SSMS extension - Color and name tabs by environment - Blake-goofy/SSMS-EnvTabs

For SQLBits this year, I wanted to submit a performance tuning session about one of the most classic, timeless problems I run into: why is the same query fast in development but slow in production? All of my regular readers - if there is such a thing - are now yelling out, "Parameter sniffing!" And yes, that's the most common cause, by far!

Tech roles are changing rapidly due to AI coding advances. You shouldn’t be using AI to write production SQL code without incredibly heavy review and revisions, but you should be using it to…

SQL Server 2016 goes end of life on July 14, 2026. That's five months from now. If you're still running 2016 in production, you're not a...

The 1970s oil crisis changed cars forever. Gas shortages were so big that General Motors developed a car that used a turbine that burned coal

GitHub Copilot is a service, you can buy subscription from here https://github.com/features/copilot.GitHub Copilot is available from website https://github.com/copilot together with services like…

On the world's largest floating electronic dance music festival, I took your top-voted database questions from Here's what we covered: 00:00 Start 01:54 Frost: What is your opinion on Group Managed Service Accounts? 04:09 Elwood: What AI tool or skills do you recommend learning for DBAs to stay relevant? 07:59 GSurgeon: What are the telltale signs that a database has flaws?

I was about to walk out the door to take a flight, when my phone rang. Our major software system we had just released last week was returning weird data. FirstName and LastName was being reversed. …

For many over the years, they didn’t choose their role. The Accidental DBA was a recognised path into the profession. With platforms and skills changing, I thought it worth asking – are…

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, SQL Server Management Studio was included as part of the SQL Server installer. Back then, upgrading SSMS was not only a technical problem, but a political one too. Organizations would say things like, "Sorry, we haven't certified that cool new SQL Server 1982 here yet, so you can't have access to the installer." Developers and DBAs were forced to run SSMS from whatever ancient legacy version of SQL Server that their company had certified.

In China, we picked one of these up: Some people call it a tri-fold, which isn’t right – it’s only got two folds in it. When it’s folded up like a Z, you have a reasonably s…

In China, we picked one of these up: Some people call it a tri-fold, which isn't right - it's only got two folds in it. When it's folded up like a Z, you have a reasonably sized phone: It's thick, but not unreasonably thick. It still fits easily in a pocket, and it's about the same thickness as the single-fold Samsung Galaxy phones I've handled, or as thick as two iPhones on top of each other.

SQL Server Availability Groups can be a great feature to help support your High Availability needs, but what happens when they fail to work as expected? Do you have an expiring certificate on used by…

Is your company hiring for a database position as of February 2026? Do you wanna work with the kinds of people who read this blog? Let's make a love connection. If your company is hiring, leave a comment. The rules: Your comment must include the job title, and either a link to the full job description, or the text of it.

A Flappy Bird game implemented entirely in SQL Server - Best2Two/SQL-FlappyBird

The annual SQLBits conference is April 22-25, and they just announced the session and speaker lineup. This year's theme is Cartoon - something I love deeply to begin with - and I decided to lean into that theme, big time. Here are my sessions: Training Day: Dev-Prod Demon Hunters: Finding the Real Cause of Production Slowness - I work with a lot of development teams who really struggle with queries that work just fine in development, but then fall apart in production scenarios.

Millennials and Gen Zs lag far behind prior generations

LinkedIn is leaning into the rise of vibe coding by allowing users to show off their proficiency with various AI coding tools directly on their profiles.

While in the midst of moving my home office into a new room in the house, I stopped to take your top-voted questions from About 18.5 minutes into the recording, my camera overheated because I hadn't set up the fan on it yet, hahaha. Here's what we covered: 00:00 Start 02:28 Born to be glowin: Have you ever added a feature to first responder kit that you had hesitation or regrets on?

$99 deposits! Prices go up Feb 6th

We are currently living in “Interesting Times”. While this may be good news for journalists and the 24×7 rolling news cycle, it’s not necessarily good news for those of us wh…

Normally, when SQL Server updates statistics on an object, it invalidates the cached plans that rely on that statistic as well. That's why you'll see recompiles happen after stats updates: SQL Server knows the stats have changed, so it's a good time to build new execution plans based on the changes in the data. However, updates to system-created stats don't necessarily cause plan recompiles.