Episodes
Guy and Eitan talk about some interesting news from Microsoft about SQL Server in Azure. And also discuss the topic of Backups and Recovery, RTO, RPO, RCO, and database Integrity Checks. Relevant links: Microsoft Copilot in Azure extends capabilities to Azure SQL Database (Private Preview) - Microsoft Community Hub Regex in SQL DB (microsoft.com) SQL Server Regular Expressions Library Sample - Microsoft Community Hub STRING_SPLIT (Transact-SQL) - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn Do You...
Published 04/08/24
Published 04/08/24
Niko Neugebauer and Vladimir Ivanovic are our esteemed guests for today, and they have a HUGE announcement to make about Azure SQL Managed Instances. Extra! Extra! 🗞 Hear all about it on this exclusive scoop here at the SQL Server Radio podcast! Relevant links: Azure SQL Managed Instance Next-gen GP (microsoft.com) Use Next-gen General Purpose service tier - Azure SQL Managed Instance | Microsoft Learn Try for free (preview) - Azure SQL Managed Instance | Microsoft Learn Next-gen...
Published 03/21/24
Guy tries to convince Eitan that OPTION(RECOMPILE) is the ultimate "Turbo" button in SQL Server, and that it's strongly underappreciated. Relevant links for more info: OPTION(RECOMPILE) (Transact-SQL) - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn Recompile a Stored Procedure - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn Should I use option(recompile)? – SQLServerCentral SQL SERVER - Parameter Sniffing and OPTION (RECOMPILE) - SQL Authority with Pinal Dave
Published 02/12/24
Guy and Eitan discuss various practices in SQL Server that hurt performance and possibly waste money, negative VarDecimal numbers, renumbering Identity columns, and the new Azure Database Fleet Manager. Relevant links: SQL Server IN Clause With Multiple Literal Values Performance Behaviour | Neeraj Prasad Sharma Could SQL Injection be dangerous even when perfectly safe? | Eitan Blumin The Anatomy of Vardecimals | Mark S. Rasmussen Utility Scripts/ReNumber_Identity_Column.sql Introducing...
Published 01/08/24
Guy and Eitan talk about some great things about SQL Server, and mostly Guy’s experience in digging into execution plans and generating synthetic IO workloads. Relevant links: What’s new in SQL Server and Azure SQL 2023 Year in Review Multi-Tenancy in the Real World | Eitan Blumin (Data Weekender 6.5)  
Published 12/11/23
Guy and Eitan go back to their SQL Server roots and go hardcore into execution plan analysis and database corruption. Relevant links: Health Check Scripts/Find_Top_Exec_Plans_to_Optimize.sql SQLServerFast.com Database Corruption Challenge by Steve Steadman A DBA's Guide to the Proper Handling of Corruption Data TLV Summit PASS Data Community Summit  
Published 10/09/23
Guy and Eitan celebrate resuming the school year with some learning of their own. This time, focusing on encryption types in SQL Server. Relevant links: External REST Endpoint Invocation is now GA! Types of Encryption in SQL Server PWDENCRYPT and PWDCOMPARE Dynamic Data Masking And also, don’t forget to register for the upcoming Data TLV Summit!
Published 09/11/23
Today we have Kevin Chant as our guest! We talk about Kevin’s favorite topics: Microsoft Fabric, Azure DevOps, SQL Server, and more. Relevant links: https://www.kevinrchant.com/2023/06/13/create-your-own-microsoft-fabric-environment/  
Published 08/14/23
Guy and Eitan discuss several interesting topics and recent experiences that you'd want to hear about! Relevant links: Trigram Wildcard String Search in SQL Server The Story of DBeaver, PostgreSQL, and the silly data engineer SQL Server Error Log Management High VLF Counts Got You Down? Here's How to Keep Them Low and Performance High
Published 07/10/23
As promised in the previous episode, Guy and Eitan interview an actual human this time! The one and only, the famed Erik Darling is our guest for today! Check out his official website: Erik Darling Data Erik Darling's YouTube Channel We apologize in advance for Guy's occasional audio glitches, as he was having network issues on the day of recording.
