Category: SQL Saturday

We’re Taking This Show Online

Posted on by Erik Darling

Maybe Next Year

With SQL Saturday Chicago being canceled this year, I still wanted the nice folks who signed up to spend a Friday with me learning about SQL Server Performance Tuning to do just that.

The event will be taking place Friday, June 26th from 10AM EST – You’re Done Asking Questions.

While you won’t get to see me eat lunch at the speed of light or wonder what kind of scotch I smell like, you will get to learn all the horrible things I know about SQL Server.

Because a lot of emails from Eventbrite seem to get sent to the Great Spam Heaven, I’m writing this post for more visibility. If you’ve already bought a ticket, please check your email. If you can’t find one, get in touch with me here. I’ve been sending them, I swear.

Showing Up

On the day of the training, you’ll be able to watch the video stream on my site here.

To interact with me and other students, go to SQLslack.com to get an invite, then go to https://SQLcommunity.Slack.com, or download the Slack app to join. We’ll be in the #erikdarling-tuning channel. That’s the only way to ask questions right now. Unfortunately with video streaming, there’s no built-in chat. You have to bring your own.

If you wanna follow along, you’ll need to download the StackOverflow 2013 database, along with the latest SSMS, and Developer Edition of SQL Server: 2017 | 2019. While you’re being a good DBA, don’t forget to make sure you’re up to date on patching.

Late Registration

Since the event is online, I’ve decided to open ticket sales back up. If you wanna join in on the fun, you have until next Thursday to sign up.

All attendees get free access to my video training, for life. That’s a $1000 value.

Thanks, and see you there!

Announcing My Precon For SQL Saturday Chicago 2020

Posted on by Erik Darling

Deep Dish SQL

If you’re in Chicago and heading to SQL Saturday 2020, I’d love to see you at my full day precon on Friday, March 20.

I’ll be delivering a ton of awesome material that’ll help make your performance tuning life a whole lot easier. This session is totally focused on how to tune SQL Server performance, and teaching you how to do pain-free analysis of queries, indexes, and execution plans.

All of the material comes from the most common and most complex performance issues I’ve seen during my years as a consultant and DBA. We’ll be pulling on the rubber gloves and digging deep into places that’ll make the optimizer uncomfortable.

For a limited time, use the coupon code “newyorkpizza” for $50 off!

Thanks for reading, and see you there!

SQL Saturday Washington, DC: Two Weeks To Go!

Posted on by Erik Darling

HELLO GUAM!

If you’re planning on attending SQL Saturday Washington, DC, why not play hooky from work and spend the day with me learning about all the atrocities SQL Server is capable of?

I’m going to be delivering my Total Server Tuning material, which has been a hit at a whole bunch of events this past year.

Attendees has a choice to either follow along with me on their laptops, or just watch in horror as familiar events unfold before their very eyes.

If you want to follow along, grab a copy of the StackOverflow2013 database. It’s about a 10GB download, which turns into a ~60GB database.

Fair warning: if you’re gonna follow along, you’re gonna have a tough time on skimpy laptop hardware. My personal laptop is 64GB of RAM and some pretty fast cores. At least they were until Intel started patching things. Most demos are on SQL Server 2017, but I’m going to be showing you stuff from SQL Server 2019 as well.

For a limited time, use the coupon code “votesql” for $50 off.

SQL Saturday Washington, DC: Three Weeks To Go!

Posted on by Erik Darling

HELLO GUAM!

If you’re planning on attending SQL Saturday Washington, DC, why not play hooky from work and spend the day with me learning about all the atrocities SQL Server is capable of?

I’m going to be delivering my Total Server Tuning material, which has been a hit at a whole bunch of events this past year.

In case you’ve never seen it, here’s the trailer I recorded for SQLBits earlier this year for it:

See you there!

For a limited time, use the coupon code “votesql” for $50 off.

Announcing My Precon For SQL Saturday Washington, DC

Posted on by Erik Darling

HELLO GUAM!

If you’re planning on attending SQL Saturday Washington, DC, why not play hooky from work and spend the day with me learning about all the atrocities SQL Server is capable of?

I’m going to be delivering my Total Server Tuning material, which has been a hit at a whole bunch of events this past year. It’s an eye-opening full day of training where you’ll find out all my favorite ways that things can go wrong with SQL Server hardware, queries, and indexes.

And of course, how you can outsmart SQL Server.

Which is pretty hard.

Like, doctors work on it and stuff.

See you there!

For a limited time, use the coupon code “votesql” for $50 off.

SQL Saturday Portland: One Week To Go!

Posted on by Erik Darling

Training Daze

Right now, we’re only one week out from SQL Saturday Portland.

