For static databases, it’s quite useful to set SQL Server’s “read only” database property to true. When the database is read-only, it ensures that the last backup you took is still valid… as long as nothing bad happens to that backup file.
Update, 6/21/2016: Be careful using indirect checkpoint with failover clusters if your SQL Server 2014 instance is not fully patched. See KB 3166902. This bug was fixed in SQL Server 2016 prior to RTM.
SQL Server 2016 introduces big new features, but it also includes small improvements as well. Many of these features are described in the “It Just Runs Faster” series of blog posts by Bob Ward and Bob Dorr.
SQL Server 2016’s Query Store feature promises to be better than Plan Guides ever were. The Query Store lets you track query performance, collect execution plans, and force a specific plan if you notice that a query is sometimes fast, and sometimes slow.
Whenever you’ve got a new feature, one of the first things to ask is, “What happens when I break it?”
Because we’re going to break stuff.
I like SQL Server’s new Live Query Statistics feature a lot for testing and tuning large queries. One of my first questions was whether this could replace using actual execution plans, or if it’s useful to use both during testing.
Finding: Both are useful. And both can impact query performance.
Managing indexes got trickier with SQL Server 2012. SQL Server has tracked and reported statistics on how often indexes are used and requested since SQL Server 2005. As of SQL Server 2012, suddenly all that information started getting reset whenever anyone ran ALTER INDEX REBUILD.
SQL Server 2016’s new Query Store feature makes it easier than ever for DBAs and developers to identify the most important queries to tune– and perhaps apply a quick fix by pinning an execution plan.
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