Important considerations when performance tuning
In last week's survey I asked what you think is the most important thing when it comes to performance tuning, if you *had* to choose
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In last week's survey I asked what you think is the most important thing when it comes to performance tuning, if you *had* to choose
The July 2009 edition of TechNet Magazine is available on the web and include a feature article I wrote explaining backups. It's the first in
There's another DBA 'chain-blog' going around, this time started by Tim Ford, and I was tagged by Tom LaRock. The idea is that you're stuck
Just found this excellent blog post (continually updated) that lists a ton of free SQL Server tools for all sorts of purposes. Check it out
Wow. This is a driving stunts video by Ken Block – it's just jaw-dropping what this guy can do flying around a dockyard in a
Chad Miller over on SQLServerCentral has put together a really great collection of scripts that allow you to easily monitor and report on what backups
Part of being a Microsoft Regional Director is getting early access to information and private releases to play with. They also hand out free stuff
Quick blog post to celebrate a bit of a milestone and round out the month of May – no blogging tomorrow. Earlier today I was
This week's survey is going to provide some fun debating topics. I'd like to know what the number 1 thing is that YOU go after
In last week's survey I asked you two things, as a precursor to a whitepaper I'm writing for Microsoft The first question was what is
I’ve just read a very good, very deep, and very interesting blog post by James Rowland-Jones. In the post, James investigates some locking issues using
I've just been posting a few links on Facebook and began reminiscing about my days at Edinburgh University. I spent a lot of my 3rd
The SQLCAT team have published another excellent whitepaper – this time the long-awaited one on the SQL Server 2008 data compression feature. Thirteen people inside
There’s still a widely held misconception that when properly in the FULL or BULK_LOGGED recovery models that full or differential backups can truncate the log.
Saw this on Twitter (anonymous original author): A SQL query walks into a bar. It goes up to two tables and says “Mind if I
Cool news – the pre/post-con workshops and spotlight sessions acceptance emails came out this week and we're both going to be there. We've booked our
This week's survey is inspired by this morning's Kimberly+Paul hot-tub conversation around data-dependent routing vs. network load balancing, which then turned to SLAs. Yes, we
In last week’s survey I asked whether you’re ever tested your disaster recovery plan, and if so, what happened? (See here for the survey). Here
About a year ago, I blogged a cool script that would work out how much of a database has changed since the last full backup
I was reading through some gardening books this morning trying to identify a plant we had last year that died over the winter (I was
I'm teaching a class this week on database maintenance, for DBAs inside Microsoft. One of the things we're discussing today is index fragmentation and how
This week's survey is inspired from many stories I saw on the forums and Twitter this week – mostly bad, one good (someone I'm following
Last week's survey was another two-fold one – when you buy new servers, what architecture to you predominantly buy, and why?; when you buy new
This week's been a busy one on the forums and Twitter, with lots of interesting problems people are hitting. One of the things I've noticed
Quickie this morning to start the day off. I saw a question on a forum: if I *have* to use a GUID and *must* have
Go to www.wordle.net/create and enter a URL. Here's what it thinks of my current blog homepage: Cool!
I've just been setting up some of our new hardware, and wanted to do some background reading to ensure I use the correct disk partition
A sad, tear-jerky story about how a socially-inept, stay-at-home shut-in, SQL expert gets a new lease of life and finds he really does have friends out
This is a true story, and unfolded over the last few days. It’s deliberately written this way, I’m not trying to be patronizing – just illustrating
Page splits are always thought of as expensive, but just how bad are they? In this post I want to create an example to show
Hopefully all of you reading my blog already know to use the WITH ALL_ERRORMSGS option whenever you run DBCC CHECKDB (which is now the default
This week's survey is another two-parter, part 1 of which suggested by Mike Walsh on Twitter: When you buy new servers, what archictecture do you
Last week's survey was two-fold – what's the largest SQL Server database you manage, and how many SQL Server databases are you responsible for managing.
Here are a couple of videos I came across today that are very funny. The second one had me in tears laughing. Let's just say
Another quickie today. If you're using Activity Monitor in SQL Server 2008, or Performance Data Collection with the Server Activity system data collection set, then you may
This is a quick follow-on from my Misconceptions around null bitmap size post. The null bitmap is *always* present in a data record (i.e. records in
This short post is prompted by a question that came in through Twitter – I *knew* it was worth joining and spending time on it
5/11/09: Little bit of a rewrite today as it seems some people are taking what I'm saying the wrong way. Over on Ed Bott's blog,
This has come up a few times now, most recently in an email question this morning – subsequent runs of DBCC CHECKDB show varying numbers of
Recently there’s been a spate of people noticing strange behavior from active transactions when DBCC CHECKDB (or any of the other DBCC consistency checking commands
I'm starting a new series called 'Misconceptions' – a series of short posts that debunk some of the many myths and misconceptions that exist about
Jason Massie posted an interesting statistic yesterday – Facebook has 1.5 petabytes of image storage, and it grows by 25TB daily – I wonder how
Last week’s survey was on what kind of backups you take, along with the recovery model used (see here for the survey). Here are the
In one of our visits to Bangkok this year, we toured the Imperial Palace. I uploaded a bunch of photos to Facebook of statues that
The June edition of TechNet Magazine is available on the web now and has the latest installment of my regular SQL Q&A column. This month's
Here's an interesting bug that was just recently fixed, and someone actually hit it today, so it's time to blog it. Bottom line is that
(Thanks to David Baffaleuf for pointing this out to me) Ever wanted to know a bit deeper how memory works in your laptop or servers?
I was in a discussion earlier today, and it's one I've had lots of times in the past – both inside and outside Microsoft and
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