Script: open transactions with text and plans
[Edit 2017: this query is still entirely applicable on all current versions of SQL Server.] Here’s a little script I knocked up this afternoon to
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[Edit 2017: this query is still entirely applicable on all current versions of SQL Server.] Here’s a little script I knocked up this afternoon to
(For the hardware setup I’m using, see this post. For the baseline performance measurements for this benchmark, see this post.) In my previous post in the
I'm running some performance tests on the hardware we have (more details on the first of these tomorrow) and I was surprised to see some
Earlier today there was a question on SQL Server Central where someone wanted to know what could be causing so many reads on their transaction
One of the things I love teaching is how the transaction log and logging/recovery work. I presented a session on this at both PASS and
One of the perennial problems facing both experienced and involuntary DBAs is how to tell whether a database is really in the Full recovery model
Last week I posted in-depth about how checkpoints work and what exactly goes on (see How do checkpoints work and what gets logged). About a
(Check out my Pluralsight online training course: SQL Server: Logging, Recovery, and the Transaction Log.) This is a blog post I’ve been meaning to do
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 came across a question on ServerFault this afternoon that inflamed my desire to be ultra-geeky (it was really already inflamed after teaching backup and
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.
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
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
A short post to start the day (in India) and then at lunchtime I'll do how it works: FILESTREAM garbage collection. This is a question
Every so often (well, ok, very frequently) my internal list of ‘I must blog about that’ gets too big and I have an almost
Last week's survey was on how *you* manage the size of your transaction log (see here for the survey). Here are the results as of 4/10/2009
In this week's survey, I'm interested in how *you* manage the size of your transaction log. I'll report on the results around 4/10/2009. Thanks! (No
Way back at the start of me blogging here I wrote a comprehensive description of ghost records and the ghost cleanup process – see Inside
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):
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
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
Here’s a question I got from someone who attended our database maintenance workshop at PASS last week (paraphrased): I attended your pre-conference session on database
Today's post is based on a bunch of questions I've had around the various compression features in SQL Server 2008. Does turning on data compression
During early SQL Server 2008 development, the Storage Engine team introduced additional minimally-logged functionality. And then it was removed again for RTM. Now it seems
It’s been almost two weeks since my last post as we’ve been offline in Scotland (another photo post to follow – I owe you two
Now this one’s sure to spark some controversy… I was checking my RSS feeds of the SQL blogs that I follow and noticed an interesting
I woke up this morning and someone had replaced my wife with someone who likes to blog :-). Kimberly’s turned over a new leaf and is
This is a quickie in response to a blog comment from my previous post on instant initialization: How to tell if you have instant initialization
There's been a spate of problems on the forums and in my inbox with people's transaction logs filling up. With the increase in "involuntary DBAs",
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
In a previous post (see here) I debunked a myth about how much transaction log a full backup would include. I had a question
A couple more questions from the last couple of classes. Q1) Why doesn’t performing an index rebuild alter the fragmentation? A1) Here are the possibilities
Quick post this morning before this gets knocked out of my head by the Disaster Recovery session we're doing today at SQL Connections. This came
I’ve been involved in a few conversations today that have highlighted some big misconceptions about how backups work. I’d like to use this blog post
There’s been some discussion over on the SQL Server Central forums about database mirroring performance, and one question in particular on how to do index
This has come up several times over the last few days, and is something that Kimberly and I discuss (and deplore) when we lecture –
As I mentioned in a previous post, one of the new features for database mirroring in SQL Server 2008 is log stream compression. There’s a
Over the years I was in the Storage Engine team I saw a lot of concern on the various forums about the ghost cleanup task.
Here’s a really interesting question that was in my search engine logs yesterday – if I have a transaction that runs and completes while a backup
(New for 2020: we’ve published a range of SQL Server interview candidate screening assessments with our partner Kandio, so you can avoid hiring an ‘expert’
(Check out my online training courses: SQL Server: Detecting and Correcting Database Corruption and SQL Server: Advanced Corruption Recovery Techniques. We can also help you with
One of the great things about the blog engine we use is that it shows all the search engine queries that led to someone clicking
(Check out my online training course: SQL Server: Detecting and Correcting Database Corruption.) In this post I want to describe the two worst things I
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