Category: Experiences

SQLBits 2022 – London

SQLBits 2022 – London

I went to SQLBits 2022 last week, returning with feelings of joy, inspiration, a cold and a swollen ankle! Here follows a long rambling essay about my experiences, peppered with a collection of random photos from random people. I learned loads at SQLBits, from a technical perspective, I picked up a lot of knowledge but…

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EXCEPT Operator Troubles (RowGoal)

EXCEPT Operator Troubles (RowGoal)

Sometimes, queries just go bad. They can take you on a Journey. Not always a Journey that you want to go on, but so long as you’re learning then “The Journey is the reward”. I’ve seen a lot of queries recently that use the EXCEPT operator. Frequently used in Data Warehouses to process Slowly Changing…

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Query Plan says “Just do nothing”

Query Plan says “Just do nothing”

How many times do you ask someone to do something and get the response “I’m not doing that – there’s no point”. Turns out SQL Server does that sometimes too – as I was reminded recently.   After spending time examining query plans using SentryOne Plan Explorer, I was faced with the following improbable Plan…

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Options for deleting large amounts of data

Options for deleting large amounts of data

Recently, I had a situation where a lot of data needed to be deleted. This was caused by a Monitoring system which was incorrectly configured. When Monitoring, you should Monitor just the information that you need, but no more. In this case, far too much information was being monitored and recorded, causing the Database that…

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Availability Groups – Making SQL Agent Jobs only run on Primary Replica

Availability Groups – Making SQL Agent Jobs only run on Primary Replica

I recently encountered some strange behaviour with SQLAgent Jobs in an Always On Availability Group. There’s a major difference between SQL Server Failover Cluster Instances (FCI) and SQL Server Availability Groups that makes it a little bit more complicated with SQLAgent Jobs. Put simply, with a Failover Cluster, there is only one “SQL Server” involved.…

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Using SQL Server Data Compression

Using SQL Server Data Compression

Over time, things come along that you think “that would have been so useful” in the past. Data Compression is one of those features within SQL Server.   Data Compression has been around for a few years. It was introduced in SQL Server 2008. I remember a conversation with Tony Rogerson (UK SQL Server User…

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