Conor vs. SQL

Conor vs. SQLBits X Slide Decks

Conor Cunningham [MSFT] — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 01:11:13 GMT

Thanks for all who attended SQLBits last weekend and for those of you who attended my talks. I had three talks this time at SQLBits, including the technical keynote on Saturday. I’ve attached these decks for your reference here: Making DW Easy ppt...(read more)

Conor vs. Traceflags

Conor Cunningham [MSFT] — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 16:20:21 GMT

I got a question from a reader asking me to explain various cases for the use of one of our traceflags. The flag in question doesn’t matter per se (the only official documentation on the flag, 2301, is at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/920093 ...(read more)

Conor vs. SQL Azure Pricing

Conor Cunningham [MSFT] — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 16:47:30 GMT

New Pricing for SQL Azure is out today (and it is cheaper on storage): http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/details/...(read more)

Conor vs. window functions, sequence/ranking functions order-of-operations

Conor Cunningham [MSFT] — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 02:15:17 GMT

We had a customer issue today that ended up being by-design but was confusing enough that I offered to write up a blog post so that people could reference it in the future. It boils down to the question “when should ROW_NUMBER() be computed in a...(read more)

Conor vs. SqlBits Spring 2012

Conor Cunningham [MSFT] — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 22:49:57 GMT

For those interested, I will be speaking at the SqlBits conference in London, UK at the end of March. I’ll be giving the Saturday keynote (on the new Batch processing engine in SQL 2012 used with Column Store indexes) and 2 other talks (one on Data...(read more)

Conor vs. SQL Azure Resource Usage

Conor Cunningham [MSFT] — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 17:43:53 GMT

For those of you watching SQL Azure, you probably have noticed that it releases more frequently than regular SQL Server. There was a release in late November/early December (it is complicated since the installation of the new software is done largely...(read more)

Conor vs. ColumnStore Index Stats

Conor Cunningham [MSFT] — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 18:40:18 GMT

I haven’t posted much on the new SQL Server 2012 features yet, but I’m going to start doing so soon. I’ll also be speaking about them at upcoming conferences. We have an exciting new index type in SQL Server 2012 that is column-oriented...(read more)

Conor vs. Distributed Query Provider Hints

Conor Cunningham [MSFT] — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 14:55:19 GMT

(I promised I’d write more ) Today I will talk a bit about Distributed Query (DQ), a feature that lets you query across databases/servers. I’ve previously posted an academic paper we wrote on the subject some time back ( http://citeseerx.ist.psu...(read more)

Conor vs. SQL Azure/SQL Server 2012

Conor Cunningham [MSFT] — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:16:04 GMT

I’m not one for New Year’s Resolutions, but I am going to try to blog a bit more. It’s hard to describe working at Microsoft, especially as one gets more senior. There are lots of really smart people. There’s an ability to work on problems...(read more)

Conor vs. Extended Events

Conor Cunningham [MSFT] — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 17:46:47 GMT

I have been playing with the XEvent feature in SQL 2012 (RC0) and there are a few gotchas that I hit. I figured I’d post them up here so that others could learn from my experiences. I was trying to do something pretty simple – get the % Processor...(read more)

Conor vs. Synergija Slide Decks

Conor Cunningham [MSFT] — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 19:17:06 GMT

I had a great time visiting Belgrade last week. I’d like to thank everyone who attended one of my talks and I wanted to post up the slide decks for those who would like to see them. One talk was on the new SQL 2012 ColumnStore index feature...(read more)

Conor vs. Sinergija 2011

Conor Cunningham [MSFT] — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 14:30:38 GMT

As a professional announcement, I will not be speaking at PASS this year (nor will I be at the conference). Instead, I will be in Belgrade, Serbia the following week to speak at the Sinergija 11 conference. I’ll be doing a talk on the new...(read more)

Conor vs. Max Server Memory

Conor Cunningham [MSFT] — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 19:00:40 GMT

