[Video] Office Hours: Q&A on the Mountaintop
Well, maybe mountain is a bit of a strong word, but it’s one of the highest elevation home sites in Las Vegas, with beautiful views over the valley, the Strip, the airport, and the surrounding mountains. Let’s go through your top-voted questions from h …
SQL101: Top Ten SQL Server Performance Tuning Best Practices
There are a huge number of best practices around SQL Server performance tuning – I could easily write a whole book on the topic, especially when you consider the number of different database settings, server settings, coding practices, wait types, and …
Y’all Are Getting Good Free AI Advice from PasteThePlan.
PasteThePlan has a new AI Suggestions tab, and it’s been really fun to watch the query plans come in and the advice go out. Here are some examples: Date “tables” – when I looked at the query, I glossed over the real problem. I thought arc_Calendar was …
Everything you should know about the SQL Server Resource database
Every SQL Server instance contains a database that most people never query, never back up, and never even see in Object Explorer. Yet, without it, SQL Server would not start. Enter the SQL Server Resource database. This article explains what the SQL Se …
My Wish List for SQL Server Performance Features
There are a lot of shopping days left before Christmas, and even more before the next version of SQL Server ships, so might as well get my wish list over to Santa now so the elves can start working on ignoring them. My work focuses on performance tunin …
Why most enterprise AI projects fail – and how to fix them
Today’s AI landscape is characterized by a gap. While it is often relatively easy to reach the proof of concept (PoC) stage, getting from a PoC to a reliable production system is often much more challenging than teams expect. As a result, by some indus …
SSMS v22.4.1: Copilot is GA. So What’s It Do Right Now?
Copilot in SSMS has two parts. Usually people focus on the pop-out Copilot chat window, and that’s useful for sure, but honestly I think you’re going to get way more mileage out of the code completions feature, right away, because it blends in with you …
Protecting Transparent Data Encryption Databases
I have gotten a lot of email questions recently about TDE and SQL Server, specifically around the encryption hierarchy involved in protecting the encrypted data inside of a TDE enabled database in SQL Server. So, rather than continuing to write long em …
DevOps anti-patterns: what they are and how to avoid them
In software development, DevOps promises faster delivery, increased collaboration, and more reliable deployments. However, many teams unknowingly fall into anti-patterns. Anti-patterns refer to recurring practices that may seem beneficial initially but …
[Video] Office Hours in North Bay, Ontario
I’m up in North Bay, Ontario, Canada for the 2026 Can-Am Curling Cup run by Aaron Bertrand – and my team actually won! Hanging out with Andy Mallon, Aaron Bertrand, Leanne Swart, Michael J Swart, and Ken Mallon before the tournament The winning team, w …
How to migrate from on-prem to the cloud: uncovering legacy system ‘skeletons’
In this article, Pat Wright explains how to identify hidden risks in legacy applications before moving to the cloud. It features practical advice and guidance to avoid migration failures and surprises. I have worked in very few companies that had appli …
Updated First Responder Kit and Consultant Toolkit for March 2026
For the last few years, I’ve slowed the First Responder Kit release down to once per quarter. It felt pretty feature-complete, and I didn’t want to make y’all upgrade any more than you have to. You’re busy, and I don’t want to take up your time unless …
How to determine the last value used by a sequence in SQL Server
I’ve been a fan of sequences ever since they were added in SQL Server 2012. Prior to that, developers had a choice of IDENTITY columns or a roll-your-own table mechanism. What are sequences in SQL Server? Sequences allow us to create a schema-bound obj …
Get Free AI Query Advice in PasteThePlan.
At PasteThePlan.com, you can paste execution plans into your browser, then send a link to someone else to get query advice. It’s useful for online forums, Stack Exchange, and the like. After you paste the plan, you’ve got a new AI Suggestions tab. It s …
The Curious Case of… no buffer pool memory and no OS memory available
Jonathan had a client issue recently where SQL Server’s buffer pool had been forced down to a ridiculously small size, only a few hundred MB, but the OS also showed basically no free memory. Page Life Expectancy was zero! What was going on? From invest …