Patch your SQL Server instance today
On 14 February 2023, Microsoft released updates for all supported versions of SQL Server in the form of a General Distribution Release (GDR). A GDR is an out-of-band update that usually includes bug fixes and/or…
Deprecated and discontinued features in SQL Server
My co-authors and I recently wrapped up the book SQL Server 2019 Administration Inside Out, which should be hitting the shelves in the next week or two. At the end of Chapter 1 I have…
Did you know we have another SQL Server book coming out?
SQL Server 2017 Administration Inside Out was the first technical book I contributed to, and all its authors were very happy with how it turned out. All the content was written from scratch, which made…
String or binary data would be truncated: get the full picture in SQL Server 2017
SQL Server 2019 Preview (CTP 2.0) introduced a long-awaited improvement to an error message that’s been around in SQL Server for many years, but was unhelpful: Msg 8152, Level 16, State 6, Procedure ProcedureName, Line…
Create a slipstream installer for SQL Server on Windows
Since the release of SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1 in April 2009, it has been possible to install SQL Server with media that includes the latest patches, whether they be Service Packs (for SQL…
Changes to the SQL Server servicing model (Cumulative Updates)
On Monday of this week, Microsoft announced changes to the servicing model for SQL Server, starting with SQL Server 2017. From today onward, we can expect to see the following during the first five years…
Repair SQL Server on Linux after an Ubuntu distribution upgrade
SQL Server 2017 is supported on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Long-Term Support), however that version of Ubuntu Linux is now more than two years old, so you may be tempted to update Ubuntu to a more…
No moving parts, the story of persistent memory
In November 2017, during the PASS Summit keynote, Microsoft’s Bob Ward (Principal Architect) demonstrated a “diskless database” running on Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) hardware. The storage layer is known as “persistent memory”. At the end of…
SQL Server 2017 Administration Inside Out
For the last five months or so, I have been helping some really smart people put words on paper, both the physical and electronic kind, which is hopefully going to culminate in an actual technical…
Changes to Service Packs and Cumulative Updates for SQL Server 2017
Edited on 10 October 2018: Please note that this model has changed. See Changes to the SQL Server servicing model (Cumulative Updates) for more. The updated information is below. For a few years now, Microsoft…
A trillion and one
Joe Obbish wrote an epic post a few weeks ago about loading a trillion rows into a non-partitioned table in SQL Server, using a clustered columnstore index to maximise the compression. (Short version: it’s very…
SQL Server Management Studio v17.0
Version numbers are confusing. SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), the client user interface by which most DBAs access SQL Server, was decoupled from the server product for SQL Server 2016. For the last 18 months…
SQL Server 2017 Announced
By now you will have heard that the next version of SQL Server has been announced. There’s no release date yet, but Brent Ozar seems to think it’ll be before June. There are many new features,…
Should I upgrade SQL Server 2012, or migrate to Azure?
[Last updated February 27, 2020] Brent Ozar Unlimited runs a website called SQL Server Updates which comes in really handy for keeping your on-premises SQL Server up to date. Of interest is that extended support…