Question (paraphrased): “Conor, does changing the max server memory settings always empty the plan cache on SQL 2005 and 2008?” Answer: yes, this is what happens and what is supposed to happen. One of the inputs to the optimizer is...(read more)

Conor vs. SQL Saturday Austin

Conor Cunningham [MSFT] — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 15:44:16 GMT

I'll be talking about one of the new things our team has been develping this Saturday at the SQL Saturday event in Austin ( http://www.sqlsaturday.com/97/eventhome.aspx) on the new ColumnStore index being added in the upcoming release of SQL Server. It...(read more)

Conor vs. Parallel Execution Plan Contexts/Runtime Instances

Conor Cunningham [MSFT] — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 13:50:35 GMT

I’ve received a question about parallel execution plans from a customer. ( http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/cc966425.aspx ) Execution contexts for parallel plans are not cached. A necessary condition for SQL Server to compile a parallel query...(read more)

Conor vs. SQLBits 2011 Brighton

Conor Cunningham [MSFT] — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 12:28:59 GMT

Here is the slide deck from my presentation at SQLBits Friday in Brighton file I had a great time at SQLBits, even though I had to leave early. Thank you to everyone who attended the talk and to those who asked questions and gave me feedback...(read more)

Conor vs. SQLBits (United Kingdom)

Conor Cunningham [MSFT] — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 23:47:06 GMT

I will be in Brighton, England this upcoming Friday where I will be speaking at the SQLBits conference. I plan to give a talk that goes deep into how many SQL Server processes Update queries (Insert, Update, Delete). So, if you’ve ever wanted...(read more)

Conor vs. Map-Reduce vs. Databases

Conor Cunningham [MSFT] — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 21:06:07 GMT

I found this paper interesting, so you might too. It covers some of the differences between parallel database systems and map-reduce style computation: http://database.cs.brown.edu/papers/stonebraker-cacm2010.pdf Happy Querying! Conor...(read more)

Conor vs. Views/Tables

Conor Cunningham [MSFT] — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 16:22:16 GMT

I received an email from a reader this weekend that has a lot of different questions, but one of the main questions related to the difference between views and base tables in SQL Server’s plan generation process. ie if I have a view “select * from...(read more)

Conor vs. How I got into computers…

Conor Cunningham [MSFT] — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 02:02:52 GMT

I thought I’d do a small post about some of the reasons I got into computers since I’ve randomly had a few opportunities to revisit them. Tron 2 came out recently, reminding me of the original movie. Additionally, I went home for the holidays...(read more)

Conor vs. more SARGable predicates

Conor Cunningham [MSFT] — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 16:51:14 GMT

I got another question in the mail this week from another reader: Hi Conor Thanks for an interesting blog. Maybe you have the answer to this question: Why I SQL Server having performance problems with these types of expressions: --------------...(read more)

Conor vs. Join Search Space

Conor Cunningham [MSFT] — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 16:18:47 GMT

I received a question this week from a reader about how SQL Server determines the join order if there are more than 6 joins in a query. There are a lot of details about how SQL Server’s optimizer works here, and some of them are beyond the level of detail...(read more)

Conor vs. Row Growth in Read Committed Snapshot Isolation

Conor Cunningham [MSFT] — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 19:23:59 GMT

At PASS last week, I was asked about fragmentation caused by RCSI when a row is first converted to use RCSI. I talked to some people in the team and found that one of my colleagues had already written a nice blog entry about it. http://blogs.msdn.com...(read more)

Conor vs. PASS (Slide Decks)

Conor Cunningham [MSFT] — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 17:32:17 GMT

I had a great time at PASS last week and got to talk to a lot of wonderful customers- thank you! As promised, here are the decks: Update Talk Performance Troubleshooting Talk Happy Querying! Conor...(read more)

Conor vs. PASS

Conor Cunningham [MSFT] — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 15:35:10 GMT

It’s one of the most exciting weeks of the year to be a SQL Server junkie – PASS is this week in Seattle! I’m giving a talk on the many details of Update queries. It will cover the various operators and how they work, why the plan shapes look the...(read more)