How to optimize planned availability group failovers in SQL Server
We often perform planned availability group failovers in SQL Server for maintenance, patching, upgrades, and even hardware rotation. Typically, our failovers are fast, but sometimes they take longer – and it’s not always intuitive why, as there are no …
The SQL Server Transaction Log, Part 2: Log Architecture
(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.) In the first part of this series …
[Video] Office Hours: Ask Me Anything About Microsoft SQL Server and Azure SQL DB
Want to ask your own questions or pick the ones I discuss? Head over to https://pollgab.com/room/brento to get involved. In the meantime, let’s hang out in the backyard, where Beni makes a special guest appearance. Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Start 0 …
How to safely use MySQL 8.0 post end-of-life (and alternatives to consider)
Regardless of how popular a specific software appliance is, particular versions of it are inevitably phased out over time, paving the way for new ones. MySQL, the DB-Engines DBMS of the Year in 2025, is perfect proof of this. MySQL 8.0 was officially r …
Achievement Unlocked: One Year Sober
(This is from the Insider Newsletter that I sent out earlier today…) Back in early 2023 I wrote a long blog post about my struggles with alcohol and how I’d decided to stop. I made it a few months, and then several times on and off after that, in the c …
How to Help Copilot Encourage Good Database Standards
I know a lot of y’all lag behind on upgrading SSMS, but v22.3 just introduced something that you need to be aware of. It’s going to impact any of your users who DO upgrade their SSMS, or who use Github Copilot. There’s something that you can do in orde …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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: …