Sql Server Radio

Do you know what FOMO means? It means “Fear of Missing Out”, and it’s a term used in the startup and venture capital fields. However, it’s also relevant for us as DBAs, and we start the show explaining why. Other than that, we talk about: Why you should be careful when using SQL Server’s Row Level Security Duplicate indexes The dangers of Indexed Views An important thing you need to know about Filtered Indexes Lots of ways to improve your productivity with Management Studio Allow Snapshot Isolation and Read Committed Snapshot Items mentioned in the show: Startup podcast 356labs Matan Yungman – 5 Ways to Improve Your Productivity with SSMS Forum discussion: ALLOW_SNAPSHOT_ISOLATION and READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT MCM readiness videos

We start to warm up the engines towards PASS Summit, which will take place in Seattle at the end of October. Before the summit, we will host a few speakers to talk about their sessions and share some of the stuff you can expect to hear. In this show, we have Bradley Ball (blog | twitter), Data Platform Management Lead at Pragmatic Works. Among other topics, we talk to Bradley about: What you can expect to hear in Bradley’s PASS Summit precon and session Data architecture What is Microsoft APS and what’s important when working with it How Azure SQL Datawarehouse took the APS idea a step further Message queuing Bradley’s military career Items mentioned in the show: Bradley’s PASS Summit session: Indexing Internals for Developers and DBAs Bradley’s PASS Summit precon: Optimize “All Data” with a Modern Data Warehouse Solution Jason Strate – sp_IndexAnalysis We also talk about some weird meanings of the acronym “APS”. About Bradley Bradley Ball is a SQL Server MVP with about 15 years of IT experience. Bradley

A few months ago we hosted Sean McCown for a talk about indexing tips and backup performance. On this show, we have Sean again. Sean reveals tons of backup tips and tricks while talking about his new free product, Minion Backup. Among other topics, we talk about: What are VLF’s and why it’s not good to have many of them When you SHOULD use shrink Why Sean doesn’t like Policy Based Management How to monitor backup progress Regular Expressions in SSMS And as always with our guests, we play Scattergories, and Sean tells a VERY interesting story about cluster configuration. Items mentioned in the show: Minion Backup Sean’s PASS Summit session – Monster Text Manipulation: Regular Expressions for the DBA Sean’s PASS Summit precon – The Enterprise Scripting Workshop   About Sean: Sean McCown is a Microsoft Certified Master in SQL Server 2008. He is also a SQL Server MVP with over 20 years experience in databases. Sean is also founder and co-owner of the renowned website MidnightDBA.com where he records free SQL

We tried something new this time, and broadcast the show live on Persicope. Periscope is a service by Twitter that allows each one to start a live broadcast anywhere and anytime from his phone or tablet. We will try it out a few more times, so watch for our announcements about future broadcasts on Twitter. As for SQL Server stuff, among other topics, we talk about: SQL Server Developer Edition vs. Enterprise Edition Benchmarking Columnstore Indexes and Columnstore in SQL Server 2016 Restoring transaction logs on Amazon RDS Log Shipping on disconnected servers Amazon RDS vs. Azure SQL Database Amazon Aurora Denormalization Foreign Keys Links mentioned in the show: Matan Yungman – Columnstore Indexes: Questions and Answers Kendra Little – The Easiest Way to Restore Transaction Logs to a Point in Time

On this show, we host a good friend of both of us – Boris Hristov! Boris (blog | twitter) is a SQL Server MVP from Bulgaria and a really passionate and efficient guy. He delivers a lot of technical training and also talks a lot about presentation design. We talk to Boris about those things and also about travelling, sports, work-life balance, and more. Among other topics, we talk to Boris about: Boris’ community initiative, SQL Hangouts What is Policy Based Management and why is it so important? How can you use Distributed Replay in your environment? The importance of presentation design Data corruption Efficiency What is Tapout XT Items mentioned in the show: SQL Hangouts Guy Glantser on SQL Hangouts about founding a company and work-life balance Matan Yungman (with William Durkin) on SQL Hangouts about transitioning from DBA to consultant Boris Hristov – Presentation Design – Why You Should Care? Boris Hristov courses on Pluralsight About Boris Boris is a SQL Server Consultant and Pluralsight Author fro

Two weeks have passed, and another show is here! We start by talking about scary DBA sentences We continue with PASS Summit 2015 and about the sessions we’ll deliver at the summit. We then talk about: T-SQL code patterns interesting scenarios with small but very active SQL Server tables jobs that will be replaced by machines Tempdb Contention and improvements in SQL Server 2016 The power of SQL for other data solutions like Couchbase and Azure Stream Analytics And more.. Items mentioned in the show: Kendra Little – Contest: Write the Scariest DBA Sentence PASS Summit 2015 Matan Yungman – The Data Loading Performance Presentation (from 24 Hours of PASS) Dwain Camps – High Performance T-SQL using Code Patterns Matan Yungman – Can a SQL Server Table be Too Small? Will Your Job Be Done By a Machine? The Azure Stream Analytics Query Language Couchbase N1QL

A few shows ago, we talked briefly about Virtualization and mentioned it would be a good idea to have a Virtualization expert on the show. In this show, we have David Klee (Blog | Twitter), one of the top Virtualization experts in the SQL Server space. We talk to David about: What’s important to know when virtualizing SQL Server How to properly size your VM What metrics to monitor when virtualizing When to use SQL Server High Availability features and when to use them at the virtualization side When NOT to virtualize Some of David’s most challenging projects In addition, we talk to David about starting a company and the life of an independent consultant. About David David is a technologist that is lucky enough to have a job doing that which he enjoys – working in high technology, using cutting edge technology to make businesses more efficient. He is the Founder and Chief Architect of Heraflux Technologies, and travels around the country working with companies to reduce risk, improve performance, and virtual

We have a different show this time – in which we play a game! On each round, as in the famous Scattergories game, we draw a SQL Server-related term and have to tell an interesting story about it. Along the way, we cover quite a few topics and situations we’ve been to in our careers, like the time a job ran for 14 hours, and the time a job didn’t finish at all. At the end, both of us got 1 million points. Listen to know how.

