Kalen Delaney

Geek City: More statistics info available!

Kalen Delaney — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 01:39:00 GMT

I just started using a new DMV (one that’s actually an ‘F’ not a ‘V’, as in Function) that gives us more info about distribution statistics. It returns info about the last statistics update date (which is also available with a function STATS_DATE())....(read more)

Geek City: A Grammar Geek in the Cloud

Kalen Delaney — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 06:25:00 GMT

Those of you who know me well know that I am usually a stickler for spelling, grammar and proper word usage. I may have even lost a few friends because of what some people see as obsession. I am not infallible, and I do make typos, but I like to try to...(read more)

Geek City: Join With Me!

Kalen Delaney — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 22:16:00 GMT

I remember one of the most surprising changes in SQL Server 2000 2005 was how the graphical plans showed the use of a nonclustered index to seek, and the plan included something that looked like a JOIN to find rows in the base table. Here’s an example....(read more)

Geek City: Accessing Distribution Statistics

Kalen Delaney — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 20:08:00 GMT

Distribution statistics are one of the most important sources of information that the Query Optimizer uses to determine a good query plan. In this post, I’m not going to tell you everything about distribution statistics. I’m just going to show you a few...(read more)

Geek City: What Triggered This Post?

Kalen Delaney — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

I’d really like to get another post up onto my much neglected blog before the end of 2012. This will also start one of my New Year’s resolutions, which is to write at least one blog post a month. I’m going to tell you about a change in SQL Server that...(read more)

Did You Know? I’m delivering my first SQL Server 2012 class this week!

Kalen Delaney — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 04:14:00 GMT

This is actually just a very short post to get my name back up in the list on the right side of SQLBlog, because Adam’s configuration removes people who haven’t posted in 3 months. I’ve been extremely busy trying to get my new book finished, and then...(read more)

Did You Know? Turning Off Locking

Kalen Delaney — Mon, 07 May 2012 23:35:00 GMT

Back when the lock manager was rewritten for SQL Server 7, and row level locking was added to the product, the procedure sp_indexoption gave us the ability to turn OFF either row or page locks or both, for one particular index, or for a table and all...(read more)

Geek City: Build a Big Table with a Columnstore Index

Kalen Delaney — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:18:00 GMT

I was looking all over to find a big table to use for my columnstore examples in my SQL Server 2012 book, and the only one I found was from someone at Microsoft and was not publicly available. When I demonstrate code in my writings, I like to have the...(read more)

Follow-up Answers for my Australia Classes

Kalen Delaney — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 22:56:00 GMT

I was out of the country for the last two weeks of March, delivering classes in Brisbane and Sydney, which were organized by WardyIT . It was a great visit and there were 24 terrific students! As is sometimes (perhaps often?) the case, there were questions...(read more)

Geek City: Growing Rows with Snapshot Isolation

Kalen Delaney — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 00:43:00 GMT

I just finished a wonderful week in Stockholm, teaching a class for Cornerstone Education. We had 19 SQL Server enthusiasts, all eager to find out everything they could about SQL Server Internals. One questions came up on Thursday that I wasn’t sure of...(read more)

Did You Know? Query Options Setting in SSMS

Kalen Delaney — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 00:09:00 GMT

Hi folks I’m back from an amazing week at PASS and an awesome reception for SQL Server MVP Deep Dives Volume 2. I’m starting to plan and write my next book on SQL Server 2012 Internals so blogging will kept to a minimum, not that I’ve had a lot of time...(read more)

Did You Know? I’ll be teaching my Internals Class online!

Kalen Delaney — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 20:27:00 GMT

In my most recent commentary for SQL Server Magazine, online here: http://www.sqlmag.com/article/training-and-certification2/sql-server-training-options-140429 , I talked about different options for making training content available online. As an addendum...(read more)

Geek City: Where are LOBs stored?

Kalen Delaney — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 21:27:00 GMT

When researching a question from one of the students in my class last week, I was reading the documentation for CREATE TABLE about storing LOB columns at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms174979.aspx . For this discussion LOB columns includes...(read more)

Geek City: What gets logged for SELECT INTO operations?

Kalen Delaney — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 19:41:00 GMT

Last week, I wrote about logging for index rebuild operations. I wanted to publish the result of that testing as soon as I could, because that dealt with a specific question I was trying to answer. However, I actually started out my testing by looking...(read more)

Geek City: What gets logged for index rebuild operations?

Kalen Delaney — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 18:54:00 GMT

This blog post was inspired by a question from a future student. Someone who was already booked for my SQL Server Internals class in June asked for some information on a current problem he was having with transaction log writes causing excessive wait...(read more)