SQL Server Radio

Guy and Eitan go over Paul Randal's article of "Top Ten SQL Server Performance Tuning Best Practices" (published in last March), and add their own input. We also talk about considerations of upgrading SQL Server to 2025, and we also learn something new about Temp Table Caching. Relevant links: SQL101: Top Ten SQL Server Performance Tuning Best Practices - Paul S. Randal SQL Server 2016 Extended Se...

Guy talks about an interesting incident involving performance problems in a virtual environment. And also, we talk about the SSMS StatisticsParser extension and the question of SSMS extensions in general. Relevant links: vmware.com/docs/sql-server-on-vmware-best-practices-guide Hyper-V and SQL Server Best Practices: What We Wish You Knew - SQL Server Consulting - Straight Path Solutions Announcing...

Guy and Eitan discuss a few new things in the latest SSMS update, and Eitan tells about a very peculiar use case involving transactional replication and AlwaysOn Availability Groups, and Guy talks about a use case involving deletion triggers. Important note: The part about SQL Server 2025 CU4 adding automatic update was an April 1st joke :) Relevant links: SSMS 22.5.2 Release Migrate SQL Server to...

Guy and Eitan discuss several very interesting new features recently announced by Microsoft. Relevant links for more info: Stop defragmenting and start living: introducing auto index compaction | Microsoft Community Hub Automatic Index Compaction - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn Database DevOps (preview) in SSMS 22.4.1 | Microsoft Community Hub Manage SQL database schemas in VS Code: Publish dialog...

Guy and Eitan talk about Erik Darling's new monitoring app, which reminds us of similar tools we had experience with long ago. And, again, it's time to talk about AI. Specifically, a side-effect of it called "The Liar's Dividend". Relevant links for more information: Free SQL Server Performance Monitor App by Erik Darling - Brent Ozar Unlimited® Free SQL Server Performance Monitoring | Darling Dat...

Looks like it's that time of the year again, to face the impending death of the DBA role! Or... Is it? Guy and Eitan discuss the topic and raise several interesting points you should listen to. Relevant links: sqlfingers.com: Death of the DBA (Again) ( Reddit thread )  

In this year's first episode of the new year, Guy and Eitan discuss the new Next-gen General Purpose tier of Azure SQL Managed Instance, which is now GA. They also discuss a few interesting customer stories, how they were resolved, and how they're not actually SQL Server's fault. Relevant links: Generally Available: Azure SQL Managed Instance Next-gen General Purpose | Microsoft Community Hub The...

Matan Yungman is our special host for today, who came especially to talk about his special project called "Rapido", which is capable of automatically tuning SQL queries at scale. Perhaps there is some inspiration in it for us? Relevant links: Matan Yungman | LinkedIn Matan Yungman (@MatanYungman) / X SQL Server 2025 is Now Generally Available | Microsoft Community Hub Intelligent Query Processing...

Guy and Eitan talk about the new preview version of SSMS, application locks, and stupid troubles with TempDB shrinkage. Relevant links: Announcing the Release of SQL Server Management Studio 22 Preview 3 | Microsoft Community Hub Release Notes for SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 22 Preview 3 Get Started - GitHub Copilot in SQL Server Management Studio (Preview) | Microsoft Learn Overview of th...

We let a dice roll decide today's topic, and the winner ended up being: Computed Columns with PERSISTED and Indexed Expressions. We give our thoughts about it, best practices, pit falls, and tips. Relevant links: SQL Server 2025 Preview RC1: Now Supporting Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 10 | Microsoft Community Hub Specify computed columns in a table - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn Indexes on comp...

Guy and Eitan discuss several interesting announcements and updates from Microsoft related to SQL Server and VS Code. And also Eitan talks about a weird issue he encountered involving page latch time-outs during DBCC CHECK command. Please fill out the SQL Server on Linux adoption survey here ! Thank you! Relevant links: Higher log rate for business critical service tier in Azure SQL MI | Microsoft...

Guy and Eitan discuss security-related best practice scripts, and several interesting AI topics. Relevant links: microsoft-dbas-club/Security and Compliance/Check_Passwords_SQL_Server_Generated.sql microsoft-dbas-club/Security and Compliance/Best Practice Checks/Invalid_owner_for_system_schema_role_or_database.sql microsoft-dbas-club/Security and Compliance/Windows Group Members.sql Microsoft Intr...

Guy and Eitan discuss Stephen Planck's blog post "Five SQL Server 2025 Enhancements DBAs Will Notice", and add some of their own insights. Relevant links: Five SQL Server 2025 Enhancements DBAs Will Notice - SQL Table Talk Configure a flexible automatic failover policy for an availability group - SQL Server Always On | Microsoft Learn Accelerated Database Recovery (ADR) in TempDB | Microsoft Learn...

