I had so much fun at SQL Saturday in Vancouver BC last year, I have decided to go again. The sessions submitted are: The “Run Faster” Switch The NO_LOCK hint is often believed to be the “Run Faster” switch, but in reality can cause some very inconsistent results.   Explore alternatives to the NO_LOCK hint to get your queries to run …

Sessions submitted to SQL Saturday Vancouver BC Read more »

After writing a recent blog post on Are you wasting half the capacity of IDENTITY, I started thinking about how much is too big for an BIGINT IDENTITY. If you don’t know about, you can get Are you wasting half the capacity of IDENTITY 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 IDENTITY values out of a BIGINT in SQL Server.  Which in easier terminology is 9 with roughly 18 …

How BIG is too BIG for a BIGINT IDENTITY? Read more »

When creating a table you can specify IDENTITY with the following syntax: For example The IDENTITY property is valid for data types of the integer data type category, except for the bit data type, or decimal data type.  So how many rows can you insert into that table?  It depends on the data type used. BIGINT maximum value is 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 …

Are you wasting half the capacity of IDENTITY? Read more »

In the manufacturing world it is referred to the 7 wastes, or the Japanese term Muda.  How does this apply to software development. THE 7 WASTES OR MUDA ARE: Transportation Inventory Motion Waiting Over-Processing Over-Production Defects These all apply to software development in similar ways as they apply to a manufacturing facility. For instance: Transportation refers to moving things, which …

Muda – or the 7 Deadly Wastes Read more »

Today I release Beta 3.1 of the Database Health Reports. Immediately after the release of Beta 3, there were 3 bugs reported that were very quick to fix.  I was able to get these fixed, along with one other bug fix, once they were all tested, I launched Beta 3.1 of the Database Health Reports. For anyone who downloaded Beta 3 …

Database Health Version 3.1 So Soon After Beta 3 Read more »

One big new feature in Beta 3 of the Database Health Reports, the historic monitoring. The way that the historic monitoring works is that it continuously monitors your SQL Server database and logs the details around queries that are causing waits. Here is an example, the following ugly block of TSQL updates a table with a few million rows in …

Beta 3 is Now Available. Read more »

Finally after a month and a half of preparation on Beta 3 of the Database Health Reports, it will be released tomorrow. The biggest feature in Beta 3 is the historic monitoring.  This process installs a small database to track wait times continuously, with a very small (less than 1%) on the database being monitored. Look for the download of …

Beta 3 of the Database Health Reports will be launched tomorrow. Read more »

Coding on the Database Health Reports project, making notes in my Quest Software notebook, with a pencil from Redgate SQL in the City, wearing my Confio t-shirt, refilling my SQLSentry plastic pint glass with a Nalgene bottle from Quest Software, storing data on my Redgate thumb drive, overwhelmed with all the swag from the last several conferences.   Oh and …

Swag Read more »

For more information on Common Table Expessions and performance, take a look at my book at Amazon.com: Common Table Expressions Joes 2 Pros®: A CTE Tutorial on Performance, Stored Procedures, Recursion, Nesting and the use of Multiple CTEs There are many reasons that a Temp Table, Table Variable or Common Table Expression can be a good solution, but there is …

Temp Table vs Table Variable vs CTE and the use of TEMPDB. Read more »

5 days until Beta 3 of the Database Health Reports.  Coming soon, and this one is going to be cool.  Although Beta1 and Beta2 had a number of great monitoring features Beta 3 takes a whole new approach.  All of the previous features in the database Health Reports report on the current status at the time you run the program. …

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