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Vimeo messed up, and you and I get the consequences

July 11, 2026

I am furious right now. Vimeo has made a mistake, and as a result, the SQLServerFast Execution Plan Video Training is currently not available for viewing. Vimeo’s announcement Four days ago, I got a notification from Vimeo. They have decided to shut down their VOD service, which is where my videos are hosted. And even though I paid for an annual subscription that run until March 28, 2027, they will actually fully shut down the service on November 21 already, after a gradual downgrade of service that already starts August 22. I instantly opened a ticket for two main questions:…

T-SQL Tuesday 200 – Query red flags

July 7, 2026

Hugo Kornelis

When Adam Machanic started T-SQL Tuesday, I bet that nobody, least of all himself, expected it to run for over ten years. Yet, here we are. Not ten, but over 16 years later. Or 200 months, to be exact. This anniversary edition is hosted by Brent Ozar. And his chose topic is: query red flags. Things that make you groan when you open a query and see them in the code. I’m sure there will be a ton of posts, because there are so many. I myself could probably fill a book with things I consider a red flag (and…

Plansplaining part 34 – XML indexes revisited

June 30, 2026

Hugo Kornelis

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Welcome back to my plansplaining blog series, where I dive deep into the details of non-obvious execution plans. This part is also a sort of follow up on my post from two weeks ago, when I wrote about the structure and usage of XML indexes, and had to admit that I had not been able to come up with good use cases for all types of secondary XML index. That very same day, I received an email from Mikael (Micke) Eriksson, who pointed me to this question and answer on Stack Exchange for Database Administrators. I then modified that example…

Change is the only constant

June 27, 2026

Hugo Kornelis

(Warning: This blog post is non-technical but purely personal. In my leukemia diary, I write openly about my current health issues. This blog might be triggering for people who struggle with, or lost dear ones to, cancer and other similar diseases.) Last week, my near future was clear. I would go through the official entry tests for the CAR-T trial. Hopefully, I would pass them all, and then start on that trial. Or, if not, I would fall back to the alternative approach of azacitidine combined with venetoclax, AZA-VEN. And then things changed. Again. June 22 In the morning of…

Another crazy week

June 19, 2026

Hugo Kornelis

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(Warning: This blog post is non-technical but purely personal. In my leukemia diary, I write openly about my current health issues. This blog might be triggering for people who struggle with, or lost dear ones to, cancer and other similar diseases.) It’s exactly a month after my last leukemia diary entry. Not much happened for most of that time. And then a lot happened. May 18 until June 3 Yes, I know that this entry starts even before my last diary entry, which was May 19. Deal with it. During this period, originally planned for two weeks, but then extended…

Storage structures 5 – XML indexes

June 16, 2026

Hugo Kornelis

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After covering on-disk rowstore, columnstore indexes, memory-optimized storage, and memory-optimized columnstores, it is now time to turn our attention to storage structures that are used for specific datatypes only. The first “victim” will be the XML index. When you need to store XML data in a SQL Server database, you can choose between two data types, each with their pros and cons. You can choose to store the XML data as nvarchar(max). This preserves the exact content of the XML as you received it, which might be required for legal reasons. However, any query that cares about the specific content…

Video training update 2026

June 13, 2026

Hugo Kornelis

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During the past months, in between working on new videos, I have also made various updates to existing videos in the SQLServerFast Execution Plan Video Training. Since I pushed two really big updates (over half an hour of added content!) live today, I decided that now is a good time to let everyone know what I changed. But let’s first address a few questions you might have. Questions and answers How does this affect the prices? Many of the changes are small, as you will see in the overview below. However, two videos have been extended with a significant amount…

Optional Parameter Plan Optimization

June 6, 2026

Hugo Kornelis

It’s time to finish the triptych on bad parameter sniffing, and how Microsoft tries (and fails) to fix this for you. After first talking about bad parameter sniffing in general, I used my last video to explain Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization, the feature that Microsoft released in SQL Server 2022 as an attempt to fix one of the three root causes for bad parameter sniffing. If you want to see why I consider that a failed attempt, go watch that video. In SQL Server 2025, Microsoft then added Optional Parameter Plan Optimization (OPPO). Their attempt to fix the second of…

Storage structures 4 – Memory-optimized columnstore

May 27, 2026

Hugo Kornelis

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Time for the next part in my series on storage structures. The previous parts covered on-disk rowstore, columnstore indexes, and memory-optimized storage. In this part, I will look at the combination of the latter two: memory-optimized columnstore indexes. Memory-optimized columnstore indexes were introduced in SQL Server 2016. I’ve seen some slick Microsoft marketing sessions in that time that were big on “real-time operational analytics”. A new trend where analytical processing would no longer be done on a stale copy of the data in a separate data warehouse, but directly on the OLTP database. Reports would always be fully current, there…

Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization

May 23, 2026

Hugo Kornelis

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Bad hair day? Try having an almost-no-hair month! Jokes aside. It has been almost six weeks since my last video blog. Not really the schedule I had planned. But I believe I have good reasons. Anyway, I do have a new video ready now. As promised in my last video, I now cover Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization (PSPO), a new feature, introduced in SQL Server 2022, that is supposed to alleviate the pain of bad parameter sniffing. PSPO, the answer to bad parameter sniffing? The first part of the video explains the feature, and how it is intended to work.…

Vimeo messed up, and you and I get the consequences

T-SQL Tuesday 200 – Query red flags

Plansplaining part 34 – XML indexes revisited

Change is the only constant

Another crazy week

Storage structures 5 – XML indexes

Video training update 2026

Optional Parameter Plan Optimization

Storage structures 4 – Memory-optimized columnstore

Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization

Vimeo messed up, and you and I get the consequences

T-SQL Tuesday 200 – Query red flags

Plansplaining part 34 – XML indexes revisited

Change is the only constant

Another crazy week

Storage structures 5 – XML indexes

Video training update 2026

Optional Parameter Plan Optimization

Storage structures 4 – Memory-optimized columnstore

Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization

Hugo Kornelis

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