Today is my last day with Microsoft. After five and a half years, I recently decided to join SQLskills as "Employee #4". Microsoft has been very good to me over the years and I'm grateful for the friendships made and the significant memories. For...

I’ve been waiting for a long running transaction to commit, so to speak, before announcing the big news… I am truly happy to announce that Microsoft Learning has hired a new SQL MCM Program Manager to keep moving forward with our recent...

The cache store “CACHESTORE_SQLCP” represents cached ad-hoc query plans, server-side cursors and prepared statements. One way to gather memory allocation values for this specific cache store is by using the following query: SELECT single_pages_kb...

Now I’m definitely not a networking guy, so even the more basic networking concepts fill me with wonder. One area I learned about recently with regards to the following scenario was related to Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) caching. Consider...

Consider the following scenario: You have a database that has PARAMETERIZATION FORCED enabled. You have a table using a filtered index. Here is a demo setup so you can follow along: -- Create demo database ...

The last two Mondays have brought us two new highly qualified Microsoft Certified Masters. If you’ve been involved with the SQL Server community for the last few years, it’s likely you’ve already heard their names – Maciej Pilecki and certified today...

News travels pretty fast, so I thought I would get the official word out tonight before this news became too stale. As many already know, three months ago we announced some pretty significant changes to the SQL MCM program . I won’t recap those changes...

Our last planned batch of SQL Server 2008 MCM Readiness Videos are now published – covering Partitioning, Snapshot Isolation, EXECUTE AS, SQL Injection, Replication, Partial Database Availability, Online Piecemeal Restore, optimizing procedural code,...

We just added another 23 videos on Technet – making it a total of 56 videos available as of today. The new videos cover storage core concepts & guidelines, DAS vs SAN architecture, storage testing and monitoring, index internals, the clustered index...

“ Know what you know. Know what you don’t know. Don’t ever confuse the two. ” Per Farny, founder of the original Microsoft Certified Master and Architect program How do you know if you are ready to take the Microsoft Certified...

I just found out today that one of our own SQL MCMs (2005/2008) & MCA, Christian Bolton , is a co-author for the recently published book Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Administration for Oracle DBAs . I just wanted to congratulate Christian on yet another...

It’s a big day for the Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) program, as we announce the new MCM SQL Server 2008 certification path . Our customers want to be able to earn a SQL Server Microsoft Certified Master certification at a lower price, with more...

Apologies for my radio silence lately. With SQL PASS next month, I'll be getting a little more verbose again. In the meantime while I remain relatively quiet, I worked on a White Paper with Eric Holling (Microsoft IT) and with Sanjay Mishra (SQL CAT...

“Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.” Zen proverb I see my daily work as nothing more than a high tech form of chopping wood and carrying water. Work can sometimes seem to be...

(Reposting from cache - as the MSDN blog migration seemed to have lost my latest post) Do you share your T-SQL code with others? If you do, then first of all, thanks for sharing. But next question - did you test it on a case sensitive SQL instance...

The ninth rotation of the SQL Microsoft Certified Masters program begins Monday. I'm really looking forward to meeting this next batch of candidates and future MCMs. A few days ago I drew up a summary of each attendee's experience and background and then...

So I just got finished with a Friday afternoon head scratcher (that luckily had a resolution). Problem: Ad hoc query with a predicate that references a literal value does an index seek. 0 second execution. Ad hoc query that defines a local...

I’ve used DDL Triggers before to prevent database DROP DATABASE operations.   For example:             CREATE TRIGGER ddl_ss_prevent_database_drop ON ALL SERVER FOR DROP_DATABASE AS PRINT 'Will...

(Cross posted on The Masters Blog) The eighth rotation of the SQL Microsoft Certified Masters program is about to wrap up and tomorrow is the big day of exams. David Ikeda is covering this rotation, but last week I got a chance to sit with the existing...

I was asked a few questions about the behavior of using “ALTER INDEX ALL… REBUILD” and thought I would detail my answers here…   Quick background - using the ALL argument with ALTER INDEX REBUILD instead of naming a specific index allows you to specify...

Brent Ozar, who is a Microsoft SQL Server expert for Quest Software , Microsoft MVP , Editor-in-Chief at SQLServerPedia.com , and coauthor of Professional SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting - has written a series of posts related to his SQL...

When an unexplained outage occurs on a standalone server and you need to determine root cause, DBAs usually start with the collection and analysis of the following “artifacts”: Event Log (Application, System) SQL Error Logs Perfmon...

I’ve been a casual jogger for about 14 years, and lately I’ve been debating whether or not I should get serious and sign up for a marathon. In order to make my decision (still pending) I generated a list of some pros and cons. During that process I realized...

I spoke with a DBA today about the following scenario… When running DBCC CHECKDB in SQL Server 2005, he noticed that there were no entries for the hidden database snapshot in sys.databases; however he did see that a database_id value was shown when querying...

David Ikeda and I have updated the SQL Server 2008 MCM Pre-reading list based on the last training rotation we conducted last October. You can download the PDF here. As a seasoned SQL Server professional, ideally you'll already have read some, if not...

** Cross posted from the Master blog.  I usually don’t cross post the new SQL MCM member announcements – but since we’re at sixty members, I thought this was a special occasion. ** Yesterday we added another SQL 2008 MCM to the community, making...

