It's an old story you've probably heard before.  Provide a free version of your software product with strict limitations on performance or other specific capabilities so that folks can give it a try without risk, while you minimize the chance of cannibalizing sales of your commercial products.  Microsoft has take this strategy ...

I'm doing two new webcasts next week on Wednesday, December 19th, one in the morning and the other after lunch.   SSDs are a Game Changer for SQL Server Storage No, session is not exclusively about SSDs.  But this is my first session on IO and storage tuning that emphasizes SSDs over hard disks.  As Bob Dylan said ''Times, they ...

Remote Desktop Services Component Architecture Poster Grab your own poster! A visual guide to key Remote Desktop Services technologies in Windows Server 2008R2     Virtually Free Get the latest update rollup package for the Hyper-V role in Windows Server 2008 R2 and be sure to bookmark the Windows Virtualization ...

I profiled Adam Machanic's (blog | twitter) excellent stored procedure, SP_WHOISACTIVE, back in August of 2010 in my monthly SQLMag column, Tool Time.  Adam has been diligent about maintaining the tool and adding new features. Read the details on my SQLMag Tool Time column (here - ...

It’s interesting to me that old and inaccurate performance tuning recommendations seem to have a life of their own.  In some ways, old performance tuning recommendations are like the Undead from some kind of cheesy, 1970’s zombie movie – no matter how many times you shoot them, they just keep coming back.   Here’s a good case in point, ...

I had a great time speaking with the large communities of SQL Server users as I traveled about Europe last week and much of this week.  I'm always impressed by the skill, intelligence, and creativity of these professionals. And sometimes they raise questions that I think are worth sharing with everyone because they too might've heard the ...

I find that auto_update statistics in SQL Server is a really good thing.  Without it, many third-party applications would simply fall over from lack of preventative maintenance.  With it, they are able to run for extraordinarily long periods of time without really needing a full-time DBA to check up on the databases.   Having said ...

You'd think an article called ''NASTY RUMORS ABOUT MAXDOP'' would have something to do with Britney Spears or maybe Robert Downy Jr, but in that case it'd be total fiction (at least, it would be coming from my pen).   So, I was en route to the 2008 Microsoft MVP Summit yesterday and I had a chance to catch up on my reading.  You ...

I was recently trying to diagnose some problems in one of my SQL Servers when I ran across a problem that I hadn't encountered before involving 'nonyielding worker threads'.  SQL Server also produced a dump for me to review.  Unfortunately, the dump didn't make a lot of sense to me.    If you encounter one of SQL Server's ...

MVP Hugo Kornelius once reported that he encountered a situation in which it was possible to perform a table scan on more pages than actually existed in the heap table.  Hugo deduced that this was due to a phenomenon called “forwarding pointers”.    Why in the world would this ever happen?  Real Paul Randall’s excellent blog ...