SQL 2012 Database Engine Tuning Advisor: Now With More Plan Cache!

I’m normally not one to advocate the use of the Database Engine Tuning Advisor (DETA), a tool available inside of Microsoft SQL Server. (To be fair, I’m not a fan of the SQL Tuning Advisor from Oracle, either.) But I recently came across a little nugget of information that I wanted to share with you regarding … Read more

Is Your DBA Lying To You?

“Signs point to yes.” – Magic 8-Ball prophecy You have probably heard this line at one point, the one that says “the best DBAs are the ones you never see or hear?” I used to think that was a result of some sketchy personal hygiene choices and later on understood it to mean that if … Read more

Presenting at Tech-Ed(s) This Year

The announcements came out yesterday and I can now tell the world that I will be presenting at TechEd this year. Denny Cherry (blog | @mrdenny) and I will be doing a precon seminar at TechEd in Orlando in June. The title is “Microsoft SQL Server Performance Tuning and Optimization” and we are very excited to have … Read more

Do You Make These 5 Database Design Mistakes?

Look, everyone makes mistakes. It’s true. But not all of us have the chance to make mistakes that end up costing millions of dollars in hardware and production support costs. Any one of the following five mistakes listed below will add additional costs to your company. It’s guaranteed. The costs could be hardware related (extra disk … Read more

7 Mistakes You Can’t Afford To Make When Upgrading to SQL 2012

It’s new, it’s shiny, and it smells like frozen yogurt. No, it’s not the blender you got for Christmas. It’s SQL 2012 (formerly known as codename ‘Denali’). And it’s here. And you want to use it, you know you do. As much as you would like to believe that migrating to SQL 2012 is as … Read more

12 Things You Should Stop Doing in 2012

It’s the end of the year and already I am seeing the usual blog posts that either reflect on the year that was, or are pondering the year to come. I thought about writing another post covering all of the things that didn’t happen to me this past year but since I’ve already done that … Read more