissions....

The single best way to do this is through waits. What your server is waiting on is where your bottlenecks lie. Here is an excellent article showing how to...

A health check is generally not done very often. A server health check is looking at the server configuration, settings, etc., to determine whether or not they are appropriate for...

With such a tiny table, the engine thought that just locking the entire table would be easier than locking individual rows. Or, possibly, you're updating a significant number of those...

Oh yeah. It's part of my presentation.

Yes, it's insane that it isn't taken more seriously.  People will say that they take it seriously, but then not give the people what they need to...