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T-SQL Tuesday #118 – My response to COVID-19

May 12, 2020

The May 2020 edition of T-SQL Tuesday is hosted by Glenn Berry (b|t). On the surface, his topic is about “Folding@Home”. But if you read closer, you’ll see that Glenn actually asks: “what are you doing as a response to COVID-19?” And while Glenn does suggest that zooming in on how we optimize our hardware for Folding@Home might be a good idea for this round of T-SQL Tuesday, the topic allows for more freedom. I’ll grab that freedom and use it to talk about something else I do as a response to COVID-19. Execution plans? Yes, execution plans It should…

Row counts and arrow width, a primer

May 11, 2020

Hugo Kornelis

This month (May 2020), I will post several blog posts, all about the same theme: row counts in execution plans, their representation as arrow width; how to use it, and how it can confuse you. Of all the properties you find in execution plans, the Actual Number of Rows and Estimated Number of Rows properties are perhaps the most useful and most used, and definitely in the top three. They can be used for many things, and are extremely valuable. But there are some gotcha’s that a lot of people are unaware of. In this first post, I will highlight…

Query Store, force my plan on that other server too, please?

April 22, 2020

Hugo Kornelis

This blog is a follow-up to a discussion I recently had on Twitter, started by Patrick Joliffe asking some people: if you need to force an execution plan, would you prefer to do it through Query Store or through a Plan Guide? Most people agreed that Query Store should be preferred. Not only because it is easier to use, but also (perhaps I should say mainly) because it provides better insight and visibility. The last thing you want to do is to lose track of what queries you have forced an execution plan for. After all, you really need to…

SSMS 18.5 – small change, huge effect!

April 7, 2020

Hugo Kornelis

The latest version of SSMS has just been released. Version 18.5. And I need all of you to update your version. Now. Yes, right now. Here’s a link to download it. I’ll wait. Why the rush, you ask? Because hidden in between all the little (and some big) improvements and fixes, there is one true gem. One I wish Microsoft had done … oh, let’s say two decades ago? Misleading information If you have been to any of my talks about execution plan, you probably have heard me fuming about (and warning you for) the way estimated and actual number…

Announcing … the execution plan video training

April 2, 2020

Hugo Kornelis

In the past years, several people have suggested that I should make videos to help people get a better understand of execution plans. I’ve always shied away from the idea. Creating video content, or rather, creating top notch quality video content, takes a lot of time. Would it not make more sense to create more content for other channels? On the other hand, a lot of people learn more from live training, or from video training (the closest alternative), than from reading blogs or articles. And my goal is to educate as many people as possible. It’s impossible for me…

Stop the name-calling! … Execution plan terminology

February 29, 2020

Hugo Kornelis

It’s time. High time. Time to set the record straight on types of execution plans. There are some severe misconceptions, and they have many causes. One cause is many good folks, including myself, have in the past spread incorrect information. We were young, we didn’t know any better. But now we do, and we want to set the record straight. Another cause is terminology. Terms, originally chosen by Microsoft and then used by everyone else, suggested something not quite true. And we all fell for it, me included. But not anymore. It’s time to set the record straight. And to…

No I can!

May 17, 2019

Hugo Kornelis

Allow me to interrupt my normal technical posts to share a personal story. I can’t sing Starting in my early youth and continuing all through my adulthood, people have been telling me that I cannot sing. Classmates, colleagues, random people I met. But also people I trust and love. For example, my mother loves to talk about when my, my brother, and my sister were still young children and we used to have times when the us three and mum and dad would sit together and sing songs. She loves the memory, and one part of his we sang “polyphonic”…

Removing multiple patterns from a string

April 20, 2019

Hugo Kornelis

Recently one of my clients had a request that was a challenge to do effectively. I don’t think it’s a very common requirement but I still decided to blog about it. Who knows, maybe one of you will actually benefit. Pattern removal Within a existing query, one of the columns in the result set holds string data that includes sequences and patterns that need to be removed in the output. Most of those patterns can occur more than once, and then all of them need to be removed. Some of these patterns overlap with each other and then the longest…

T-SQL Tuesday #111: Why, tell me why

February 12, 2019

Hugo Kornelis

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Time flies. It feels like the new year has just started, and yet we’re already at the second T-SQL Tuesday of the year. Our host this February is Andy Leonard (b|t), and his assigned topic is, simply: Why? Or rather: What is your why? What motivates you, what makes you tick? And most of all: What makes you do the things you do? The Execution Plan Reference I do a lot of things. I have a one-person consultancy business, I have a wife and kids, I have a personal life with several hobbies, and I could talk about my motivation…

Plansplaining, part 10. Just passing through

February 4, 2019

Hugo Kornelis

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Welcome to part ten of the plansplaining series. Each of these posts takes an execution plan with an interesting pattern, and details exactly how that plan (or pattern) works. In this post we will look at a query and execution plan that may appear perfectly normal and unexpected at first sight, but that has some perhaps confusing execution counts. Sample query The sample query below will (as almost always) run in all versions of the AdventureWorks sample database. It returns a list of all staff, and for people that have a sales-related job title it adds the total of sales…

T-SQL Tuesday #118 – My response to COVID-19

Row counts and arrow width, a primer

Query Store, force my plan on that other server too, please?

SSMS 18.5 – small change, huge effect!

Announcing … the execution plan video training

Stop the name-calling! … Execution plan terminology

No I can!

Removing multiple patterns from a string

T-SQL Tuesday #111: Why, tell me why

Plansplaining, part 10. Just passing through

T-SQL Tuesday #130 – Automated restores

The SQLServerFast Execution Plan Video Training: an update

Plansplaining, part 11. Merge plans

T-SQL Tuesday #131 – Join operators simplified

PASS virtual summit: thoughts, pre-con, and sessions

Plansplaining, part 12. Foreign keys, part 1

Plansplaining, part 13. Foreign keys, part 2

Plansplaining, part 14. Foreign keys, part 3

Plansplaining, part 15. Foreign keys, part 4

T-SQL Tuesday #134 – Give me a break!

Hugo Kornelis

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