The Curious Case of… almost online index rebuilds
(The Curious Case of… used to be part of our bi-weekly newsletter but we decided to make it a regular blog post instead so it can sometimes be more
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(The Curious Case of… used to be part of our bi-weekly newsletter but we decided to make it a regular blog post instead so it can sometimes be more
(The Curious Case of… used to be part of our bi-weekly newsletter but we decided to make it a regular blog post instead so it can sometimes be more
It’s been a while coming but it’s worth the wait! Kimberly’s latest Pluralsight course has been published – SQL Server: Indexing for Performance – and it’s a
In my Insider newsletter a couple of weeks ago, I discussed how index fragmentation is often considered when designing indexes, but index depth often isn’t. In
[Edit 2016: Check out my new resource – a comprehensive library of all wait types and latch classes – see here.] SQL Server 2014 (and
My latest Pluralsight course has been published! It’s called SQL Server: Index Fragmentation Internals, Analysis, and Solutions and is just over 2.5 hours long. The modules
Last weekend there was a suggestion on the MVP distribution list about having temporary nonclustered indexes on AG readable secondaries, in the same way that
This is a question that came up this morning during our IE1 class that I thought would make an interesting blog post as there are
This is a quick blog post to let you know about a bug in SQL Server 2012 SP1 that can cause data loss when performing index maintenance.
[Edit 2016: The team ‘fixed’ the problem in SQL Server 2016 by skipping consistency checking these indexes unless WITH EXTENDED_LOGICAL_CHECKS is used.] It’s no secret
Whenever I’m teaching about index fragmentation I get asked how to track page splits proactively. This can be useful to discover fragmentation occurring in indexes
Earlier today there was a question on the MVP mailing list asking how SQL Server keeps track of per-column modification counts. From 2008 onwards, the
Back in January I posted the results of the cluster key size survey I ran in 2011 and explained how the larger the cluster key
Back in November I kicked off a survey that had you run some code to get some details about your cluster keys, nonclustered indexes, and
Continuing with my "index health" series, I've got another piece of code for you to run. This time I'm interested in the number of columns
Yesterday I blogged about how having too few or too many nonclustered indexes can be a big problem for performance (see here). Today I’m posting
Back at the start of August I kicked off a survey (see here) that gave you some code to run to produce an aggregate list of
The September 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 a survey I've been meaning to run for quite a while – that Kimberly and I are really interested in. For all the databases
(In this post I'm not going to name-and-shame, as I'm sure the problems will be fixed in time.) I want to warn you about unthinkingly
There was an interesting discussion on Twitter this morning (started by my good friend Erin Stellato (blog|twitter)) about in-place updates for index records where the
Here's yet another reason to be very careful when using the missing index DMVs… There's a bug in the missing index DMVs that could end
(Look in the Misconceptions blog category for the rest of the month’s posts and check out the 60-page PDF with all the myths and misconceptions
(Look in the Misconceptions blog category for the rest of the month’s posts and check out the 60-page PDF with all the myths and misconceptions
(Look in the Misconceptions blog category for the rest of the month’s posts and check out the 60-page PDF with all the myths and misconceptions
Way back in the mists of time, at the end of the last century, I wrote DBCC SHOWCONTIG for SQL Server 2000, to complement my
I made them up. Yup. I’m talking about the guidance which is: if an index has less than 1000 pages and is in memory, don’t
The August 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
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
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
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
Jack Li, one of the Senior Escalation Engineers in Product Support, just posted details of an interesting case over on the CSS blog – his article
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
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
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
This blog post describes the demo "2 – NC Indexes" from my Corruption Survival Techniques conference session from various conferences in 2008. The links to
Here's another corruption bug that people are hitting on 2005 SP2 – something I didn't know about until today. The situation is this: a table
It's been a long time since the last Conference Questions Pot-Pourri – in fact it was at the last SQL Connections in Orlando in April.
For the first time in ages, Kimberly sneaked in an interview without me! I was teaching a class on Database Maintenance for some Microsoft DBAs
At the last Connections conference in April, the conference organizers tapped a bunch of speakers for interviews, articles, and other content to put into a
Every so often I’ll see posts on the various data corruption forums discussing causes of corruption. In this post I want to debunk some of
At the user group meeting on Monday I spent some time explaining how GUIDs can cause fragmentation in clustered indexes AND in non-clustered indexes, even
Fresh off a week of teaching classes on the Microsoft campus, we’ve finalized some user group dates. Here’s what we have coming up: Monday August
Well, almost… Kimberly and I have agreed to co-author the upcoming SQL Server 2008 Internals book with our good friend Kalen Delaney. This is the
Over the last few weeks I've seen (and helped correct) quite a few myths and misconceptions about index rebuild operations. There's enough now to make
Kimberly and I were presenting at our local (Redmond) .Net Developers Association on Monday and the following question came up while Kimberly was talking about
It seems like all I’ve been talking about on the forums the last couple of days is the correct order of operations in a maintenance
One of the cool features of SQL Server 2008 for developers is spatial data support. There have been some great posts recently about using spatial
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