Published 06/12/23
Guy and Eitan try something new for today's show - we interview ChatGPT as our guest for today, and make it pretend that it's a SQL Server expert! Let's see how it does. Relevant links: Monitor performance by using the Query Store Brent Ozar Unlimited SQLSkills Scary DBA SQL Authority PASS Data Community Summit SQLBits GroupBy Virtual Conference Data Platform Summit
Published 05/08/23
Guy and Eitan share their experience from SQLBits 2023 and some of their favorite sessions. Relevant links: Official SQLBits Website SQLBits Content Library SQLBits YouTube Channel SQL Server Debugging with WinDbg – an Introduction Join #TeamHugo and Help Fight Leukemia Parameter Sensitive Plan optimization Azure Functions overview GitHub CoPilot  
Published 04/10/23
Guy and Eitan discuss some new and existing capabilities in the SQL Server engine related to Intelligent Query Processing, and whether our job positions as DBAs are at risk due to the imminent takeover by our robot overlords. Relevant links: Intelligent Query Processing Adaptive Joins (Batch) Intelligent Query Processing Feedback family of features Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization Scalar UDF Inlining
Published 03/13/23
Guy and Eitan list several common mistakes done by DBAs in SQL Server. Some relevant links: Architecting Database Dev and Test Environments: Best Practices and Anti-Patterns for SQL Server Ola Hallengren's Maintenance Solution HADR My Jobs - Open Source Solution by Madeira Columnstore Indexes: Planning and Implementation TSQL Script to Check for Weak Passwords Script to Check for Max DOP Configuration Best Practice
Published 02/13/23
Today we have the pleasure of hosting Rob Sewell, and talking about the upcoming SQLBits event of 2023! Relevant links: SQLBits 2023 agenda, speakers, pricing, and registration - events.sqlbits.com/2023 YouTube playlist of all 195 sessions from SQLBits 2022 - available for free! SQLBits helpers form - beard.media/sqlbits-helpers Rob Sewell's blog - blog.robsewell.com
Published 01/09/23
Guy and Eitan finally celebrate the generally available release of SQL Server 2022! And also discuss other announcements from PASS Data Community Summit, and also various interesting news and features of Azure SQL announced in November 2022. Relevant links: SQL Server 2022 is now generally available Consumption-based PAYG billing model for SQL Server 2022 on-prem PASS Data Community Summit Hug a DBA song by Killa DBA SQL Server 2022 song by Killa DBA The SQL Server Native Client has been...
Published 12/12/22
Guy and Eitan play a game of word associations to spout a bunch of stuff about SQL Server features - mostly reviewing new system objects that replaced old DBCC commands, useful scripts in our toolbox, and talking about Application Reliability Errors. Relevant links: Buffer Pool Extension SQL Server editions comparison dashboard by domains, features, and scale capacities – by Romain Ferraton SQL Server Standard vs Enteprise Edition features history – by Romain Ferraton SQL Server Scale...
Published 11/14/22
Today we're pleased to have the one and only Itzik Ben-Gan hosted at our show again! We talk about interesting SQL/T-SQL related topics, the experience of teaching, his new upcoming book edition of T-SQL Fundamentals, and more. Relevant links: Itzik's personal web page at tsql.lucient.com Itzik Ben-Gan's Blog posts at SQLPerformance.com SQL Server Central - Question of the Day Even more fun with DATETIME arithmetics (Eitan Blumin) The Itzik Ben-Gan Trick (batch processing hack)
Published 10/10/22
Guy and Eitan discuss a few new features in SQL Server 2022, and Guy tells a story about an interesting use case where a customer accidentally dropped their encryption keys in production. Relevant links: SQL Server 2022 RC0 is now available! Azure Active Directory authentication for SQL Server 2022 Tutorial: Set up Azure Active Directory authentication for SQL Server Bidirectional Transactional Replication in SQL Managed Instance Considerations on Bidirectional Transactional Replication...
Published 09/12/22
Today, Guy has a lot of tips to share after reviewing one of those... "problematic" customer environments. Let's just say that he's got his hands full. But it's still fun, and you get to learn as well! Relevant links: Forced Parameterization | Microsoft Docs Forced Parameterization Can Lead to Poor Performance | Microsoft Tech Community Why Multiple Plans for One Query Are Bad | Brent Ozar Relevant scripts from our Madeira Toolbox: Find Unused Indexes Find Redundant Indexes Join, Query,...
Published 08/29/22
Guy and Eitan discuss their favorite upcoming new features in SQL Server 2022, and talk about some major upcoming events and summits. Relevant links: SQL Server 2022 public preview is now available on Linux Introducing the SQL Server 2022 blog series by Bob Ward Contained Availability Groups in SQL Server 2022 | Eitan Blumin What is a contained availability group? | Microsoft Docs Erik Darling Blog series about Parameter Sensitive Plans XML Data Compression in SQL Server 2022 Link feature...
Published 07/11/22
Guy and Eitan talk about a lot of exciting announcements and announcements about a lot of excitements! Does this even make sense? I don't know! Listen to the show to find out! Relevant links: How to HADR Your SQL Jobs Contained AlwaysOn Availability Groups Overview Pedro Lopes's Slides Deck for SQL Bits 2022 How to Identify and Fix TempDB Contention The Best Solution for SQL Server Partitioning Sliding Window Roll_Forward_Transaction_Log_Backups.sql Restore-DbaDatabase (DbaTools) Tsql2sday...
Published 06/13/22
Guy and Eitan discuss interesting challenges and news about migrations in SQL Server. Also, we talk about performance considerations of partitioning in SQL Server, a blog post series about how to tune performance, and new scripts in our Madeira Toolbox on GitHub. Relevant links: Data-tier Applications (DACPAC and BACPAC) About: Snapshot Replication Generally available: Azure Virtual Machines increase storage throughput by up to 300% Generally available: Announcing Azure SQL Migration...
Published 05/09/22
Guy and Eitan discuss upcoming events and conferences in 2022, and also about new features in SQL Server 2022, and more. Relevant links: Conferences: SQL Server & Azure SQL Conference Data Platform Virtual Summit 2022 DataGrillen PASS Data Community Summit 2022 (registration is open!) Get Ready for SQL Server 2022 Get Azure recommendation in Azure SQL Migration extension Madeira Toolbox Roundup: Linked Server Vulnerability.sql Maintenance of Azure SQL Databases via Azure Automation...
Published 04/11/22