Blog

  • Introduction to SQL Server Query Store

    Introduced with SQL 2016, Query Store was, probably without doubt, the most anticipated and talked out new feature. In this post we’ll just take a brief look at it, what it is, how you set it running, and what you can use it for. This will be a fairly brief overview – you’d need a… Read more

  • TDE in Standard Edition on SQL 2019

    Recently, Microsoft quietly let us know that TDE (Transparent Data Encryption) will be available in the Standard Edition of SQL Server 2019. If you don’t follow SQL topics on Twitter then it would have been easy to have missed that. Transparent Data Encryption is the ability to have all your data stored encrypted on disk… Read more

  • Why Does Everyone Have More Friends Than You?

    No, the answer isn’t because you’re a DBA. This isn’t a technical post about databases, but rather a discussion of a statistical paradox that I read about recently. Statistics and data often go hand in hand, and many of us who work with data often use statistics in our work – particularly if we cross… Read more

  • Instantaneous Transaction Rollback with SQL 2019

    If you’ve read about the Accelerated Database Recovery feature in SQL Server 2019 you could be forgiven for thinking it’s just about speeding up database recovery time in case of a server failure. In fact, enabling it also means that where you have a long running transaction that fails or is cancelled the rollback is… Read more

  • Check Query Progress with Live Query Stats

    This is something I touched on back in 2017 a little after the Live Query Statistics feature was introduced with SQL 2016, but I was using the functionality this morning and felt like it was worth a reminder. https://matthewmcgiffen.com/2017/02/23/livequerystats/ You can use Live Query Stats to check on the progress of an executing query –… Read more

  • SQL Server Wishlist

    This month for T-SQL Tuesday Kevin Chant asks us what our fantasy SQL feature would be. https://www.kevinrchant.com/2019/09/03/t-sql-tuesday-118-your-fantasy-sql-feature/ I think it’s appropriate to give a shout-out to Microsoft at this point, because over the last few releases they’ve given us some of the items that are top of my list. Recommending and setting MAXDOP during setup… Read more