MSSQL Tiger Team
This is the official web log for the SQL Server engineering team – we focus on learning customer workloads running on SQL Server, integrating that feedback to enhance the product, and provide guidance on using SQL Server to solve customers' business challenges.
Developers Choice: Programmatically identify LPIM and IFI privileges in SQL Server
Lock Pages in Memory and Instant File Initialization privileges are couple of configuration settings...
Author: Parikshit Savjani Date: 11/26/2016
Developers Choice: USE HINT query hints
The use of Trace Flags has always been understood as a sort of ‘hack’, and a solution that is hard...
Author: Pedro Lopes (PL) Date: 11/21/2016
SQL Server 2016 SP1: Things you should know
With the release of SQL Server 2016 SP1, a number of programmability features which were only...
Author: Parikshit Savjani Date: 11/20/2016
Developers choice: Columnstore index in Standard and Express Edition with SQL Server 2016 (SP1)
On 16th Nov 2016, Microsoft announced the support for ‘Consistent Programming Surface Area’ across...
Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 11/18/2016
Developers Choice: CREATE OR ALTER
Today we are starting a new blog post series entitled “Developers Choice”. In the first few posts we...
Author: Pedro Lopes (PL) Date: 11/17/2016
New Showplan XML properties in SSMS October Release
Back in March we announced the availability of per-operator level performance stats for Query...
Author: Pedro Lopes (PL) Date: 11/14/2016
Columnstore Index: Why do I need to create clustered columnstore Index on In-Memory OLTP table for Analytics?
The columnstore index on In-Memory table(s) targets real-time operational analytics (HTAP) allowing...
Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 11/06/2016
In-Memory OLTP: Is your database just in memory or actually optimized for memory?
In my many conversations with customers during Microsoft events, people often confuse between the...
Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 11/06/2016
Columnstore Index: Which Columnstore Index is right for my workload?
While we all understand that columnstore index in SQL Server 2016 can deliver amazing query...
Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 11/06/2016
Columnstore index: Why do we refer to it as In-Memory Analytics?
Columnstore index is part of In-Memory technologies released in SQL Server 2014 and SQL Server...
Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 11/06/2016
Migrating SAP workloads to SQL Server just got 2.5x faster
SAP provides R3load process to perform export/import of SAP data to SQL Server for homogenous (SQL...
Author: Parikshit Savjani Date: 11/03/2016
Integrating PolyBase with Cloudera using Active Directory Authentication
This article outlines the steps to use PolyBase in SQL 2016(including R-Services) with a Cloudera...
Author: Ajay.MSFT Date: 10/21/2016
Filestream RsFx Driver fails to load after installing SQL Server 2016 with CU2 on Windows Server 2016 with SecureBoot ON
Starting Windows 10 version 1607 (Redstone 1) and Windows Server 2016, there is a new enforcement...
Author: Parikshit Savjani Date: 10/19/2016
Change Tracking Cleanup–Part 1
Part 2 of the series is available here. Change tracking is a lightweight solution that provides an...
Author: Amit Banerjee Date: 10/19/2016
Something for the SQL Server Backup Vendors
SQL Server VSS allows ISVs to develop backup solutions using APIs exposed by VSS framework. One such...
Author: Parikshit Savjani Date: 10/18/2016
MSSQLTIGER Team at the PASS Summit
It’s that time of the year again when data professionals across the world converge at Seattle for...
Author: Amit Banerjee Date: 10/13/2016
Understanding the requirements for SeSecurityPrivilege to SQL setup account on remote fileserver when default backup folder is set to UNC path
One of the actions of SQL Server setup is to configure appropriate permissions on the binaries,...
Author: Parikshit Savjani Date: 09/22/2016
Transactional Replication and Always On Availability Groups Support Update
In the past, we have received multiple requests from customers for supporting transactional...
Author: Amit Banerjee Date: 08/31/2016
Improving Concurrency & Scalability of SQL Server workload by optimizing database containment check in SQL 2014\SQL 2016
Starting SQL 2012, database containment property is introduced in SQL Server database to support...
Author: Parikshit Savjani Date: 08/24/2016
Operator progress changes in LQS
EDIT (11/12/2016): With the October release of SQL Server Management Studio, operator percentage...
Author: Pedro Lopes (PL) Date: 08/22/2016
Remote Blob Storage (RBS) client library setup requirements in SQL Server 2016
Remote BLOB Store (RBS) is a client library with SQL Server which allows developers to store,...
Author: Parikshit Savjani Date: 08/09/2016
MSSQLTIGER and July PASS Virtual Conferences
The Tiger Team presented another session in PASS Virtual Conference: DBA Fundamentals Chapter on SQL...
