Remembering Robert Davis, aka @SQLSoldier

I woke up early on Tuesday with a hundred things to do and plenty of energy to match my task list. By noon, I’d made a loaf of bread, helped a friend solve a tech mystery, and had various professional adventures.

Then I opened Twitter and saw the news that Robert Davis passed away.

I haven’t really gotten much done in the hours since, except think about Robert. And cry a bit. And laugh. It feels weird laughing, but I think Robert would understand.

Continue reading

Sys.dm_db_tuning_recommendations Makes Suggestions if Automatic Tuning is Not Enabled

I naturally think about the new sys.dm_db_tuning_recommendations DMV when I’m working with the new Automatic Tuning feature in SQL Server 2017.

But I came across a post by Grant Fritchey recently, in which he remarked in the conclusion…

Continue reading

Auto-Tuning: Automatic Plan Correction is Cleared on Restart

The new Enterprise Automatic Tuning feature in SQL Server 2017 may sound intimidating at first – one question I get a lot lately is whether or not there’s a future for DBAs. Will Auto-Tune mean we don’t need any more human tuning?

Well, not anytime super soon.

Continue reading

Partitioned Tables: Rolling/Rotating/Round-Robining Partitions

I recently received a terrific question about options for “rotating” table partitions.

Continue reading

Why Is My Function Missing From sys.dm_exec_query_stats and Query Store?

I just spent 90 minutes of my life figuring out a detail about sys.dm_exec_query_stats which I’m pretty sure I figured out five years ago, but didn’t write a blog post about.

Time to write a blog post, so I can save time when I go searching for this in a couple years.

Continue reading

Adding a Downloadable Calendar Event File to Wordpress without a Plugin

Let’s say you’ll be doing an event soon – say a Facebook Live event– and you want to create a calendar reminder for folks to download. Lots of us live and die by calendar invites, so this can be helpful to get people to attend.

Continue reading

New Course: Why Table Partitioning Does Not Speed Up Query Performance – With One Exception

Table Partitioning is Tricky Business

In this new course you will learn why SQL Server’s table partitioning feature won’t make your queries against disk-based rowstore indexes faster– and may even make them slower.

Continue reading