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Stedman SQL Server Podcast: Insights, Expertise, and Real-World Solutions

Welcome to the Stedman SQL Server Podcast, where we dive deep into the world of Microsoft SQL Server. Whether you’re a DBA, developer, or IT manager, our podcast provides valuable insights into SQL Server performance tuning, disaster recovery, query optimization, and more. Hosted by Steve Stedman, a seasoned SQL Server expert with over three decades of experience, each episode offers a blend of technical expertise, real-world examples, and actionable advice for database professionals at all levels.

Podcast Episode 91: DBA Tools – Listen and find out what you are missing.

Today Episode 91 released and it is our pleasure to present this episode on DBA Tools.  DBA Tools is an open source project (http://DBATools.io) that provides a number of powershell scripts to better help the DBA perform common SQL Server tasks. This was a fun episode with the panel of Chrissy, Rob, Constantine, and Aaron who were super excited to talk with us and we loved their energy.

We all want an easy button.  It is human nature.  We heard quite a bit about how easy PowerShell will make everything, but for those of us who aren’t programmers, it can be a bit intimidating to get started.  The PowerSHell tools from dbatools.io are shaping up to be the closest thing to an easy button for DBAs.  On this episode we invited some of the team to chat with us about their tool, how they got started and the types of problems they are looking to solve.

Episode Quotes

“The features that are now inside of DBA tools, honestly, I would describe them as really awesome.” – Constantine
“I promised you this is the best code ever used and that you will ever have.” – Aaron
“It is important to us that people do feel welcomed and that their codes gets merged in.” – Chrissy

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The Use of WITH NOLOCK Query Hint

TWITH NOLOCKhere is a great deal of confusion about the WITH NOLOCK query hint. The following is a transcription of a conversation that I had on the SQL Data Partners Podcast #57 about the WITH NOLOCK hint, and some of the misconceptions about it.

WITH NOLOCK Hint

Carlos: So the next on is the WITH NOLOCK hint and I think this is on the list, ultimately, because there’s a lot of misinformation out there.

Steve: Absolutely, yes. The NOLOCK hint is one of my peeves on SQL Server, actually. I see it used a lot and really 99 percent of the time I see it used, people think that it’s doing something different than what it does. So, I heard the statement, “But I want to run a query in the production system but not impact or block anyone else. Shouldn’t I just use NOLOCK?” And the answer there is NO. The NOLOCK hint tells SQL Server to ignore other people’s query locks. Basically, to read dirty or uncommitted data at that point, which can lead to missing rows or phantom rows or data showing up in results. But it doesn’t do anything to stop the locking or the blocking in any way on the query that’s calling it. So it’s the equivalent of saying read uncommitted on a specific table that it’s referencing.

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