Category: Experiences

Becoming a SQLBits Helper

Becoming a SQLBits Helper

Introduction While I’ve been a regular attendee at SQL Bits (going back to the original conference in 2007), this year I did something different. This was my first time volunteering – becoming a SQLBits Helper.    I’m lucky to already know some people who are experienced SQLBits Helpers. They helped me out by answering some…

Read More Read More

T-SQL Tuesday #163 – What is the best piece of Career Advice you ever received?

T-SQL Tuesday #163 – What is the best piece of Career Advice you ever received?

T-SQL Tuesday is the blog party started by Adam Machanic (b|t) over a decade ago and is now maintained by Steve Jones (b|t) on tsqltuesday.com. Each month, lots of people blog their thoughts on a common topic. This month’s T-SQL Tuesday is from Gethyn Ellis (b|t) who is asking us to share the “best piece…

Read More Read More

SQLBits 2022 – London

SQLBits 2022 – London

I went to SQLBits 2022 last week, returning with feelings of joy, inspiration, a cold and a swollen ankle! Here follows a long rambling essay about my experiences, peppered with a collection of random photos from random people. I learned loads at SQLBits, from a technical perspective, I picked up a lot of knowledge but…

Read More Read More

EXCEPT Operator Troubles (RowGoal)

EXCEPT Operator Troubles (RowGoal)

Sometimes, queries just go bad. They can take you on a Journey. Not always a Journey that you want to go on, but so long as you’re learning then “The Journey is the reward”. I’ve seen a lot of queries recently that use the EXCEPT operator. Frequently used in Data Warehouses to process Slowly Changing…

Read More Read More

Query Plan says “Just do nothing”

Query Plan says “Just do nothing”

How many times do you ask someone to do something and get the response “I’m not doing that – there’s no point”. Turns out SQL Server does that sometimes too – as I was reminded recently.   After spending time examining query plans using SentryOne Plan Explorer, I was faced with the following improbable Plan…

Read More Read More

Options for deleting large amounts of data

Options for deleting large amounts of data

Recently, I had a situation where a lot of data needed to be deleted. This was caused by a Monitoring system which was incorrectly configured. When Monitoring, you should Monitor just the information that you need, but no more. In this case, far too much information was being monitored and recorded, causing the Database that…

Read More Read More

Availability Groups – Making SQL Agent Jobs only run on Primary Replica

Availability Groups – Making SQL Agent Jobs only run on Primary Replica

I recently encountered some strange behaviour with SQLAgent Jobs in an Always On Availability Group. There’s a major difference between SQL Server Failover Cluster Instances (FCI) and SQL Server Availability Groups that makes it a little bit more complicated with SQLAgent Jobs. Put simply, with a Failover Cluster, there is only one “SQL Server” involved.…

Read More Read More

Follow on Feedly

By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. more information

The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.

Close