This month the SQLskills team is presenting a series of blog posts aimed at helping Accidental DBAs ‘keep the SQL Server lights on’. It’s a little taster to let you know what we’ll be covering in our brand new Immersion Event for The Accidental DBA, which we’ll be presenting for the first time in September 2013 in [...]
Kimberly L. Tripp
Improving my SQL skills through your questions!
The Accidental DBA (Day 15 of 30): Statistics Maintenance
Posted on: June 15, 2013 9:20 am
Removing duplicate indexes
Posted on: July 15, 2011 8:47 am
SQL Server has a horrible habit of letting bad habits move forward (for the sake of backward compatibility [e.g. autoshrink]). And, I do understand *some* of the reasons for allowing some of these “features/options” to move forward. However, there are a few that frustrate me and I’ve talked about this one quite often. SQL Server [...]
Indexes: just because you can, doesn’t mean you should!
Posted on: March 28, 2011 9:10 am
I've decided to create a new series of posts – just because you can, doesn't mean you should! These are going to go in a new category called "Just because" and I've already got a few lined up in this series. The first one is one I've spoken about often and one that's near/dear to [...]
How much does that key cost? (plus sp_helpindex9)
Posted on: November 12, 2010 8:27 am
OK, two in two days? What's wrong with me (is what Paul said) after he said – who are you and where is my wife? But, this one is a short one, specifically a follow-on to my prior post about "Disk space is cheap…" I did a bit of simple math on the internal overhead and [...]
The MOSS Show Sharepoint Podcast – Episode 21 is live!
Posted on: April 29, 2010 3:50 am
Paul and I chatted with Hilton Giesenow about SQL Server, Sharepoint and Involuntary DBAs. Paul blogged a bit more details about it in the post titled: Paul and Kimberly interview from MVP Summit. And, you can get the actual interview here: Episode 21 – Diving Into SQL Server With Paul Randal & Kim Tripp Enjoy! kt
Spring cleaning your indexes – Part II
Posted on: March 27, 2009 9:33 am
I started the series here: http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/kimberly/post/Spring-cleaning-your-indexes-Part-I.aspx and I want to continue with Part II today by clarifying some great questions/comments that have come up on the series. In Part III, I'll give you a few more ways to get rid of (or consolidate) indexes. And, I think there's still a bit more that Paul and I [...]
Spring cleaning your indexes – Part I
Posted on: March 23, 2009 2:14 pm
First and foremost, happy spring! I truly hope we’re on the path to summer (although who would know it here – we’re in Florida for SQL Connections and the weather is a bit chilly and it’s been raining off/on today – I hope this is short term (no, I don’t want to look at the [...]
Database Maintenance Best Practices Part III – Transaction Log Maintenance
Posted on: March 14, 2009 2:23 pm
This is a tough topic. It's a big topic and more than any other – I think there are a lot of misunderstandings about what the log is for, why it's so critical and ESPECIALLY when/why it gets extrememly large. Simply put, it gets large when it's not managed correctly. OK, there are times when [...]
Database Maintenance Best Practices Part II – Setting FILLFACTOR
Posted on: March 13, 2009 9:45 am
When you decide to rebuild or reorganzie an index, you have an option to set something called FILLFACTOR. This is probably the MOST IMPORTANT thing to understand about index maintenance and reducing fragmentation (especially in databases that are prone to it). Unfortunately, we need to dive into some internals to really understand why this is [...]
Database Maintenance Best Practices Part I – clarifying ambiguous recommendations for Sharepoint
Posted on: March 12, 2009 4:01 pm
OK, it seems as though there's A LOT of confusion about what steps are required for proper database maintenance. And, it seems as though some recommendations are being given as "quick fixes" without any real recommendation for root cause analysis. I'm not saying that the generalizations are horribly wrong but in many cases they're just [...]
GUIDs as PRIMARY KEYs and/or the clustering key
Posted on: March 5, 2009 1:06 pm
(Be sure to join our community to get our monthly newsletter with exclusive content, advance notice of classes with discount codes, and other SQL Server goodies!) Expanding on the topic of "are you kidding me"… one of the MOST PREVALENT problems I see today is the dreaded "GUIDs as PKs" problem. However, just to be [...]