Many announcements and interesting releases came out this past month, so we got a lot to talk about in this episode! Relevant links: What's New in SQL Server 2025 - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn SQL Server 2025 - AI ready enterprise database from ground to cloud | Microsoft Community Hub Announcing Public Preview of DiskANN in SQL Server 2025 | Microsoft Community Hub SQL Server 2025: introducing o...

Guy talks about a recent migration project he was working on to move an on-prem SQL Server to AWS RDS. Eitan talks about a new AI-related feature in Azure SQL Databases. And we also discuss the new SNAPSHOT backup T-SQL command in SQL Server 2022. Relevant links: Importing and exporting SQL Server databases using native backup and restore - Amazon Relational Database Service Learn about Amazon RDS...

Guy and Eitan worry about the decline in SQL Server feature quality. But maybe there's something else behind it? Relevant links: Improving Azure SQL Database reliability with accelerated database recovery in tempdb | Microsoft Community Hub What the Decline of Sql Server Quality means for Developers and DBAs SLA for SQL Database | Azure AI will eliminate DBA Jobs faster than you think

Guy and Eitan discuss a few interesting topics. Including a fun new game called "SQL Noir", how to implement statistical clustering model in SQL, about surrogate and natural keys, and the recently announced deprecation of Azure Data Studio. Relevant links: SQL Noir - A Detective SQL Game How to Write a Recursive CTE in SQL Server | LearnSQL.com Azure Data Studio Retirement - Azure SQL Devs' Corner...

Guy and Eitan answer an interesting question from the forum regarding the logic of NOT BETWEEN. And also, checking out the SQL Squid Game, discussing SQL Audit, and sharing some tips for SSMS. Relevant links: SQL Squid Game SQL Server Audit (Database Engine) - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn microsoft-dbas-club/Maintenance/SQLVersionUpdates Tell us how you did and whether you survived the SQL Squid G...

Guy and Eitan talk about SQL Server 2025 (well, they try to, at least), and its various interesting upcoming features. Relevant links: Announcing SQL Server 2025 – SQLServerCentral What's New in SQL Server 2025 - Brent Ozar Unlimited® Optimized Locking - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn SQLBits is Coming Back to London in June 2025! - Brent Ozar Unlimited®

Guy and Eitan go over the most popular sessions released from the SQL PASS archive of 2023, and discuss some other topics. Relevant links: Announcing Microsoft SQL Server 2025: Enterprise AI-ready database from ground to cloud - Microsoft SQL Server Blog Sessions Archive for 2023 - PASS Data Community Summit Resolving and Preventing Deadlocks in SQL Server SSMS v21: Dark Mode, Git, Vertical Tabs,...

Guy and Eitan discuss the common challenge of long-running database integrity checks (DBCC CHECKDB) and a solution to resolve it, and why do we need integrity checks at all? Relevant links: PASS Data Community Summit Incremental Integrity Check for Large Databases - Eitan Blumin's blog SQL Server Integrity Check - by Ola Hallengren tigertoolbox/MaintenanceSolution/5_job_Maintenance.sql · microsoft...

Guy and Eitan discuss some interesting news from Microsoft regarding SQL Server, and also about the right way to handle index fragmentation. Relevant links: Resources from Microsoft: Preview release of SDK-style SQL projects in Visual Studio 2022 - Microsoft Community Hub Native JSON support now in preview in Azure SQL Managed Instance - Microsoft Community Hub EAP for Vector Support Refresh - Int...

Fair warning for all listeners! Before starting to listen to this podcast, very strongly recommended: Have the diagram at the bottom of this page ready in front of you, so that it'll be easier for you to follow along: Common Causes and Troubleshooting Solutions for SQL AG Data Synchronization Latency - Microsoft Community Hub (sorry in advance!) Additional relevant links: Index cleanup : Harder th...

Guy and Eitan discuss the recent CrowdStrike incident and what it would mean for DBAs, and discuss options to load huge CSV files into SQL Server as fast as possible. Relevant links: 101 of Troubleshooting SQL Server on Linux - Microsoft Community Hub bcp utility - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn Altering lock escalation for SQL Server tables (mssqltips.com) dbatools docs | Import-DbaCsv A Fast Way t...

Guy and Eitan discuss some important and interesting news from Microsoft about SQL Server, Straight Path Solutions publish 30 articles about SQL Server security checks, Guy talks about his experience with Excel, and Eitan is irritated about people  still not doing SQL jobs correctly in AlwaysOn Availability Groups. Relevant links: SQLBits Free Videos - YouTube JSON data type (preview) - SQL Server...