This quarter's release includes new checks for SQL Server 2025's new memory pressure warnings, Azure SQL DB's operations in progress, warnings about not using partitioned statistics where appropriate, plus bug fixes. To get the new version: Download the updated FirstResponderKit.zip Get The Consultant Toolkit to quickly export the First Responder Kit results into an easy-to-share spreadsheet PowerShell users: run Install-DbaFirstResponderKit…

I recently presented a session on RCSI(Read Committed Snapshot Isolation) and version store, and I learned a few things myself.

Question 1: Pick the Problematic Plan: someone hands you a pair of queries, and you get the estimated query plans. (Perhaps you get the estimated plans from SSMS, or from sp_BlitzCache, or from your monitoring tool.) Which one of these two should you focus on tuning first, Query 1 or Query 2? Question 2: on an estimated plan, what does the thickness of the colored arrow represent? Question 3: on an actual plan, what does the thickness of the colored arrow represent? Tune in next week for the answers!

I'm leaving Microsoft, and heading for a new role... | 379 comments on LinkedIn

Optimize your database performance by understanding SQL Server Availability Group index usage in both primary and secondary replicas.

You're a developer, analyst, database administrator, or anybody else working with SQL Server, Azure SQL DB, or Amazon RDS SQL Server. You want to learn how to make your databases go faster. Good news! Next week, I'm teaching totally free half-day versions of my classes from 9AM-1PM Eastern time, 8AM-Noon Central, 6AM-10AM Pacific: Monday: Fundamentals of Index Tuning Tuesday: Fundamentals of Query Tuning…

Is your company hiring for a database position as of October 2025? Do you wanna work with the kinds of people who read this blog? Let’s make a love connection. If your company is hiring, leave a…

I like fast databases. Naturally, this puts me at odds with GUIDs. Alas, developers like to use them, sometimes for good reasons (“we need ids generated on different servers to be unique̶…

You’re a developer, analyst, database administrator, or anybody else working with SQL Server, Azure SQL DB, or Amazon RDS SQL Server. You want to learn how to make your databases go faster. Good…

Is your company hiring for a database position as of October 2025? Do you wanna work with the kinds of people who read this blog? Let's make a love connection. If your company is hiring, leave a comment. The rules: Your comment must include the job title, and either a link to the full job description, or the text of it.

A reader posted a question for Office Hours: Hi Brent, What is your take on Hugo Kornelis’s explanation of execution plan naming. As her his explanation, estimated exec plan is simply an execution…

Today’s brief Stack Overflow outage reminded me of something I’ve always wanted to blog about: There’s a gray bar across the top that says, “This site is currently in read-only mode; we’ll return…

You're building a new table or adding a column, and you wanna know which datatype to use: VARCHAR or NVARCHAR? If you need to store Unicode data, the choice is made for you: NVARCHAR says it's gonna be me. But if you're not sure, maybe you think, "I should use VARCHAR because it takes half the storage space." I know I certainly felt that way, but a ton of commenters called me out on it when I posted an Office Hours answer about how I default to VARCHAR.

Whether you’re looking to go cutting-edge and hop on SQL Server 2019 as soon as it’s available, or whether you’re just trying to evacuate from SQL Server 2008 to anything that’s going to be supported…

Learn a common mistake people make when tuning stored procedures: don't fall into the trap of using local variables to test.