Check trace flag 3226, understand suppressed backup success messages, and use msdb history to monitor backups without log noise.
Chatty Applications: Finding Many Tiny Queries per Second
Diagnose chatty applications with batch rates, cached executions, bounded session event counts, and measured round trips per user action.
Heartbeat Gaps: Finding Missing Check-Ins With LAG
Detect missing check-ins with LAG, report closed heartbeat gaps, and find silent or never-seen sources using an explicit UTC tolerance.
Agent Jobs Running Longer Than Usual: Finding Them in Job History
Find Agent jobs running longer than usual by decoding history durations, comparing current activity, and alerting against a baseline.
Reading Performance Counters in T-SQL Without Misreading Them
Read SQL Server performance counters with two timed samples, a proper ratio base, and a concise workload and memory dashboard.
percent_complete: Which Commands Show Real Progress
percent_complete tells you how far a running command has come, but only some commands fill it in. This post times eleven commands on SQL Server 2025, shows which ones report real progress and which stay at 0, and adds a way to watch the silent ones.
Parameters of sp_who2: Active, Session ID and the Login Trap
The parameters of sp_who2 are one optional value that can be a session ID, the word active or a login name. This post counts the rows each form returns, shows that the login form does not filter, and explains the errors.