You might have noticed, if you’re a heavy user of PerfMon, that some counters are exhibiting alterations in behavior between SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005.  For example, I’ve long used the “Transactions/sec” counter to get an idea of how much work a SQL Server is accomplishing.  Now, in SQL Server 2005, certain internal system ...

If you use computed columns a lot, you might want to know about some new behavior in SQL Server 2005. One of the changes in SQL Server 2005 was to evaluate expressions in queries to match computed column expressions and identify redundant expressions, in order to prevent run-time errors in queries that have unsafe expressions. This is documented ...

Italian SQL Server MVP Davide Mauri has released four very useful scripts that simplify the usage of SQL Server 2005 DMVs to discover, analyze, and understand index usage and health.  The queries are not rocket science, but they are long and rely on DMVs that you may not have learned about yet.  They also provide useful and ...

Just a quick note to send a big Thank You to Christoph Stotz of Frankfurt, Germany for his hospitality on Sunday.  Thank you, Christoph!  Slava Oks has a rather well-known blog entry about how hyperthreading can negatively impact the performance of a SQL Server 2000 instance: ...