On this show, we host Niko Neugebauer, a.k.a “Mr Columnstore”!. On this very fun conversation, we talk to Niko about his various roles and activities, about the improvements Microsoft is making version after version, about SQL Server 2016, and of course, about Columnstore. Among other topics, we cover: What people need to know about Columnstore How to use Columnstore the right way Columnstore and In-Memory OLTP improvements in SQL Server 2016   About Niko Niko Neugebauer is a Software Designer, living in Portugal. In the recent years he’s being fascinated by data (big and small) and its analysis. Niko also likes to write about Clustered Columnstore Indexes and SQL Server. Niko founded and leads the Portuguese SQL Server User Group , and he’s the head of the organization committee for the SQLSaturday events in Portugal. He works as a BI Consultant for OH22, where he creates intelligent solutions for Business with a focus on Data Quality. Niko presents on the topics of Microsoft Data Platform around the world

We start show 21 with some inspiring quote competition (and ending with some as well). During the show, we talk about: Index rebuilds and fragmentation How efficient Columnstore is in terms of IO Debugging stored procedures Uses for Log Shipping and why it’s still relevant Solving latch problems And more.. Items mentioned in the show: Niko Neugebauer – Columnstore IO

It seems like ages ago, but we had a pretty busy month on March, with lots of conferences and great time. We start the show by summarizing March Madness, with the presentations, the people, the parties and the food. We then talk about: Things to take into account when upgrading to SQL Server 2014 and when installing a new server Windows Azure SQL Database backup options and new online features Cloud adoption considerations The top 10 presentations from PASS summit 2014 And more.. Items mentioned in the show: Guy shares the holiday spirit at SQLRally Nordic 2015 Top 10 sessions of PASS Summit 2014 Azure SQL Database Backup and Restore Aaron Bertrand – More Azure SQL Database Online Operations SQL Server 2014 Upgrade Technical Guide

Show 19 was recorded at the SQLBits conference in London, where we had the pleasure to interview PASS President, Thomas LaRock (blog | twitter). We talk to Tom about his long time volunteering at PASS and about his current role as the president of the organization. Among other topics, we cover: What does it mean to be PASS president? What’s the path to being on the board of directors? How does Tom manage to balance between his job at Solarwinds, his role at PASS and his family? How did 24 Hours of PASS come to the world? What is PASS Summer Camp? And more.. About Tom: Tom LaRock works as a Head Geek for Solarwinds, where his mission is to give IT and Data Professionals longer weekends. He also serves as the president of the PASS board of directors. He’s a Microsoft Certified Master, a SQL Server MVP, a VMWare vExpert, and also a Microsoft Certified Trainer. He has over 15 years experience in the IT industry in various roles such as programmer, developer, analyst, and database administration. Tom is also the

On show 18, we host Sean McCown, a.k.a Midnight DBA. We start the show with some tips about working from home without hurting your productivity. We then take a deep dive into two of Sean’s favorite topics: Reindexing and backup performance. Sean shares quite a few tips regarding the two topics, and takes us into the bits and bytes of his new free maintenance solution, Minion Reindex. About Sean: Sean McCown is a Microsoft Certified Master in SQL Server 2008. He is also a SQL Server MVP with over 20 years experience in databases. Sean is also founder and co-owner of the renowned website MidnightDBA.com where he records free SQL Server training videos and co-hosts the popular webshow, DBAs@Midnight.

On show 17, we start the show with a small small-talk about a few cool researches. We then dive in to SQL Server and talk about: Backup and DR to Azure Weird lock behavior Isolation Levels Visualization The risk of SQL Server ownership chaining Parallelism, Max Degree of Parallelism and Cost Threshold for Parallelism Azure row level security And more.. Items mentioned in the show: Tony Hawk Rides the Hover Board Michael J Swart – Visualizing Transaction Isolation Levels for SQL Server

We love working with SQL Server, but over the years, we’ve had some interesting, funny, sad and horrific cases related to it. On this show, we talk about some of those cases. Among other topics, we talk about: How to bring SQL Server online when it has no tempdb files Stored Procedure and Plan Cache optimization over the phone Finding out who dropped a database A very destructive MERGE statements that kills clusteres Data corruptions Table variable horrors And more.. Items mentioned in the show: Matan Yungman – The Strange Story About the MERGE that Killed the Cluster Paul Randal – Advanced Data Recovery Techniques Russ Thomas’ Monthly DBA Challenge If you like the show, please consider leaving a short review about the show on iTunes. 

2015 started well, fast, and furious. We start the show by congratulating Guy for earning the MVP title, and Guy explains what he did in order to get this achievement, and what you can do to earn it too. We also talk about the crazy March we’re going to have, with a lot of flights, conferences and many other events. In addition, talk about:  A weird scenario of updating a table using a view How to perform an ordered update efficiently What to expect when transitioning from DBA to consultant Parameterization Productivity and learning optimizations DBA challenges Physical joins And more.. Items mentioned in the show: Guy Glantser – I’m a SQL Server MVP! Matan Yungman – Things I learned in 2014 Guy Glantser – Parameterization Part 7: Summary Matan Yungman – What to Expect When Transitioning from DBA to Consultant Russ Thomas – Monthly DBA Challenge SQL Hangouts