I’ll be delivering my Total Server Tuning session, where you’ll learn all sorts of horrible things about SQL Server.

To get ready for the session, you’ll need a local version of SQL Server Developer Edition, 2017 + whatever the latest CU is.

I’m writing this a few weeks out, and who knows what kind of antics Microsoft will get up to.

Will they release, un-release, re-release, re-un-release, and then delete all internet history of another CU?

STAY TUNED!

For Sure

One thing you’ll definitely need is a copy of the StackOverflow2013 database.

Seats are limited, so hurry on up and get yourself one before you get FOMO in your MOJO.

Thanks for reading!

SQL Saturday Portland: Two Weeks To Go!

Posted on by Erik Darling

Training Daze

Right now, we’re only two weeks out from SQL Saturday Portland.

The Oregon one, not the Maine one.

I’ll be delivering my Total Server Tuning session

Where you’ll learn all sorts of horrible things about SQL Server. The kind of stuff that no one else wants to talk about.

Here’s the promo video that I recorded it for SQL Bits, which I still love today.

Seats are limited, so hurry on up and get yourself one before you get FOMO in your MOJO.

Thanks for reading!

Going To SQL Saturday Portland? Come To My Precon!

Posted on by Erik Darling

Training Daze

I’ve delighted to announce that I’ve been selected to present a full day session for SQL Saturday Portland.

The Oregon one, not the Maine one.

I’ll be delivering my Total Server Tuning session, where you’ll learn all sorts of horrible things about SQL Server.

I’m going to be talking about how queries interact with hardware, wait stats that matter, and query tuning.

Seats are limited, so hurry on up and get yourself one before you get FOMO in your MOJO.

Thanks for reading!

Joe Obbish Precon Super Sellout Sale

Posted on by Erik Darling

If you’re interested in attending Joe’s precon, use the discount code “compressionsavings” to save 40% through Tuesday, 10/1 when ticket sales end!

 

I’m In Your Area

If you’re in the New York area and looking for some great free SQL Server training, head to SQL Saturday NYC.

We’ve got a great lineup of speakers covering a wide variety of topics that can help you learn no matter what your job function is.

And of course, if you’re looking for a full day of training, we’ve got a precon with Joe Obbish the Friday before the event (October 4th).

Joe Obbish – Clustered Columnstore For Performance

Buy Tickets Here!

Clustered columnstore indexes can be a great solution for data warehouse workloads, but there’s not a lot of advanced training or detailed documentation out there. It’s easy to feel all alone when you want a second opinion or run into a problem with query performance or data loading that you don’t know how to solve.

In this full day session, I’ll teach you the most important things I know about clustered columnstore indexes. Specifically, I’ll teach you how to make the right choices with your schema, data loads, query tuning, and columnstore maintenance. All of these lessons have been learned the hard way with 4 TB of production data on large, 96+ core servers. Material is applicable from SQL Server 2016 through 2019.

Here’s what I’ll be talking about:

– How columnstore compression works and tips for picking the right data types
– Loading columnstore data quickly, especially on large servers
– Improving query performance on columnstore tables
– Maintaining your columnstore tables

This is an advanced level session. To get the most out of the material, attendees should have some practical experience with columnstore and query tuning, and a solid understanding of internals such as wait stats analysis. You don’t need to bring a laptop to follow along.

Buy Tickets Here!

Location:

Courtyard Times Square – 114 West 40th street NY, NY 10018
Meeting Room – Lower Level  – Meeting Room A & B

I'm just a picture, don't click on me.

 

Why Does My Serial Query Have Parallel Waits?

Posted on by Erik Darling

Harkening

In dramatic fashion, I’m revisiting something from this post about stats updates.

It’s a quick post, because uh… Well. Pick a reason.

Get In Gear

Follow along as I repeat all the steps in the linked post to:

  • Load > 2 billion rows into a table
  • Create a stats object on every column
  • Load enough new data to trigger a stats refresh
  • Query the table to trigger the stats refresh

Except this time, I’m adding a mAxDoP 1 hint to it:

SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM dbo.Vetos
WHERE UserId = 138
AND   PostId = 138
AND   BountyAmount = 138
AND   VoteTypeId = 138
AND   CreationDate = 138
OPTION(MAXDOP 1);

Here’s Where Things Get Interesting

Bothsies

Our MaXdOp 1 query registers nearly the same amount of time on stats updates and parallelism.

If this is madness…

But our plan is indeed serial. Because we told it to be.

By setting maxDOP to 1.

Not Alone

So, if you’re out there in the world wondering why this crazy kinda thing goes down, here’s one explanation.

Are there others? Probably.

But you’ll have to find out by setting MAXdop to 1 on your own.

Thanks for reading!