Importance of index maintenance
Last week’s survey was on what kind of regular index maintenance you perform (see here for the survey) as a way of kicking off a
Last week’s survey was on what kind of regular index maintenance you perform (see here for the survey) as a way of kicking off a
Way back at the start of me blogging here I wrote a comprehensive description of ghost records and the ghost cleanup process – see Inside
I’m teaching the Microsoft Certified Masters – Database qualification this week here in Redmond, and in part of day one I discuss the FILESTREAM directory
There's a long-running discussion with people tagging each other to post advice for people new to SQL Server, about what they know now and wished
Yes, it's that time again (well a little bit earlier than usual). With the Spring SQL Server Connections show coming up next week, its time
I'm about to start a new series of post about index fragmentation and removing it. For this week's survey, I'd like to know what index
Last week I kicked off the first weekly survey – on whether you validate your backups or not (see here for the survey). The results
Ola Hallengren, who we meet every so often at SQL Connections, has a great script that helps automate consistency checking, backups, and index maintenance. He's
Ok – so Kimberly got on Facebook last weekend after peer-pressure from a bunch of people at Katie's 9th birthday party. I resisted, in vain
After writing the FILESTREAM whitepaper for Microsoft, I’ve had lots of questions about the structure of the FILESTREAM data container. The FILESTREAM data container is
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Internals finally starts to roll off the presses at Microsoft Press today! For me this is the first time in
I came across a good post over at the Data Management section of Less Than Dot, describing how to scan through a network looking for
The April 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
As you may know, Kimberly and I teach (and wrote) the first week of the 3-week Microsoft Certified Master – Database qualification. From next week
Both 2005 SP3 CU2 and 2005 SP2 CU12 contain fixes for two bugs that cause corruption in LOB data. The first bug may happen when
As you may know, DBCC CHECKDB (and some of the other DBCC CHECK*) commands use an internal database snapshot to get a transactionally consistent view
Whenever I teach a class I’m amazed at the number of DBAs who don’t know about instant file initialization. Without wanting to redo blog posts
There's been an interesting discussion on SQLServerCentral about whether this question is valid for a DBA interview: what's the name of the executable that runs
This is an interesting case that cropped up yesterday – the transaction log is damaged so a log backup doesn’t work (with the error below):
I'm toying with the idea of having a weekly survey that'll highlight an interesting facet of database management. I've signed up with SurveyPopups.com, which is
We’re doing some research into database settings that people use and the best way to get a good variety of systems is to ask you
One of the opinions that was expressed yesterday by our developer friends (a bunch of Regional Directors – and look, Kimberly's the featured RD today
Today we've spent a lot of the day in discussions with some folks about developers vs. DBAs, and how it's often the case that the
In January I finally got to visit India for the first time. I've always wanted to go as my great-grandfather was in charge (I believe)
If you're new to the blog then you may not have seen my Search Engine Q&A series (or seen it and not realized what it
As you may have been seeing over the last few weeks, there are intermittent errors in some parts of mine and Kimberly's blogs. Our hosting
One set of features i haven't blogged about yet in SQL Server 2008 are the new security features: SQL Server Audit, Transparent Data Encryption, and
This question came up in a class I was teaching a few weeks ago: given that the variable-length column offset array in a record only
While trawling through the latest 2008 Books Online this morning to answer a question, I noticed a new section that I hadn't seen before, which
In the TechNet Magazine article I wrote on Advanced Troubleshooting with Extended Events, I mentioned the always-on event session called system_health. Jonathan Kehayias, a fellow
Cumulative Update 1 for SQL 2008 RTM contains fixes for two nasty FILESTREAM bugs (among a lot of other bug fixes). The first one concerns
In my previous post today I talked about error 825 and how you should have an Agent alert set up to catch it when it
There are two pretty well-known I/O errors – 823, and 824 – but there’s also one called 825 which most DBAs do*not* know about, and
The first of the long-promised photo posts (with lots of Wikipedia links) – click on photos for larger versions. Over the holidays Kimberly and I
Microsoft has released a PDF showing all the SQL Server 2008 system tables – very cool but you'll need a big printer to print it
Microsoft’s Steffen Krause has written an excellent whitepaper on Tuning the Performance of Change Data Capture in SQL Server 2008, that I technically reviewed, and
Well, it was released a year ago but I only just found out about it last week. The SQL CAT team published a whitepaper last
It’s become something of a tradition for me to do a Valentine’s Day blog post (the 2008 one about SQL Server blogs is at Wow
In SQL Server 2000 and before, the symptoms of database corruption would occasionally manifest themselves as asserts, such as: SQL Server Assertion: File: <recbase.cpp>, line=1378
One of the things I mentioned in my recent TechNet Magazine article on Understanding Logging and Recovery was the need to manage the transaction log
This year it looks like we’re not going to be involved in TechEd US in May so the SQL Connections show in Orlando in March (21-26)
(Yes I know I haven't posted for a while, we've been travelling – we're in Hyderabad right now – but I'll post a bunch over
OK – last content post today. I forgot that the February TechNet Magazine also has the latest edition of my regular SQL Q&A column. This
Wow – today is all about new content. As if I haven't already blogged about enough stuff to keep you reading through next week, the
TechNet Magazine is publishing a series of SQL Server 2008 tips every day through January – mostly taken from upcoming Microsoft Press books on SQL
Over the last few weeks Sunil Agarwal (from the SQL Storage Engine team) has posted a great series of blog articles about tempdb and the version
Kimberly also did an interview with TechNet Radio back in December – this time about partitioning. The links for the interview are: WMA – http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/5/2/F52567BB-D32D-437E-A9A7-60D898AA03C7/TechNetRadio-01132009-web.wma
Well, we're back from vacation finally (only for 10 days and then off to India and Thailand for 3 weeks… phew) and I've got a
With training and consulting from SQLskills, you’ll be able to solve big problems, elevate your team’s capacity, and take control of your data career.