Month: January 2026

A picture that shows several soccer goals, aligned in rows.

Rowgoals, part 1: How do rowgoals work?

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For my second vlog, I decided to talk about rowgoals. First an explanation of what they are, then an overview of some obvious and some not so obvious cases where the optimizer will use a rowgoal, and finally a warning about cases where this normally beneficial feature might hurt instead of help. And then, after recording and editing, I had a video of over 35 minutes. I felt that this might be too long for the format of these vlogs. But that is just my assumption. So I decided to verify, by opening this poll on LinkedIn  (which, by the…

Storage structures 1 – On-disk rowstore

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When a query is slow, it is often caused by inefficient access to the data. So our tuning work very frequently comes down to figuring out how data was read, and then massaging our queries or database structures to get SQL Server to access the data in a more efficient way. So we look at scans, seeks, and lookups. We know that scans are good when we access most of the data. Or, in the case of an ordered scan, to prevent having to sort the data. We know that seeks are preferred when there is a filter in the…

Self-promo: Precon opportunities

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I am normally not very good at promoting myself. I always forget to use the social media banners that conference organizes helpfully send me. And while I do have a list of upcoming speaking engagements on this site, I don’t really push it in your face at every opportunity. But the organizers of SeaQL 2026 pushed me. They asked me to record a video, to explain what attendees can expect when they sign up for my precon. And then, the fantastic Tonie Huizer went one step further, and created a YouTube short out of my promo video! The obvious next…

Problems purchasing videos?

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I started the SQLServerFast Execution Plan Video Training in 2020. At that time, I chose Vimeo as the platform to use for hosting and selling my videos. The major reason for this choice was their advertised ability to sell video access to customers across the world, so that everyone, regardless of location, can buy access to my videos and learn to read execution plans. Not in India! Two months ago, I received an email from someone who lives in India. When he tried to buy access to my videos, he received an error message: “This video is not for your…
A dark figure called "danger", armed with a knife, is chasing a running DBA.

A new experiment for 2026

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It is January 1st, 2026. So let me first use this opportunity to wish all my readers a very good 2026, with lots of performance gains in your servers, lots of new insights into SQL Server, … but most of all, lots of love and happiness in your personal lives. Video blogging? It started when Erik Darling tempted me, even though I doubt he remembers. He has been vlogging for a long time already, and he basically dared me to try it too. I didn’t. Not at that time. But the seed was planted. During this year, I had several…

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