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Why oh Why? Effects of Antivirus on a DB Server
TSQL Tuesday *shrug* my post is late due to technical issues. The second Tuesday of the month is upon us once again. That means it is time for another group blog party called TSQLTuesday. This party...
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The Gift of the SPN
TSQL Tuesday The second Tuesday of the month is upon us once again. That means it is time for another group blog party called TSQLTuesday. This party that was started by Adam Machanic has now been...
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Easy Audit Index Changes
In the previous article, I showed a somewhat elaborate method that could be used should there be a need to audit changes to your indexes. As I learned many years ago in school, the elaborate or...
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Creative Extended Event Sessions
In the previous article, I showed how to take advantage of collations to add more unique and interesting names to databases. In that article, I alluded to the better collation to use but failed to be...
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Creative XE Sessions – Funky Data
In the previous article, I explored the opportunity of using special characters (or emojis) within Extended Event Sessions. Creating a session with these characters in the name is not terribly...
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PowerShell to Backup XE Session
Quite some time ago, I shared a few articles that peeled back the top layer of how to use PowerShell (PoSh) with Extended Events (XEvents). Among those articles, I showed how to retrieve the metadata,...
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Trace Query in Extended Events
Tracing a query is a common task for a DBA. The methods employed are pretty varied. I seem to encounter a new method here and there throughout my journeys and projects. One method is surprisingly easy...
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Window Shopping the Query Store with XEvents
TSQL Tuesday The weather is starting to warm and Spring is upon us. It feels like a great time to take a stroll outside in the warming sun and maybe do a little window shopping on our way to the March...
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Collation Conflict with Extended Events
Have you ever run into an error like this? Cannot resolve the collation conflict between “pick a collation” and “pick another collation” in the equal to operation. This kind of error seems pretty...
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Audit Logons with Extended Events
Some time ago, I wrote an article for SQL Server 2008 to help determine the use of the server since SQL Server 2008 was reaching End Of Life. In that article, I shared a reasonable use of server side...
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How To: XEvents as Profiler
A common excuse for not delving into extended events seems to be the jump from Profiler to extended events. There appears to be an inherent fear with how to use extended events. In addition to that...
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Upgrading From SQL Server Profiler
I just shared an article describing how to use Extended Events to perform your SQL Server Profiler duties. If not, you can read all about it here. In that article, I showed one common use-case for SQL...
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How to: File Target use in Extended Events
I have been doing a lot of posts of late about extended events but have failed to share some of the essential building blocks. I am not looking to do a series of definitions, but just share a couple...
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SQL Servers Black Box Recorder – Def Trace
Across many professions and industries there is often a need to have some sort of device that “audits” everything that happens with a device or process. We are probably all quite familiar with the...
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SQL Servers Black Box Recorder – system_health
Yesterday i shared the first article in a three part series about the SQL Black Box Recorder, that you can read here, with a promise of at least two more posts. The first article in the series laid...
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SQLs Black Box Recorder – sp_server_diagnostics
Yesterday i shared the first article in a three part series about the SQL Black Box Recorder, that you can read here, with a promise of at least two more posts. The first article in the series laid...
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Finding Installed Event Sessions
As a DBA, it is not uncommon to feel like you are marooned off on some tiny little island trying to figure things out for yourself. It may even be very common to feel the icy pain of the development...
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Finding Application Session Settings
One of the underused troubleshooting and performance tuning techniques is to validate the application session settings. Things can work fabulous inside of SSMS, but run miserably inside the...
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Checking your Memory with XE
It is well known and understood that SQL Server requires a substantial amount of memory. SQL Server will also try to consume as much memory as possible from the available system memory – if you let it....
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Event Tracing for Windows Target
There are many useful targets within SQL Server’s Extended Events. Of all of the targets, the most daunting is probably the Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) target. The ETW target represents doing...
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Automatic Tuning Monitoring and Diagnostics
Cool new toys/tools have been made available to the data professional. Among these tools are query data store and automatic tuning. These two tools actually go hand in hand and work pretty nicely...
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Short Circuiting Your Session
It isn’t very often that one would consider a short circuit to be a desired outcome. In SQL Server we have a cool exception to that rule – Extended Events (XE). What exactly is a short circuit and why...
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Quick Permissions Audit
Whether it is for a client, an audit, or just for good housekeeping, DBAs will often need to figure out who has access to what. In addition, they may need to know by what means people have access...
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Audit SQL Agent Jobs
One probably seldom thinks of the SQL Agent jobs scheduled on the SQL Server instance – unless they fail. What if the job failed because something was changed in the job? Maybe you knew about the...
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An Experiment with Deadlocks
Everything can be fixed with a query hint (*cough* directive), right? If a certain process is consistently causing deadlocks, a simple ROWLOCK hint can be added to prevent it, right? Well, for whatever...
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Database Recovery Monitoring with XE
On of the greatest benefits of Extended Events (xe) is how the tool simplifies some of the otherwise more difficult tasks. Recently, I wrote a rewrite of my database recovery progress report script....
