I did not hand it a plan with a spill in it. Everybody can find a spill. I handed it a plan with no warnings at all, where every number on the screen looked healthy, and the query underneath was reading five million rows to return seventeen.
NOLOCK: Why It Counts Some Rows Twice and Misses Others
NOLOCK is not a safe performance fix, it is a decision to reduce blocking by accepting an answer that may never have been true. The whole problem is that nobody who types it thinks they are making that trade.
I Let AI Recommend SQL Server Indexes Across a Week of Queries
I let AI recommend SQL Server indexes across a week of queries, measured every number before and after, and the result was not the one I expected to write about.
Full, Differential and Log Backups: A Practical Guide
Full, differential and log backups are the three things almost every SQL Server DBA can define, and the three things a surprising number of us get wrong under pressure at two in the morning.
Nine Unusual Ways My Clients Use AI With SQL Server
Everyone writes about AI generating queries. Nobody writes about the strange jobs it is actually doing inside real database teams. These are nine of them, and I helped build every one.
SQL Server Deadlock: Build One With Your Own Hands
A SQL Server deadlock occurs when sessions form a cycle of dependencies and none can continue. This example lets you create the cycle, inspect it, and remove it.
Database Performance Health Check: Six Months Slow, Fixed in 75 Minutes
Six months of slow SQL, fixed in 75 minutes. See what a database performance health check finds, and how one focused 4-hour session ends the guessing.