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Goodbye IsNumeric hell
A well overdue feature introduced in Denali CTP 3 is that of the Try_Parse and Try_Convert functions. These are great for dealing with the something that’s frustrated SQL developers for years – data...
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All about Execution Plans
Coming to the PASS Summit in October this year? Excellent! I say excellent, because Grant (blog|twitter) and I are presenting a full-day seminar on the Monday, all about execution plans. Excited...
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Compiles and recompiles
I want to spend some time over the next few months looking at query compilation and the plan cache, and there’s a couple concepts that I want to get cleared up beforehand. The first of those is around...
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On hiatus
I’m taking a break from blogging while I finish off my thesis. With the pile of outstanding things that need doing and the deadlines for them, something has to give, and I figure the blog is the least...
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24 Hours of PASS Questions
I finally found the time to work through the questions from the 24 Hours of PASS session that I did. Thanks to everyone that attended the event Q1: Can you filter execution plans for sort warnings? No....
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12 months of books
Several months ago, Buck Woody put out a challenge, not only to people who attended his SQLCruise class but to anyone else interested, to read a book a month (ones relevant to their career goal) and...
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SQL University: Advanced indexing – Sorting and Grouping
Good day everyone and welcome to another week of SQL University. I know we’re getting close to the end of the year and everyone’s looking forward to a nice long vacation soaking up the sun at the...
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SQL University: Advanced Indexing – Filtered Indexes
Welcome back to day 2 of Advanced Indexing. Today we’re going to look at a feature that was added in SQL Server 2008 – filtered indexes. In versions previous, indexes were always on the entire table....
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SQL University: Advanced Indexing – Indexing Strategies
Right, I know it’s Friday and everyone’s tired and looking forward to the weekend, but I do need to finish off this indexing section and I’ll try to keep this short and interesting and hopefully keep...
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2011 Book review
Another year over and much as I did last year, I’m going to briefly go over the books I read this last year. I will freely admit, very few of these could be considered ‘classic literature’, most is a...
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SQLSkills Immersion training in London
Just short of the winter solstice, I bailed out of a freezing cold Johannesburg for warmer climates; well, actually for London where the weather could almost have been mistaken for a South African...
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Monitoring wait stats
This post, like last week’s, is based off the presentation I did to the DBA Fundamentals virtual chapter. The request was for more details on the method I use to capture wait and file stats on servers,...
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Obsessing over query operator costs
A common problem when looking at execution plans is attributing too much meaning and value of the costs of operators. The percentages shown for operators in query plans are based on costs generated by...
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Blocking operators and actual row counts
Query plans can sometimes be hard to read, and other times can be downright mystifying. Take this plan for example. Not too hard in general. Two index seek/scan, a join, a sort and a filter. The...
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SQL Server 2016 features: Query Store
Given that SQL Server 2016 is coming ‘real soon now’, it’s probably well past time that I write up some thoughts on new features. The first one I want to look at is a feature that I’m so looking...
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SQL Server 2016 features: Live query statistics
Ever wanted to look at a query’s actual execution plan (execution plan with runtime information) without waiting for the query to finish? Now you can. Enable that and run a query, and you get an...
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SQL 2016 features: Stretch Database
Stretch database allows for a table to span an ‘earthed’ SQL Server instance and an Azure SQL Database. It allows for parts (or all) of a table, presumably older, less used parts, to be stored in Azure...
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Upcoming conferences
It’s shaping up to a busy year for conferences, well busy by my standards that is. While I’m unfortunately missing SQLBits, I’ll still be getting a chance to enjoy an English summer. InsideSQL The...
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SQL Server 2016 features: Temporal Tables
Another new feature in SQL 2016 is the Temporal Table (or System Versioning, as its referred to in the documentation). It allows a table to be versioned, in terms of data, and for queries to access...
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SQL Server 2016 features: R services
One of the more interesting features in SQL 2016 is the integration of the R language. For those who haven’t seen it before, R is a statistical and data analysis language. It’s been around for ages,...
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