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Event Log File Paths
How does one consistently find the correct path to the Extended Event Log file (XEL file)? This is a topic that I ventured into some time ago. The previous article can be read here. In that article I...
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Mass Backup All Sessions
Migrating Extended Event Sessions from one server to another should be a simple task. So simple, one would think there was no need to give it a second thought, right? Well, I have previously written...
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Implicit Conversion Insights with XE
Implicit In a recent article, I covered a little bit about implicit conversions and an error that may crop up from time to time. It is one thing to understand what an error means, it is an entirely...
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Easy Open Event Log Files
One of the beauties of using a tool such as Extended Events (XEvents) is the versatility and ease of use. XEvents can be used for so many things to help an aspiring DBA or Developer do their job...
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Get the Source of PREEMPTIVE_OS_PIPEOPS Waits
A client reached out to me for help about a wait_type they were seeing. That’s not terribly uncommon, but the specific wait_type was something that was fairly obscure. Every day, they could see the...
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Database File Changes
Data professionals around the globe are frequently finding themselves occupied with figuring out why and when a file (data or log) for a database has changed in size. Whether that change is a growth...
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Is That Database in Use?
Does anybody know who or what is using this database? Better yet, is the database being used by anything at all? Have you ever asked those types of questions of your staff in an environment you have...
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Event Files on Linux
TSQL Tuesday The second Tuesday of the month is upon us once again. That means it is time for another group blog party called TSQLTuesday. This party that was started by Adam Machanic has now been...
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Life Support 2008 – Audit Logons
With SQL Server 2008 and 2008R2 limping along and becoming terminally ill (End of Life Support was July 9, 2019), it should come as no surprise that it is recommended to migrate/upgrade affected...
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Extended Events Gets a New Home
It should be no secret that I am a huge advocate of the Extended Events (XEvents) feature in SQL Server. A good example of this advocacy can be found just by looking through my collection of articles...
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Disappearing Data Files
TSQL Tuesday Boy has it gotten hot outside. As the heat turns up outdoors, it is frequently a really good idea to get together with friends and family to relax with a little outdoor party. As luck...
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Your Quick Introduction to Extended Events in Analysis Services
The Extended Events (XEvents) feature in SQL Server is a really powerful tool and it is one of my favorites. The tool is so powerful and flexible, it can even be used in SQL Server Analysis Services...
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Easy Monitoring: Application Timeouts in SQL Server with XEvents
One of my least favorite feelings in the IT world is to be caught by surprise. Not just any type of surprise. I am talking about the kind of surprise that comes from an end user letting me know that...
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Powerful Monitoring for Your Linked Servers with XEvents
When I am looking for random failures or looking to resolve performance issues, one of the first things I like to check is if there are any linked servers that could be contributing to the problem....
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Top 3 Easy Help Queries for XEvents in Azure SQL
When working with Extended Events (XEvents), there are times when a little more information is, well, helpful. You know you want to use XEvents to try and monitor for a specific thing to happen....
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3 Highly Improved Help Queries for XEvents in Azure SQL
Finding the right event or combination of events to monitor may seem like quite a daunting task with so many events to explore and (frequently) too little familiarity with Extended Events. In this...
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Blocked Process Report: How to Get More Value
Blocking in SQL Server is not an uncommon phenomena. Many times it is rather trivial. Sometimes, it extends beyond the realm of trivial and needs to be addressed. How do you know when a blocked...
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Statistics Auditing to make you Omniscient
Statistics in SQL Server, love them or hate them, are essential to good performance. Statistics help to drive execution plan selection and thus can have quite a profound impact. If you have bad stats,...
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Queries that Fail and How to find Them
Queries will fail. That is as inevitable as death and taxes. Many times queries fail without you knowing. Other times, the failure is glorious and impossible to not notice. In the majority of cases,...
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Memory – How to Find when Excess is a Bad Thing
Excessive memory grants are extremely problematic in SQL Server. These excessive grants do not just happen out of the blue. Memory grants are directly linked to the queries. When you write a bad query...
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Owner is Missing in the GUI – An Easy Fix
Having a Database Owner is not something that most people think about until something breaks. Usually, people will just kind of ignore it because it is just so innocuous and uncommon for the owner to...
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Azure DB – A Quick Spelunk Into XEvents to Love
This is a very simple introduction into the creation of an Extended Event session using a template for Azure SQL DB. I demonstrate the use of the GUI to configure the session quickly. After which I...
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Bulk Insert – Insights That Will Make You Drool
Bulk insert can be an extremely helpful tool to help ingest data into SQL Server efficiently. Sometimes, it is necessary to capture metrics in regards to the bulk insert in order to understand the who,...
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Checkpoint Analysis: Your Exclusive How-To with XEvents
Checkpoints are essential in SQL Server to help with the durability and reliability of data persisted in the database. When done right, you barely even notice the checkpoint and performance is groovy....
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