Blogs

Will the Cloud Eat My DBA Job? (Dear SQL DBA Episode 31)

Will the Cloud Eat My DBA Job? (Dear SQL DBA Episode 31)

on February 23, 2017 • 8 min read

Will cloud services render DBAs obsolete? Does the cloud mean that developers will use less of SQL Server? In this post I talk about the future of database administration and give tips on strategizing your career.

Continue reading

Understanding avg_total_user_cost and avg_user_impact in Missing Index Requests

Understanding avg_total_user_cost and avg_user_impact in Missing Index Requests

on February 22, 2017 • 4 min read

The hardest thing about looking at index requests in SQL Server is understanding what the column names mean.

Continue reading

Adding Partitions to the Lower End of a Left Based Partition Function

Adding Partitions to the Lower End of a Left Based Partition Function

I recently got a table partitioning question from a reader:

We now need to load some historical data into the table for 2013 so I want to alter the function and schema to add monthly partitions for this. But I can’t work out how to do this using SPLIT? Every example and tutorial I’ve looked at shows how to add new partitions onto the end of a range, not split one in the middle.

Continue reading

Confused by sp_who2 (Dear SQL DBA Episode 30)

Confused by sp_who2 (Dear SQL DBA Episode 30)

By Kendra Little on February 16, 2017 • 6 min read

This week’s ‘Dear SQL DBA’ question gets us down to the essentials: how to I tell if a transaction is hanging?

Continue reading

The Top 3 Mistakes I Made Fighting Blocking

The Top 3 Mistakes I Made Fighting Blocking

on February 16, 2017 • 4 min read

Category: blocking , deadlocks , locking

At the beginning of the “Troubleshooting Blocking and Deadlocks” course, I mention that it took me a long time to get into using the tools I show in the course.

The tools are all free, and many of them are built into SQL Server.

Update: the course itself is now free, too!

Continue reading

New online course: Troubleshooting Blocking & Deadlocks for Beginners (Free!)

New online course: Troubleshooting Blocking & Deadlocks for Beginners (Free!)

on February 14, 2017 • 2 min read

I made y’all a SQL Server style Valentine’s day present: a new FREE online training course.

Continue reading

Should I Learn Fulltext Indexing? (Dear SQL DBA Episode 29)

Should I Learn Fulltext Indexing? (Dear SQL DBA Episode 29)

on February 9, 2017 • 7 min read

This week’s question is about a longstanding feature in SQL Server that sounds really cool: full-text search. If you’re learning performance tuning, how much time should you invest in researching and learning about full-text indexes?

Continue reading