The Curious Case of… occasional query failure on a tiny table
This is a case that happened on a client system last year: occasionally a common query on a tiny table appeared to ‘hang’ and had to be killed and re-run. What’s going on? The table in question only had a few million rows of data in it, with a maximum …
SQL Server Long-Running Query Detection: How to Find and Monitor Slow Queries
Monitoring and alerting can be overwhelming tasks, especially for those new to the world of managing production data. One common challenge for any data professional is the identification and management of queries that run for longer than they should. L …
How to Find and Monitor Slow/Long-Running Queries in SQL Server
Monitoring and alerting can be overwhelming tasks, especially for those new to the world of managing production data. One common challenge for any data professional is the identification and management of queries that run for longer than they should. L …
New course and bundle: SQL Server 2025 Vector Search in Practice
(TL;DR; Video trailer for the new course is here.) Joe’s next course, AIVSP: Vector Search in Practice, is now available! This online course builds on AIVSE: Vector Search Essentials to cover production patterns for vector search in SQL Server 2025 and …
[Video] Office Hours at Atlantis, Bahamas
It’s an overcast afternoon at Atlantis Paradise Island in the Bahamas, so since I can’t go into the water, might as well go through your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento. Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Start 00:48 jrl: What makes …
Python is good, but not perfect – here are 10 reasons to avoid it
Four years ago I wrote a blog on this site explaining why Python is better than C# and, arguably, most other programming languages. To redress the balance, here are 10 reasons why you might want to avoid getting caught up in Python’s oh-so-tempting coi …
Updated First Responder Kit and Consultant Toolkit for February 2026
Two big sets of news this month! The Consultant Toolkit now supports imports to a database so you can track your clients’ health and performance over time, and sp_BlitzCache has a new @AI parameter. Set @AI = 1, and get a prompt you can copy/paste into …
SQL Server 2025 CREATE EXTERNAL MODEL and AI_GENERATE_EMBEDDINGS Commands Explained
When SQL Server 2025 was announced, Bob Ward mentioned that there would be some new commands for managing AI models and their definitions, as well as T-SQL functions to generate embeddings, etc. I even made a guess that the command might be CREATE AI M …
[Video] Office Hours Aboard the Groove Cruise
On the world’s largest floating electronic dance music festival, I took your top-voted database questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento. Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Start 01:54 Frost: What is your opinion on Group Managed Service Accounts? 04: …
Who’s Hiring Database People? February 2026 Edition
Is your company hiring for a database position as of February 2026? Do you wanna work with the kinds of people who read this blog? Let’s make a love connection. If your company is hiring, leave a comment. The rules: Your comment must include the job ti …
The SQL Server Transaction Log, Part 1: Logging Basics
(This post first appeared on SQLperformance.com four years ago as part of a blog series, before that website was mothballed later in 2022 and the series was curtailed. Reposted here with permission, with a few tweaks.) All through my career as a data p …
I’m Coming to #SQLBits! Here are My Sessions.
The annual SQLBits conference is April 22-25, and they just announced the session and speaker lineup. This year’s theme is Cartoon – something I love deeply to begin with – and I decided to lean into that theme, big time. Here are my sessions: Training …
[Video] Home Office Hours, Under Construction Edition
While in the midst of moving my home office into a new room in the house, I stopped to take your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento. About 18.5 minutes into the recording, my camera overheated because I hadn’t set up the fan on it …
Automatic Stats Updates Don’t Always Invalidate Cached Plans
Normally, when SQL Server updates statistics on an object, it invalidates the cached plans that rely on that statistic as well. That’s why you’ll see recompiles happen after stats updates: SQL Server knows the stats have changed, so it’s a good time to …
Securing Your Databases in 2026: Best Practices for the Evolving Threat Landscape
In 2026, your approach to both applications and databases must be focused on practical and technical real-world operations and use cases rather than just hype. If not, you’re heading for trouble as threat actors are becoming more sophisticated and the …