We all crave routine in our life, from the time we are babies through adulthood. Routine and familiarity. This extends to how we do performance monitoring and troubleshooting. Everyone has their favorite set of tools to help get the job done, tools that have a familiar routine involved to make them work best for us. Over the … Read more
I’ve witnessed many novice administrators make the common mistake of believing that the SQL Server upgrade process for a database server is as easy as pressing a few buttons.
Recently it was brought to my attention that the query_hash and query_plan_hash columns inside of sys.dm_exec_requests were returning NULL values. I think everyone knows how I feel about NULLs already, but this was slightly more concerning. See, I work for a company that makes this wonderful tool called Database Performance Analyzer (DPA), and we rely … Read more
I like having a routine. Most people do, I suppose. There’s some comfort in knowing what lies ahead, what comes next. The same holds true for restoring the master database in SQL Server 2014, because it’s the same routine as what I posted for SQL Server 2012. For those of you too lazy to click … Read more
I’m on my way to the PASS Business Analytics conference today. If you are attending, and you are reading this blog post, come find me and Rob Collie (blog | @powerpivotpro) during the welcome reception on Wednesday night; we’d love to talk data. Speaking of data…I was finishing up a session at the Colorado Springs SQL Saturday recently … Read more
Having standards is important. If you don’t believe me, just ask your spouse or significant other. Knowing that such things are important I am willing to wager that your company has spent time putting together a set of standards to be followed with regards to application development, including database standards. I’m here today to tell … Read more
