Here's an evergreen question. It's a question that never completely goes away. But lately, I've been getting it a few times per week. So I thought it's time to readdress the question, which usually takes some form of the following:I can't really do effective development on my little dev laptop because our production SQL Server database is 15 ...

I first wrote about useful database maintenance scripts on my SQLBlog account way back in 2008. Hmmm - now that I think about it, I first wrote about my own useful database maintenance scripts in a journal called SQL Server Professional back in the mid-1990's on SQL Server v6.5 or some such. But I digress... Anyway, I pointed out a couple ...

Before I jump onto the Goals and Themeword meme started by my buddy, Thomas LaRock (blog | twitter), I decided I'd spend a few minutes looking back on both the year 2009. (From a personal standpoint, the 00's were my most difficult decade yet.  Major problems of every stripe beset me on all sides and with alarming frequency throughout ...

If you've been around a while, you tend to do things the way you first learned how to do them.  This can turn you into an ''old timer'' whose oblivious to new and better ways to do things that have appeared in the newer releases of the technology.   Take measuring log space, for example.  If I wanted to find out how much log space ...

One of the best things about becoming a Microsoft MVP is meeting other MVPs.  I bring this up because last week was the annual MVP Summit in Seattle, WA.  I was really looking forward to meeting Steve Kass.  Steve Kass is one of the smartest SQL Server MVPs I’ve encountered, especially when it comes to SQL questions.  A ...

You'd think an article called ''NASTY RUMORS ABOUT MAXDOP'' would have something to do with Britney Spears or maybe Robert Downy Jr, but in that case it'd be total fiction (at least, it would be coming from my pen).   So, I was en route to the 2008 Microsoft MVP Summit yesterday and I had a chance to catch up on my reading.  You ...

If you use computed columns a lot, you might want to know about some new behavior in SQL Server 2005. One of the changes in SQL Server 2005 was to evaluate expressions in queries to match computed column expressions and identify redundant expressions, in order to prevent run-time errors in queries that have unsafe expressions. This is documented ...

Italian SQL Server MVP Davide Mauri has released four very useful scripts that simplify the usage of SQL Server 2005 DMVs to discover, analyze, and understand index usage and health.  The queries are not rocket science, but they are long and rely on DMVs that you may not have learned about yet.  They also provide useful and ...