My training videos in the SQLServerFast Execution Plan Video Training are never just a done deal. Whenever there is new information to share, either because Microsoft adds new functionality, or because I discover something I did not know before, I go back and add this new information to the appropriate videos.
Any such update always comes free of charge to those who bought access to the videos. Once you have access, you can watch these videos as often as you like. And you will always see the latest and greatest version! So it makes sense to stay updated on those changes.
These video updates come in three categories.
- Minor changes, that I normally just push online without mentioning it anywhere. A good example of this category is a small change I made four days ago to chapter 5 of the advanced level of block 1: Batch mode versus row mode. I found and corrected a small mistake in the list of operators that supported batch mode in SQL Server 2012.
(And technically speaking, this is now no longer a change that I don’t mention anywhere). - Larger changes, that I announce to people through my email newsletter. Here, a recent example was in May 2025, when I informed subscribers that I had updated several videos to reflect recent changes and bugfixes in SQL Server and SSMS.
- Huge changes, that I consider important enough to announce not only in the newsletter, but also on my blog. The most recent example? Read on!
Update
I updated one video today: chapter 1 of the advanced level of block 2: Columnstore indexes. But it was a rather large update. Several small changes throughout the video, and almost ten minutes of added content.
So, what did I change?
The most important change was that I added coverage of the delete buffer. This is a structure that is used for nonclustered columnstore indexes only, to facilitate quick removal of rows that are deleted or updated. But it does affect the performance of retrieval operations, which I describe in detail and then show in a demo.
Additionally, I added coverage of the new “ordered” columnstore indexes that were introduced after my last revisit of that video, and I made a few minor corrections.
As already mentioned, anyone who has in the past purchased access to this video can still watch it, and will then see the most recent version, with all the new information. If you work with columnstore indexes, or if you need to advise on whether to use them or not, I can definitely recommend that you take the time to watch the video again!
Future updates
Most of my video updates are, in my opinion, not relevant enough for a blog post. But I will mention them in my newsletter! So if you want to stay updated about future changes to the videos, and also get early information about upcoming releases, then I recommend that you subscribe to this newsletter.
