Bryan Rebok and Brent Ozar recently opened my eyes to something I didn’t know.  When SQL Server recommends missing indexes to you it puts the columns in order in which they are found in the table.  That’s it.  I always thought there was more logic into it.  But there isn’t.  Upon reading this I had a terrible realization that I’ve made a lot of awful indexes in my time.  I owe the world an apology.  I hope this post can serve as that apology. I’ve written a function that accepts the equality column list from dm_db_missing_index_details as a parameter and spits those columns back out inRead More →

This post will serve as the first in a series of posts about query execution plans.  In this entry the goal is simply to understand that query execution plans exist, why they exist, and how to do basic navigation of them in SSMS. Every time a query is executed on a SQL Server instance the server must decide how best to find the necessary data to be retrieved or modified.  It’s not as simple as going to a table and returning rows.  A table may have multiple indexes and the decision must be made about which, if any, is appropriate for this query.  There mightRead More →

Even the most green DBAs know that indexes are a good thing.  A database won’t run well without them.  But it is important to remember that indexes aren’t free.  They have to be created, stored, backed up, consistency checked, updated, defragmented, and have their statistics updated.  That’s a lot of work!  This extra work associated with indexes is sometimes called the “write penalty”.  It is why having too many indexes can be just as bad as not having enough. The goal of the DBA should be to have as many high-value indexes — indexes that will be used often by the workload — as possibleRead More →

Thank you to those of you that came to see my presentation on full text indexes at SQL Saturday #615 in Baltimore!  As promised, please find the slide deck and table builder/ sample queries script at these links.  Also, I have included a few links to useful Microsoft documentation pages below to help you continue to expand your knowledge. CONTAINS FUNCTION FREETEXT FUNCTION FULL TEXT EXAMPLE LIST A few notes: I received an explanation for the strange query plan functionality I showed at the end of the class.  It turns out I was 100% wrong.  The plan was showing just fine and will show aRead More →