This week, after seeing a lot of the DMV enhancements made in SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1, I thought I would take a look at some dynamic management view/function requests. Page split personality Michael Zilberstein blogged on Monday about how Extended Events and the transaction log differ in the way they report page split information, and that it ...

On Friday, after Microsoft released the CTP, I talked a little bit about the changes you will see in SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1. Namely: new rowcount-related columns in sys.dm_exec_query_stats; extended functionality of the FORCESEEK query hint; a new FORCESCAN query hint; support for 15,000 partitions (to match new ...

Recently I was asked by John Sterrett (blog | twitter) to present to his SQL Server user group (WVPASS) in Wheeling, West Virginia. Well, today is the day, and I will be presenting, ''What's new in SQL Server Denali'' at tonight's meeting, sponsored by SQL Sentry. The slide deck is attached below; the samples are available here. If you attended ...

Earlier today, Mladen Prajdić (blog | twitter) released an updated version of his SSMS Tools Pack (v.1.9.4), a free add-in for Management Studio that provides a ton of helpful functionality that isn't available with the native tools.  I'm really glad this happened, because I've installed Denali on all of my VMs and have been using it for most ...