Last week, I attended the annual PASS Data Summit in Seattle. This was the fourth year of the event since Red Gate took over stewardship of PASS after that organization ceased operations in 2021. This...

Ever wonder how big your database estate is compared to others? Whether you've got more servers, more databases, more workloads, or more problems? Well, if you're one of my SQL ConstantCare® customers, check your email: our first set of badges just went out! With SQL ConstantCare®, your SQL Servers send us diagnostic data once per day, and our systems analyze it and email you specific, actionable recommendations to make your databases faster and more reliable.

Nah, not necessarily. SQL Server's query optimizer behavior keeps changing with every freakin' version. Let's illustrate it with a simple query against the Stack Overflow Users table: CREATE INDEX Location ON dbo.Users(Location); GO SELECT COUNT(*) FROM dbo.Users WHERE Location = N'Ahmadabad, India' OPTION (RECOMPILE); Because there are a lot of people in Ahmadabad, SQL Server gets that estimate correct, which is really important when you start joining this table to other tables, like finding their number of comments or posts:

“I’m sorry, I feel the referee was looking for something. There was no foul.”