Welcome to the delayed 191st T-SQL Tuesday. Our host is, once more, Steve Jones. This time, he asks us to write about our favorite string parsing. Which is an odd thing to ask: nobody ever said “I like doing string manipulation in T-SQL”. So instead of doing what Steve asked, I will provide some background,...| SQLServerFast
It’s October. Almost time for the annual Black Friday tradition, where companies prove how large their regular margins are by giving deep discounts to all their customers. Since the margin on my SQLServerFast Execution Plan Video Training is 100% (if we conveniently fail to count the hundreds of hours of labour I put in), I... The post Black Friday 2025 appeared first on SQLServerFast.| SQLServerFast
Welcome back! In the previous parts, I first showed how a Hash Match (Left Outer Join) can give insight in the order of data in a hash table, and then used that trick to obtain and verify some interesting insights into the internal structure of such a table. It’s now time to see if this...| SQLServerFast
It’s time for T-SQL Tuesday again. Our host for edition 190 is Todd Kleinhans, and he asks us to write about mastering technical skills. I like that topic. Most of all, of course, because I spend a lot of time teaching, which is for most people the other side of mastering new skills, or improving...| SQLServerFast
There have not been any updates for the SQLServerFast Execution Plan Video Training for a long time. In fact, it’s already over one and a half year since the last set of videos was released! But that is not because I have been sitting still. I have, in fact, done a lot of work between... The post Video training update 2025 appeared first on SQLServerFast.| SQLServerFast
In part 1 of this series, I laid the foundation to explore the structure of the hash table, as used by the Hash Match operator, by alleging and then proving that a Hash Match (Left Outer Join) returns unmatched rows from the build input in the order in which they are stored in the hash...| SQLServerFast
We all know the Hash Match operator. It joins or aggregates data, based on a hash table. That hash table is ideally stored in memory. But if the granted memory is insufficient, then Hash Match will spill to tempdb, which is slow. I assume that every reader of this blog knows this already. But what...| SQLServerFast
The 183rd edition of T-SQL Tuesday is hosted by Steve Jones. He has picked everyone’s favorite (cough) topic: permissions, and how to manage them. I am lucky. With my specialization in query performance tuning, I don’t often have to deal with permissions. (Well, apart from of course not getting the permissions I need to do...| SQLServerFast
(I wrote this well in time. Really. I swear. And then … forgot to publish it in time. Oh well. This will then be my T-SQL Wednesday, I guess?) Welcome to the first T-SQL Tuesday of 2025. Hosting duty this time falls on Rob Farley’s shoulders. And he has found a great topic: Integrity. I...| SQLServerFast
It’s December. The last month of the year, and hence also the last T-SQL Tuesday of the year. Edition 181 is hosted by Kevin Chant. His chosen topic for this episode is to have us talk about which SQL Server announcement excited us the most. This posed a bit of a problem for me. The...| SQLServerFast
Another month, another T-SQL Tuesday. Edition 180 already. Our host is Josephine Bush, and she opens a topic that hits close to home for me: is good enough, perfect? I know my weaknesses. I know that my perfectionism is one of them. I know that striving for perfect is not always the best thing to...| SQLServerFast
November is near. Traditionally (in the USA, at least) the month of the Black Friday sales. I have decided to once more join in on that tradition! During the entire month November 2024, I offer a 50% discount on all prices for the SQLServerFast Execution Plan Video Training. And that discount even stacks with the...| SQLServerFast
This post is for T-SQL Tuesday 178, hosted by Deepthi Goguri. She invites us to write about a recent technical issue we resolved. So let’s talk about the time I discovered that information in the Query Store might not be what it appears to be. Unexpected delays I was hired by a customer who had...| SQLServerFast
Welcome back to my plansplaining blog series, where I dissect execution plans in order to increase our understanding of how SQL Server processes specific queries. We’re at part 33 already, and I’m still looking at cursors. After discussing the basics, static cursors, dynamic cursors, and keyset cursors, I will now look at the last of...| SQLServerFast
Welcome to plansplaining, part 32, where we once more look at cursors. We already discussed the basics, and looked at static cursors and dynamic cursors. It is now time to cast our gaze upon the keyset cursor. The keyset cursor is sort of in between the static cursor (which presents a snapshot of the data...| SQLServerFast
I sometimes hear that query performance tuning is a dying skill. But that is not true! Even in the modern day, with workloads moving to the cloud where you can increase performance by just moving a slider, where a lot of work is done by data analysts, using low-code or no-code solutions with an abstracted...| SQLServerFast
