The new Query Store feature in SQL Server 2016 is a great new addition that we have been anticipating for many years now. There are already a bunch of articles out there that explain what it is even how to go about using it so I won’t repeat that here. However there is one aspect of the feature that has been poorly documented and even a ...

 Many of us have used the free version of Plan Explorer from SQLSentry for a long time to help tune and explore query plans in a way that SSMS can only dream of. Unlike most free tools this one still had plenty of useful features that served the community well. The Pro version did however contain a bunch of great features that many ...

ALWAYS LEARNINGAbout mid-way into August of 2015, I learned some important new factors in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that caused me to make some big changes to the way in which I blogged. Namely - simply reposting a slight variant of a given blog post could hurt your overall SEO rankings for any or all of the given posts. Now you ...

Originally appearing in my monthly column at Database Trends & Applications magazine. When it comes to cloud-based database management, there are really only two players: Amazon, the value leader, and Microsoft, the innovation leader. Amazon has carved out a niche as the value leader in cloud-based database management, ...

Originally appearing in my monthly column at Database Trends & Applications magazine. In the first of this three-part series, I described some of the findings contained in an intriguing new survey published by Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc. In that article, I covered the macroeconomic and general ...

Originally appearing in my monthly column at Database Trends & Applications magazine. In my last column, available online, I described some of the findings contained in an intriguing new survey sponsored by Ntirety, a remote database administration service provider, and published by Unisphere Research. You can read the full survey with ...

Originally appearing in my monthly column at Database Trends & Applications magazine.IT Managers and Executives: If you think it’s hard to hire a talented DBA, you ain’t seen nothing yet. If you think that a talented DBAs are expensive, just you wait.Data Management Professionals: If you thought a career in database ...

Originally appearing in my monthly column at Database Trends & Applications magazine. Delayed durability was announced late in the SQL Server 2014 development cycle, but offers something that many SQL Server professionals have wanted for years—the ability to disable transaction logging.Why turn off the transaction log? It is the main ...

Originally appearing in my monthly column at Database Trends & Applications magazine. It’s the holiday season, a time for cheer and goodwill towards men. That got me thinking about the whole “most wonderful time of the year” tune playing in the background and how that has some special implications for the SQL Server world. ...

I'm decidedly old-school in a few of my habits. My morning routine, barring anything out of the ordinary, is one such example. Typically, I'll get up between 6:30 to 7:00 am, grab my first cup of coffee, and then chat with my daughters for a few minutes before seeing them off to school. Next, I make a bowl of oatmeal (a great choice for diabetics ...