Founded by Data Platform MVP, Randolph West, Born SQL provides specialist SQL Server services, upgrades, on-site support and disaster recovery services in western Canada. Allow us to identify what’s hurting your database environment, implement changes with little to no downtime and keep your server running smoothly.
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Read our latest blog entries
Speaking at PASS Summit 2019
I am delighted to announce that I have been selected to speak at the largest Microsoft Data Platform conference in the world, PASS Summit 2019, in Seattle WA, USA. As our database community has extended beyond SQL Server into Azure and other platforms, there’s a lot to take in over the course of three days
-> Continue reading Speaking at PASS Summit 2019
Proposed SQL Server defaults: max server memory
A few months ago I suggested that the following settings should be the default for most SQL Server instances: Set cost threshold for parallelism to 50 Disable lightweight pooling if it is enabled Disable priority boost if it is enabled Set optimize for ad hoc workloads to enabled Set max server memory (MB) to a
-> Continue reading Proposed SQL Server defaults: max server memory
The easy way to handle UTF-8 in a .NET application when dealing with SQL Server 2019
A short post this week. On a mailing list recently, someone noticed that a .NET application writing to SQL Server did not have the expected behaviour with UTF-8 collation and data types. To refresh our memories, UTF-8 is newly supported in SQL Server 2019, and provides potential savings of up to 50% when storing strings,
-> Continue reading The easy way to handle UTF-8 in a .NET application when dealing with SQL Server 2019
A short Azure SQL Database Edge explainer
On Thursday May 2nd, 2019, Microsoft announced a new edition of SQL Server targeting Internet of Things (IoT) edge devices. That means SQL Server can now run almost anywhere. From the Venturebeat article: It supports ARM and x64-based edge gateways and machines, and offers low-latency analytics that combine data streaming and time-series data, with in-database
-> Continue reading A short Azure SQL Database Edge explainer
The case of scalar UDF inlining, where context is everything
Here’s an interesting story for you this week. As part of the new Intelligent Query Processing improvements introduced in the upcoming SQL Server 2019, we find a new feature called scalar UDF inlining. This post is not about scalar UDF inlining exactly, but IQP-adjacent if you like. It works by taking a typical scalar user-defined
-> Continue reading The case of scalar UDF inlining, where context is everything
Proposed SQL Server defaults: optimize for ad hoc workloads
A few months ago I suggested that the following settings should be the default for most SQL Server instances: Set cost threshold for parallelism to 50 Disable lightweight pooling if it is enabled Disable priority boost if it is enabled Set optimize for ad hoc workloads to enabled Set max server memory (MB) to a
-> Continue reading Proposed SQL Server defaults: optimize for ad hoc workloads
SQL Saturday 840 in Edmonton next weekend
As I mentioned last month, I will be speaking at SQL Saturday in Edmonton Alberta next weekend. I have been selected to speak for three separate sessions, on the following topics: 10:45 Managing and monitoring SQL Server on Linux from the command line This session will focus on installing, managing and monitoring SQL Server on
-> Continue reading SQL Saturday 840 in Edmonton next weekend
Using a home-grown Azure Blob Storage solution for SQL Server backups
I’m here for the small organizations, the shops that can’t afford expensive solutions to maintain their environments. I’m here for them because that’s me: the one-person consultancy. I’ve built stuff that’s useful to me, and then made it available for free on GitHub. My first SQL Saturday session, way back in 2015, was the public
-> Continue reading Using a home-grown Azure Blob Storage solution for SQL Server backups
It’s a UNIX system. I know this.
Jurassic Park was a great film. Steven Spielberg brought technology into the film era in a major way with computer generated dinosaurs and some now-classic film lines, many of which came from Jeff “Dreamboat” Goldblum. One other line that seems to be making a comeback is the title of this post, uttered by the character
-> Continue reading It’s a UNIX system. I know this.
SQL Server on Linux – feature change in Pacemaker 1.1.18
Heads up for SQL Server on Linux folks using availability groups and Pacemaker. Pacemaker 1.1.18 has been out for a while now, but it’s worth mentioning that there was a behaviour change in how it fails-over a cluster. While the new behaviour is considered “correct”, it may affect you if you’ve configured availability groups on
-> Continue reading SQL Server on Linux – feature change in Pacemaker 1.1.18