You should be running on SQL Server 2022
It’s me again with my apparently semi-annual blog post. This time we’re going to talk about which version of SQL Server you should be on, now that we’re at the end of 2023. Which version…
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…
Fun and profit with UTF-8
When SQL Server 2019 was announced, it brought with it UTF-8 support. Also available in Azure SQL Database, UTF-8 is exciting if you have a legacy database and application that needs to support Unicode strings…
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…
The XML data type is not immutable
Immutability In many programming languages, strings of text are immutable, meaning they don’t change. When you modify a string, a new string is created in memory by copying the original. The old string stays in…
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…
SQL Server 2019 is here
With the release of SQL Server 2019, I wanted to highlight in a single place some things that I’m excited about. Drawing on sessions I presented this year at SQLBits and SQL Saturday Edmonton respectively,…
SQL Server 2019 on Docker no longer runs as root by default
In my home lab I have an Ubuntu virtual machine that runs both SQL Server 2017 and SQL Server 2019 in Docker containers.
After SQL Server 2019 Release Candidate 1 was released, when I performed my usual migration to get the latest version, I noticed that the command line for the SQL Server instance was different.
I used sudo docker ps -a --no-trunc to see the full command, which is emulated below (note: this output is heavily abbreviated).
Better SQL Server memory defaults in 2019
In 2016 I created the Max Server Memory Matrix as a guide for configuring the maximum amount of memory that should be assigned to SQL Server, using an algorithm developed by Jonathan Kehayias. SQL Server 2019…
Better SQL Server CPU defaults in 2019
SQL Server 2019 is still in preview as I write this, but I wanted to point out a new feature that Microsoft has added to SQL Server Setup, on the Windows version. On the Database…
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…
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…
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…
Does SQL Server 2019 run on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS?
Edit from 19 March 2020: Since the release of CU 3, SQL Server 2019 is officially supported on Ubuntu 18.04, per this blog post. Original post continues below. Yes. Here’s the proof from an output…
When the buffer pool isn’t just in memory
Last time we looked at the four major components of a computer system, and then looked at the SQL Server buffer pool as a way to leverage the best performance from computing hardware. Temperature Before…