Brent Ozar

A Visual Guide to Choosing an Index Type - Brent Ozar Unlimited® Warning: I’m about to overly simplify a whole lot of topics to make things easy. Armchair architects, warm up your flamethrowers. Your table has rows and columns kinda like a spreadsheet: In most…

Classic Post: A Visual Guide to Choosing an Index Type www.brentozar.com/archive/2018...

Yeah, I felt guilty about it at first, but then I thought about how I feel when Yves goes to China without me, hanging out with her friends & family, and I'm all YOU GO GIRL, I'll be here playing Dead by Daylight and eating pizza

I died laughing.

Which Version of SQL Server Should You Use? - Brent Ozar Unlimited® Wait! Before you install that next SQL Server, hold up. Are you sure you’re using the right version? I know, management wants you to stay on an older build, and the vendor says they’ll only support…

Just updated: Which Version of SQL Server Should You Use? www.brentozar.com/archive/2019...

how it started | how it's going

the contest is over, these folks won, and this is the single best conference picture that I've ever seen in my life

HAHAHA

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HAHAHA

And then I turned around and had to pay *my* mechanic...

(True story, the Honda Beat's check engine light came on this morning, and I'm again questioning my life decisions)

that changes the uptake ratio. As in, "Well, that's a little too low, how about $X+20." Heh

I took almost every offer as-is (bar the $20 ones), but interestingly, even though people named their own price, about half of them STILL didn't buy even when I met their price, HAHAHA. I'm guessing they were just throwing numbers out to see what would happen. I'm now trying negotiating to see if

That's been an interesting experiment. I sent it to email subscribers (rather than posting it publicly) and I'm surprised at the reactions. Some people said they felt guilty for offering $300, and some people just offered $20 with no explanation. :-D

[Video] Office Hours: Ask Me Anything About Microsoft Databases I'm back at home in Vegas, taking your top-voted questions from on a hillside enjoying the fall desert weather. Here's what we covered: 00:00 Start 03:10 Bruce: Howdy! When, if ever, would you recommend implementing a SQL Server Central Management Server? 04:09 Impostor Syndrome: Are multi-TB databases really all that rare? I have several that are over 10 TB, but I don't think of myself as being in a top 1% company.

[Video] Office Hours: Ask Me Anything About Microsoft Databases

I'm back at home in Vegas, taking your top-voted questions from on a hillside enjoying the fall desert weather. Here's what we covered: 00:00 Start 03:10 Bruce: Howdy! When, if ever, would you recommend implementing a SQL Server…

It's also helped Yves take better care of me on vacations. We're going to China/Japan in December, and she's going ahead first, saying, "I have a photographer friend who will help me get the photo shoots out of the way before you arrive." AWWW YEAH

We're going on a gay cruise at the end of this month, and I'm like, "Yeah, this is a 'vacation' - I understand there will be social media activities, I'll be working as a photographer/videographer, carrying more baggage, etc." Me knowing that going in helps me cope, heh.

I do a few travels per year that are strictly *vacations*, no planned photo-friendly activities, no photo/video shoots, minimal packing, etc. Then, Yves can decide if she wants to attend those or not - but she knows going in what the rules will be, hahaha.

I'm such a huge believer in these. It helps you stay in touch with yourself.

I have another reason for it now, too: when I travel with Yves, a good chunk of the "vacation" involves doing work for social media, and ... that's not a vacation, hahaha. So we came to an agreement...

Yeah, separate companies and everything. My personal social media feeds show both, but it'll still take a while for the new one to take off, I'm sure.

Postgres Surprise #4: Pricing Since the late 1990s, I worked with Microsoft SQL Server. My employers over the years had standardized on MSSQL for a variety of reasons: It was well-integrated with Microsoft Visual Studio and the…

Postgres Surprise #4: Pricing: smartpostgres.com/posts/postgr... It's cheap, but... only cheap in a vacuum.

Three reasons RDS SQL Server is better than Azure SQL Managed Instance Kendra Little writes and draws comics about SQL Server, Data Platforms, and Database DevOps.

Reading: Three reasons Amazon RDS SQL Server is better than Microsoft Azure SQL Managed Instance: kendralittle.com/2025/10/08/t... Speed, support, and the API.

Oh man, when those show up, someone is DEAD to me. That is the worst approach.

For you, YES

HAHAHA, like a 1800 collect call!

never in the history of the telephone has a "5-minute call" lasted just 5 minutes, so no, I will not be hopping on the phone with you

Updated First Responder Kit and Consultant Toolkit for October 2025 This quarter's release includes new checks for SQL Server 2025's new memory pressure warnings, Azure SQL DB's operations in progress, warnings about not using partitioned statistics where appropriate, plus bug fixes. To get the new version: Download the updated FirstResponderKit.zip Get The Consultant Toolkit to quickly export the First Responder Kit results into an easy-to-share spreadsheet PowerShell users: run Install-DbaFirstResponderKit…

Updated First Responder Kit and Consultant Toolkit for October 2025

This quarter's release includes new checks for SQL Server 2025's new memory pressure warnings, Azure SQL DB's operations in progress, warnings about not using partitioned statistics where appropriate, plus bug fixes. To get the…

Inside RCSI - Deep dive into concurrency and version store I recently presented a session on RCSI(Read Committed Snapshot Isolation) and version store, and I learned a few things myself.

Analyzing which queries are reading from the version store, versus the regular data pages in SQL Server: gohigh.substack.com/p/inside-rcs...

Preview of an upcoming blog post.

Query Plans Pop Quiz: Three Simple Questions Question 1: Pick the Problematic Plan: someone hands you a pair of queries, and you get the estimated query plans. (Perhaps you get the estimated plans from SSMS, or from sp_BlitzCache, or from your monitoring tool.) Which one of these two should you focus on tuning first, Query 1 or Query 2? Question 2: on an estimated plan, what does the thickness of the colored arrow represent? Question 3: on an actual plan, what does the thickness of the colored arrow represent? Tune in next week for the answers!

Query Plans Pop Quiz: Three Simple Questions

Question 1: Pick the Problematic Plan: someone hands you a pair of queries, and you get the estimated query plans. (Perhaps you get the estimated plans from SSMS, or from sp_BlitzCache, or from your monitoring tool.) Which one of these two should you…

Moving on from Microsoft | Buck Woody | 379 comments I'm leaving Microsoft, and heading for a new role... | 379 comments on LinkedIn

One of the most thought-provoking database professionals I know is leaving Microsoft after ~20 years: www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...