Way back in June 2005, I blogged about '8 Steps to better transaction log throughput'. I did this blog post after seeing (again and again) overly fragmented transaction logs... Transaction logs can become *VERY* fragmented when they are not preallocated and instead they grow excessively through unmanaged (and probably the default ...

Well... I think I had had too much tea that morning ;-). But, as always, chatting with Richard and Greg was great. Here's the specific show link: http://www.runasradio.com/default.aspx?showNum=76. Oh, and just for the record, I didn't come up with that title. But, I do hope that all your [high-priority and important] ...

I first posted an update to sp_helpindex here. My version of sp_helpindex was solely to expand what sp_helpindex showed and adds 1 or 2 things based on version: for SQL2005+ it adds included columns and for SQL2008 it also adds the filter predicate. So, there were two versions of sp_helpindex2 depending on which verison ...

YES!!! OK, well, I guess I should be more specific because as in most things in SQL Server, the real answer is ''it depends''. And for these two options, it depends mostly on your SQL Server version. Since SQL Server 7.0, the way that auto update works, has changed (much so ...

Microsoft quietly released CU #9 (build 9.00.3282) yesterday; it contains a few dozen fixes, including a nasty AV involving UNION queries, documented in KB #956006.  You can read about / obtain the cumulative update at the following KB: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953752 So, now you can start hitting F5 all day, every day on the article ...

I am pleased to announce that the BIDS Helper team have just released v1.3 which is our first release with support for SQL Server 2008. With these release we have also improved our international support. All of the features in BIDS Helper still only display in English in their user interfaces. But in previous versions, some of the features of ...

OK, I first posted on some of the limitations to indexes in SQL Server 2005 and 2008 in part one here. Now, I want to dive into index internals for a post (or two). And, I often get the question “who is the best audience for your blog – or, for this post” and well, that’s a bit hard to answer. At SQL Connections in Orlando, I delivered a ...

Memorial Day weekend we were in Chicago to celebrate my Father's life. We did a ''Celebration of Life'' memorial and we had a few drinks (celebratory Meyers, Tonic and lime - which was my Father's favorite drink), we (7 of us) gave a few heartfelt speeches, and a few friends wrote a song (and passed out the words - to which we ...

A frequently asked question that surfaced again today is, ''how do I see when my data has been accessed last?''  SQL Server does not track this information for you.  SELECT triggers still do not exist.  Third party tools are expensive and can incur unexpected overhead.  And people continue to be reluctant or unable to constrain ...

OK, we were in Iceland and then Florida for our Accidental DBA workshops and both went really well. People agree that there are quite a few involuntary/accidental DBAs out there and overall, we helped quite a few to see a lot of options for better performance, availability, recovery, and/or just manageability. So, this ...