Guy and Eitan worry about the decline in SQL Server feature quality. But maybe there's something else behind it?

Relevant links:

• Improving Azure SQL Database reliability with accelerated database recovery in tempdb | Microsoft Community Hub
• What the Decline of Sql Server Quality means for Developers and DBAs
• SLA for SQL Database | Azure
• AI will eliminate DBA Jobs faster than you think

Guy and Eitan discuss a few interesting topics. Including a fun new game called "SQL Noir", how to implement statistical clustering model in SQL, about surrogate and natural keys, and the recently announced deprecation of Azure Data Studio.

Relevant links:

• SQL Noir - A Detective SQL Game
• How to Write a Recursive CTE in SQL Server | LearnSQL.com
• Azure Data Studio Retirement - Azure SQL Devs’ Corner
• Relational Databases - Surrogate Keys and Logical Duplicates (by Ami Levin)

Guy and Eitan answer an interesting question from the forum regarding the logic of NOT BETWEEN.

And also, checking out the SQL Squid Game, discussing SQL Audit, and sharing some tips for SSMS.

Relevant links:

• SQL Squid Game
• SQL Server Audit (Database Engine) - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn
• microsoft-dbas-club/Maintenance/SQLVersionUpdates

Tell us how you did and whether you survived the SQL Squid Game! 😉

Guy and Eitan talk about SQL Server 2025 (well, they try to, at least), and its various interesting upcoming features.

Relevant links:

• Announcing SQL Server 2025 – SQLServerCentral
• What's New in SQL Server 2025 - Brent Ozar Unlimited®
• Optimized Locking - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn
• SQLBits is Coming Back to London in June 2025! - Brent Ozar Unlimited®

Guy and Eitan go over the most popular sessions released from the SQL PASS archive of 2023, and discuss some other topics.

Relevant links:

• Announcing Microsoft SQL Server 2025: Enterprise AI-ready database from ground to cloud - Microsoft SQL Server Blog
• Sessions Archive for 2023 - PASS Data Community Summit
• Resolving and Preventing Deadlocks in SQL Server
• SSMS v21: Dark Mode, Git, Vertical Tabs, and More - Brent Ozar Unlimited®
• Copilot in SSMS is Kinda Like IE in SSMS - Brent Ozar Unlimited®

Guy and Eitan discuss the common challenge of long-running database integrity checks (DBCC CHECKDB) and a solution to resolve it, and why do we need integrity checks at all?

Relevant links:

• PASS Data Community Summit
• Incremental Integrity Check for Large Databases - Eitan Blumin's blog
• SQL Server Integrity Check - by Ola Hallengren
• tigertoolbox/MaintenanceSolution/5_job_Maintenance.sql · microsoft/tigertoolbox
• sp_can_tlog_be_applied (Transact-SQL) - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn
• T-SQL Script to Roll Forward Transaction Log Backups - Eitan Blumin's blog

Guy and Eitan discuss some interesting news from Microsoft regarding SQL Server, and also about the right way to handle index fragmentation.

Relevant links:

• Resources from Microsoft:
  • Preview release of SDK-style SQL projects in Visual Studio 2022 - Microsoft Community Hub
  • Native JSON support now in preview in Azure SQL Managed Instance - Microsoft Community Hub
  • EAP for Vector Support Refresh - Introducing Vector type - Azure SQL Devs’ Corner (microsoft.com)
  • Calling external REST endpoints from Azure SQL Database | Microsoft Learn
• Index fragmentation:
  • SQL Server Backup, Integrity Check, Index and Statistics Maintenance (hallengren.com)
  • Should we do index maintenance on an Azure SQL Managed Instance or Azure SQL Database? (kendralittle.com)
  • Stop Worrying About SQL Server Index Fragmentation (brentozar.com)
  • Why SQL Server Index Fragmentation Isn’t A Problem On Modern Storage Hardware – Darling Data (erikdarling.com)
• Index fragmentation scripts:
  • microsoft-dbas-club/Indexes/Table and Index High Unused Space.sql at MadeiraData/microsoft-dbas-club
  • Check Index Fragmentation Based on Page Fullness and Fill Factor
• Upcoming webinar at the Cloud Data Driven Meetup:
  • Database DevOps for Leaders - Eitan Blumin, Thu, Oct 24, 2024, 12:00 PM | Meetup

Fair warning for all listeners!

Before starting to listen to this podcast, very strongly recommended:

Have the diagram at the bottom of this page ready in front of you, so that it'll be easier for you to follow along:

• Common Causes and Troubleshooting Solutions for SQL AG Data Synchronization Latency - Microsoft Community Hub

(sorry in advance!)

Additional relevant links:

• Index cleanup : Harder than it looks - Simple Talk (red-gate.com)
• Find Overlapping Indexes.sql at chadbaldwin/SQL (github.com)

Guy and Eitan discuss the recent CrowdStrike incident and what it would mean for DBAs, and discuss options to load huge CSV files into SQL Server as fast as possible.

Relevant links:

• 101 of Troubleshooting SQL Server on Linux - Microsoft Community Hub
• bcp utility - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn
• Altering lock escalation for SQL Server tables (mssqltips.com)
• dbatools docs | Import-DbaCsv
• A Fast Way to Load Large CSV Files into Microsoft SQL Server | by Sasha Korovkina

Guy and Eitan discuss some important and interesting news from Microsoft about SQL Server, Straight Path Solutions publish 30 articles about SQL Server security checks, Guy talks about his experience with Excel, and Eitan is irritated about people still not doing SQL jobs correctly in AlwaysOn Availability Groups.

Relevant links:

• SQLBits Free Videos - YouTube
• JSON data type (preview) - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn
• Efficient Time-Based Audit Log Filtering for Azure SQL Database - Microsoft Community Hub
• UNISTR and ANSI SQL concatenation operator (||) (microsoft.com)
• SQL Server on Azure VMs: I/O analysis (preview) - Microsoft Community Hub
• Announcing the retirement of SQL Server Stretch Database - Microsoft SQL Server Blog
• 30 SQL Server Security Checks in 30 Days Archives - Straight Path Solutions
• Use Sparse Columns - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn
• SQL Server Jobs & AlwaysOn Interoperability | HADRMyJobs