The optimizer is the part of SQL Server that takes your query and reorders and rearranges your query to find the optimal execution plan. In theory.   In practice, that doesn’t always work out well. Often, the optimizer manages to come up with brilliant ways to execute a complex query very efficiently – but sometimes, it misses an ...

SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 2 Cumulative Update #9KB article : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2673382Build number is 10.00.4330 7 fixes (5 in database engine, 2 in SSAS)Relevant for : Builds of SQL Server between 10.00.4000 and 10.00.4329SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 3 Cumulative Update #4KB article : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2673383Build ...

Last summer I set up Change Data Capture for a client to track changes to their application database to apply those changes to their data warehouse. The client had some issues a short while back and felt they needed to increase the retention period from the default 3 days to 5 days. I ran this query to make that change: sp_cdc_change_job ...

Almost two months have passed since my last blog post. And while it’s true that I’ve had (much) longer breaks, I do have a good reason now. All the time that I would normally at least in part spend on preparing new blog posts is now reserved for preparing presentations for a few upcoming events. I’ll give you an overview – who knows, maybe you’ll ...

On Monday, I completely missed that the SQL Server Release Services team published two cumulative updates for SQL Server 2008. I'd blame jury duty, but that didn't start until Tuesday, and only lasted two days. Well, better late than never. Cumulative Update #8 for SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 2 KB : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2648096Build ...

It is quite difficult recently for me to find some time to write a new post, so I don’t seem to be leading the rankings of the most frequent bloggers. I rarely recently have opportunity to lay my hands on the code too, so natural sources of ‘inspiration’ are less often. Hopefully this will change in 2012 and I will have more opportunities to write ...

Ever since I started writing SSIS packages back in 2004 I have opted to store configurations in .dtsConfig (.i.e. XML) files rather than in a SQL Server table (aka SQL Server Configurations) however recently I inherited some packages that used SQL Server Configurations and thus had to immerse myself in their murky little world. To all the people ...

Very early this morning, Microsoft released two new cumulative updates for the SQL Server 2008 platform. Cumulative Update #7 for SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 2If  SELECT @@VERSION  is between 10.00.4000 and 10.00.4322KB article is KB #2617148There are 18 fixes posted to the KB articleThe new build number is 10.00.4323See the blog post ...

The first cumulative update for SQL Server 2008 SP3 is available. Build number: 10.00.5766 KB Article: KB #261714619 fixes Please note: this update is not for SQL Server 2008 R2 or for SQL Server 2008 with @@VERSION < 10.00.5500. 

I was at PASS Summit 2011 in Seattle and had a chat with Jack Richins of Microsoft on the SQL Server audit feature after his presentation. A question came up with regards to whether the SELECT permission should be checked when an UPDATE statement is being executed, and whether the behavior (i.e. you may get UPDATE even if you only want to audit ...