Here is another testimonial from a SQL Server 2008 Microsoft Certified Master who doesn’t work for Microsoft – and wasn’t paid to say all this good stuff J . His name is Peter Fictum and he is a SQL Server Engineer at GoDaddy.com: “ I would be happy...

I was recently asked by a potential SQL MCM candidate if we could share testimonials about the SQL Microsoft Certified Master program from non-Microsoft employees Out of the 57 MCMs in the world, only 12 are not Microsoft employees (by the way – the numbers...

The seventh SQL Microsoft Certified Masters rotation is almost finished. It has been a jam packed 48 hours: A full day on the topic of SQL Security from Greg Low Last night we had a Meet and Greet in Building 35 - where our candidates had a chance...

We’re midway through the second week of “Rotation 7” for the SQL Server Microsoft Certified Master program. We tried something new for this rotation, providing a copy of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Internals for each participant. So far we’ve been able...

We kicked off the seventh rotation of the SQL Server Microsoft Certified Master program on Monday and I have to say how impressed I am with this latest batch of 12 candidates. The cumulative experience in the room is significant, and the intelligence...

Just a heads up that if you've been on the fence about registering for the SQL Server Microsoft Certified Master program - you have just three more days to do so (last registration day for the October rotation is September 18th). Remember that you'll...

I just posted some information on two SQL MCM Program Fee discounts available for the next SQL MCM "rotation" (coming up in October): SQL MCM Program Fee Discounts If you have any questions about this - feel free to contact me directly. Thanks,...

I downloaded the client-based version of SQL Server 2008 R2 Books Online, however the installer wanted to upgrade my existing version of Books Online. Rather than do that, I'll just be using the MSDN version of SQL Server 2008 R2 Books Online which you...

Just a reminder that SQL-DMO will be removed in a future version of Microsoft SQL Server - so if you have an application that depends on SQL-DMO, the clock is ticking (although you have a few years to correct probably). Also, if you are installing...

** Cross posted on The Master Blog ** We have more four more SQL Server Microsoft Certified Masters and one Microsoft Certified Architect to announce! First of all, please meet our new SQL Server Microsoft Certified Architect, John Hicks (using...

Good Morning, Just a heads up that I just posted an introduction to nine out of twelve of the new MCM SQL Server 2008 candidates: Meet the new batch of SQL Server Microsoft Certified Masters For those of you interested in validating your skills...

Short post with two updates today: After many months of development, the much anticipated SQL Server 2008 Failover Clustering White Paper has arrived! You can download it here . 175 pages, so block off your calendar. Second update, is that I'll...

Today I found a new (for me), undocumented method for identifying the location of the SQL Error log. I knew you could either check the registry or use SQL Server Configuration Manager and the "startup parameters" option. I ran SQL Profiler while opening...

I just posted a new entry on the SQL Server Premier Field Engineer Blog on Three Usage Scenarios for sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats . I'm not sure which blog entries I'll put on my own blog versus the PFE blog in the long term - but for now I'll be...

The new SQL Server Premier Field Engineer Blog is now launched! It will start off small, but hopefully we'll be able to get many of my team members to contribute on a frequent basis. They have so much experience to share, and after prompting from Adam...

Sanjay Mishra just published the following White Paper, " Data Compression: Strategy, Capacity Planning and Best Practices ", highly recommended and much anticipated. On this same topic, I received a question from a colleague the other day, asking...

I recently worked on a case where a significant number of deadlocks were being generated for concurrent UPDATE operations. I looked at sys.dm_tran_locks and saw a significant number of table lock requests (with WAIT and CONVERT request_status) for the...

Heard a similar question today, related to my post on " Override READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT with READ_COMMITTED ." Question was - what is the impact of NOLOCK when RCSI is enabled for a database. Here is the demo script I sent, showing the behavior with...

The scenario… An application is using the READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT (RCSI) database option to minimize blocking of SELECT statements by concurrent data modification operations. The application is successfully using this option to reduce the number of blocked...

Here is a link to the presentation deck for yesterday's Minnesota PASS presentation: " Performance Tuning with Wait Statistics " Was fun to see everyone. Thanks for attending!

If you live in Minnesota or are visiting next Tuesday, April 21st, please stop by the Bloomington Microsoft office and say hello. I'll be presenting on the topic "Performance Troubleshooting with Wait Statistics" (a subject made famous by Tom Davidson...

Do you suspect you are encountering CPU pressure? Some of the more common signs of CPU pressure include: Sustained "% Processor Time" values (>75% for extended periods) High signal wait time percentage from sys.dm_os_wait_stats SOS_SCHEDULER_YIELD...

Today I witnessed a performance load test against a 16 proc 64-bit SQL Server instance. During the first run we saw a very high value for CXPACKET, followed up with SOS_SCHEDULER_YIELD. After disabling parallelism and clearing the wait stats, CXPACKET...

Today I received a copy of SQL Server 2008 Query Performance Tuning Distilled by Grant Fritchey (aka ScaryDBA ). I was the technical reviewer for this book and I really enjoyed the project. SQL Server performance is one of my favorite topics, and Grant...