Small Changes and Big Impacts
Using new features and changing code can cause problems in your environment. Always test to be sure that the impact is acceptable.
SQL Server 2016 Availability Group - Automatic Seeding with SSMS 17.x
In SQL Server 2016 the availability group automatic seeding functionality is implemented. This article will detail the steps to use of SSMS with automatic seeding and its limitations.
How to Send a TDE Encrypted Backup to Someone Outside Your Organization
Once you enable your database to be encrypted with Transparent Data Encryption (TDE), the physical database files, and the database backups are encrypted. If your database and database backup are encrypted, then how can you send the encrypted backup to a person outside your organization?
So Many Choices with SQL Server
There was a day when you didn’t have many decisions to make about a new SQL Server instance. You had to choose from a few editions and two licensing models: per proc or server cal. It wasn’t long ago that SQL Server would almost always be installed on a physical server on premises, and the […]
SQL Server 2017 for Linux First Impressions
Microsoft has released a version of SQL Server 2017 for Linux.
READ COMMITTED SNAPSHOT ISOLATION and High version_ghost_record_count
Developer shops may decide to use Read Committed Snapshot Isolation (RCSI) to reduce contention, and possibly improve performance, but it is not without its own pitfalls. In this article, Uwe Ricken describes a situation where long running transactions caused a severe performance degradation when RCSI was in use.
Ad Hoc Logs
We often make changes to production systems in an ad hoc manner. Steve asks how much auditing we might have in place.
Getting query text from SSMS into a CSV with PowerShell
You have times where you need to copy/paste something out of SSMS' grid view results pane that has a carriage return in it. Trying to copy/paste that data into Excel can be a headache and cause you to waste precious time reformatting. This just offers a tidbit of PowerShell code to help.
Scripting the Description of Database Tables Using Extended Properties
Stored procedures, for example, are very easy to document. The comment block at the beginning stays with the code and a CREATE or ALTER script contains everything to reproduce the proc. SQL Server tables, however, are more difficult to document. You can use Extended Properties to document columns and constraints, but working with Extended Properties is difficult at best. Phil Factor demonstrates ways to easily add Extended Properties to your build scripts.
Blogs
How to Find Expensive Queries in Amazon Redshift
Slow-running queries can degrade your Redshift cluster’s performance and lead to increased costs. Identifying...
The Notification Trap: How Input Fatigue Is Killing Deep Work in Tech
By gbargsley
If you've been here before, you know this blog is usually about SQL Server,...
Designing a Storage Load Test for SQL Server
I’ve been doing storage load tests for SQL Server for a long time, both...
Forums
How Long is a Long I/O?
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How Long is a Long...
T-SQL Trigonometric Functions in SQL Server
Comments posted to this topic are about the item T-SQL Trigonometric Functions in SQL...
Half of All Engineers
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Half of All Engineers
Question of the Day
How Long is a Long I/O?
In SQL Server 2025, a long I/O is recorded in the error log with message 833. How long much an I/O request be outstanding before this message is written to the log?
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