A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
Deepthi Goguri rounds up some thoughts on new features:
I am overwhelmed with gratitude by looking at the number of responses we received for my February month of T-SQL Tuesday invitation. Surely, I see so much interest and curiosity for the newly available features in Azure SQL and SQL Server 2022. Not to mention, for the new year resolutions too
Click through for links to a baker’s dozen responses.
Comments closedReitse Eskens shares some thoughts:
As some of you know, I’ve written a series of blog posts on Azure SQL Databases and there’s an accompanying session that I had the honour of presenting a number of times.
Now Azure keeps developing new offers and one of these went in public preview February 15th. An offer I hadn’t seen coming. You can read the introductory post here.It’s the Azure Hyperscale Serverless option.
Read on for Reitse’s impressions from the preview. This wasn’t a torture test but did provide an overview of how to create and load data into the database. Reitse also calculates the cutoff point when you should switch from Serverless to traditional Hyperscale, so check that out as well.
Comments closedSrinivas Kandibanda and Harvey Mora have announcements:
The 1st cumulative update release for SQL Server 2022 RTM is now available for download at the Microsoft Downloads site. Please note that registration is no longer required to download Cumulative updates.
Both of these came out several months later than expected, though with the big GDR that dropped yesterday, it seems like that cleared up the logjam.
Comments closedDeborah Melkin looks at a nice feature in SQL Server 2022:
A couple of months ago, I wrote about my initial thoughts to SQL Server 2022. I think a lot of what I wrote still holds true. It feels like it’s building on the functionality from previous versions, especially when it comes to Intelligent Query Processing and its feedback capabilities.
The feature I’m most curious to find out more about is the Degree of Parallelism Feedback. (You can read more about it here.) One of the main reasons for this is I know very little about the settings.
Read on for Deb’s thoughts and a situation where it would have helped.
Comments closedBy sheer coincidence, I had the privilege of being invited to a private SQL Server 2022 workshop taught by Bob Ward last week. And through my job, I also had the privilege of doing some testing work around QAT backups and S3 Data Virtualization during the private preview phase last summer. So while I had exposure and access to SQL Server 2022 for much longer than others, there were many things that Microsoft loaded into the 2022 release that I barely skimmed over or knew were even there.
Towards the end of the workshop, Bob presented a slide called Purvi’s List. Purvi Shah is an engineer on the SQL performance team and as Bob said, “spends her time finding ways to make SQL Server and Azure SQL faster.”
Read on to learn what had Andy so excited.
Comments closedIf you’re like me, Plan Explorer has always been a must-have tool in your performance tuning arsenal. And one of the things that made it so useful was a simple little SSMS Integration that would allow you to right click on an Execution Plan and see “View with […] Plan Explorer.”
Unfortunately, I started hearing reports of that no longer being available in SSMS v19. But I know a thing or two, so was willing to bet 30 minutes of time that I could get it back.
Andy won that bet, so shower him with accolades.
1 CommentMartijn Visser announces Apache Flink version 1.16.1:
The Apache Flink Community is pleased to announce the first bug fix release of the Flink 1.16 series.
This release includes 84 bug fixes, vulnerability fixes, and minor improvements for Flink 1.16. Below you will find a list of all bugfixes and improvements (excluding improvements to the build infrastructure and build stability). For a complete list of all changes see: JIRA.
We highly recommend all users upgrade to Flink 1.16.1.
Read on for the release notes, including links to all of the closed tickets.
Comments closedMonica Rathbun looks at tempdb:
Tempdb is always a topic for me whether it’s in my sessions or blogs I have written. However, I’ve never been so excited about it then I am when it comes to the dramatic performance changes introduced in SQL Server 2022. THEY HAVE SOLVED ONE OF OUR BIGGEST PERFORMANCE BOTTLE NECKS, System page latch concurrency.
Click through for the details.
Comments closedErin Stellato has a new version of Management Studio for us:
In addition, we received a lot of feedback about the dialog box, “Querying transaction count”, we introduced back in SSMS 18.11. In 18.12, we added an option to cancel the check if it took more than two seconds, but user comments indicated that was not enough. Therefore, in SSMS 19.0 you have the ability to disable to dialog box completely. Within Tools > Options > Query Execution, simply uncheck the option “Check for open transactions before closing T-SQL query windows”.
That alone might be worth it, especially if you work via VPN and have a bunch of SSMS tabs open.
Comments closedJared Poche looks at the recent past:
Tempdb contention has long been an issue in SQL Server, and there are many blogs on the issue already. But I wanted to add one more mainly to highlight the improvements in recent versions of SQL Server
Tempdb contention is most often discussed in as relating to the creation of temp tables (and other objects) in tempdb. If you are experiencing this you will see PAGELATCH_EX or PAGELATCH_SH waits, frequently with wait resources like 2:1:1 or 2:1:3. This indicates contention in database 2 (tempdb), page 1 (the first data file in tempdb), and one of the PFS, GAM, or SGAM pages (which are pages 1, 2, and 3 respectively). Tempdb files of sufficient size will have additional PFS, GAM, and SGAM pages at higher page numbers, but 1 and 3 are the pages most often referenced.
Read on to see what the SQL Server team has done over three of the past four versions of SQL Server to limit tempdb contention.
Comments closed