Blog

  • Success vs. Scalability: Why your biggest success might also be your biggest disaster

    Success vs. Scalability: Why your biggest success might also be your biggest disaster

    There is a scenario I have seen again and again. A company has developed a nice piece of software which many clients are running with happily. Then along comes a new client, the biggest client to date by far. Celebrations abound, plans are made to expand the business and the execs are wringing their hands… Read more

  • Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization in SQL Server 2022. What is it and is it any good?

    Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization in SQL Server 2022. What is it and is it any good?

    Parameter Sensitive Plan (PSP) optimization is a new feature in SQL Server 2022 that aims to improve the performance of parameterized queries. It is part of the Intelligent Query Processing family of features and addresses the scenario where a single cached plan for a parameterized query isn’t optimal for all possible incoming parameter values. This… Read more

  • Identify the (Top 20) most expensive queries across your SQL Server using Query Store

    Identify the (Top 20) most expensive queries across your SQL Server using Query Store

    Script to identify the most expensive queries on your database server using the Query Store DMVs. This allows you to look at data from a specific time frame, as well as view data that traditionally would have been lost due to server restarts, recompiles etc. Read more

  • Setting Up Always Encrypted

    Setting Up Always Encrypted

    In this post we’re going to go through the steps to set up Always Encrypted and create an encrypted column. As with my last post we’re looking at the flavour of Always Encrypted without enclaves, we’ll look at working with enclaves in detail later on. Read more

  • What is Always Encrypted and how does it work?

    What is Always Encrypted and how does it work?

    Always Encrypted was a new encryption feature added to SQL Server with the 2016 version of the product. Initially it was just available in enterprise edition, but from SQL Server 2016, SP1 was made available in standard edition also. Unlike TDE which encrypts the whole database, Always Encrypted is a form of column encryption that… Read more

  • Introduction to SQL Server Query Store

    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