Author: Parikshit Savjani Date: 07/20/2016
Memory grant related diagnostics
Back in March I blogged about Addressing large memory grant requests from optimized Nested Loops. To...
Author: Pedro Lopes (PL) Date: 07/16/2016
Dynamic Memory Object Scaling
Overview This blog provides an example of turning a customer escalation to Tiger team into a...
Author: Ajay.MSFT Date: 06/27/2016
New defaults for model and user databases in SQL Server 2016
In the previous blog post on Changes in default behavior for autogrow and allocations for tempdb and...
Author: Ajay.MSFT Date: 06/27/2016
#AskSQLTiger Twitter Chat on June 27
Have you ever wanted the opportunity to ask the MSSQLTIGER team about SQL Server? Join the SQL...
Author: Amit Banerjee Date: 06/15/2016
MSSQLTIGER and June PASS Virtual Conferences
The Tiger team will be delivering another set virtual chapter sessions for Security, High...
Author: Amit Banerjee Date: 06/10/2016
Performance Improvements in SQL Server Dashboards Management Pack
We recently released new Community Technology Preview bits for SQL Server Dashboards MP as well as...
Author: Ebru1 Date: 05/25/2016
MSSQLTIGER and May PASS Virtual Conferences
Tiger is delivering another session on an upcoming Performance Virtual Chapter (VC) meeting. This...
Author: Pedro Lopes (PL) Date: 05/17/2016
MSSQLTIGER is back in Europe
The MSSQLTIGER is going to be back in European region next week for two different events. The first...
Author: Amit Banerjee Date: 05/11/2016
Boosting Update Statistics performance with SQL 2014 & SQL 2016
With SQL 2005 end of life, many customers are planning their upgrades to SQL 2014. One of the...
Author: Parikshit Savjani Date: 05/01/2016
MSSQLTIGER at SQLNEXUS and SQLBITS
The MSSQLTIGER team is quite excited about the first week of May. We will be presenting at two...
Author: Amit Banerjee Date: 04/27/2016
Clarifications on KB 3120595
Since the release of Cumulative Update 10 for SQL Server 2012 Service Pack 2, Cumulative Update 2...
Author: Pedro Lopes (PL) Date: 04/25/2016
MSSQLTIGER and April PASS Virtual Conferences
PASS Virtual Chapters (VC) are interest-based forums that unite the SQL Server community through...
Author: Amit Banerjee Date: 04/15/2016
April updates to Plan Comparison Tool
With the SQL Server Management Studio April update, we released a new update for the Plan Comparison...
Author: Pedro Lopes (PL) Date: 04/15/2016
MSSQLTIGER at SQL Saturday Redmond
PASS SQLSaturdays are free 1-day training events for SQL Server professionals that focus on local...
Author: Amit Banerjee Date: 03/30/2016
New DMF for retrieving input buffer in SQL Server
A new DMF for retrieving the input buffer for a session/request (sys.dm_exec_input_buffer) is now...
Author: Ajay.MSFT Date: 03/15/2016
SQL Server 2016: Changes in default behavior for autogrow and allocations for tempdb and user databases
Configuration of TEMPDB is often critical to scalability and throughput of SQL Server applications....
Author: Ajay.MSFT Date: 03/15/2016
Added per-operator level performance stats for Query Processing
When you are troubleshooting query performance, metrics are never too much. With that in mind, based...
Author: Pedro Lopes (PL) Date: 03/14/2016
What’s new with SSMS Plan Comparison Tool?
With the SQL Server Management Studio February update, we released a new update for the Plan...
Author: Pedro Lopes (PL) Date: 03/09/2016
Addressing large memory grant requests from optimized Nested Loops
Optimized Nested Loops (or Batch Sort) is effectively an optimization aimed at minimizing I/O during...
Author: Pedro Lopes (PL) Date: 03/08/2016
Index Usage DMV behavior updated
Up until SQL Server 2008 R2, using index usage stats entries in sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats to make...
Author: Pedro Lopes (PL) Date: 03/07/2016
Several improvements to DBCC CHECKDB to make it run faster
SQL Server 2016 has introduced several improvements to DBCC CHECKDB to make it run faster. Here are...
Author: Ajay.MSFT Date: 03/01/2016
SQL Server 2014 is FIPS 140-2 compliant
We have recently published a KB article on using SQL Server 2014 in FIPS 140-2-compliant mode....
Author: Ajay.MSFT Date: 02/29/2016
SQL Server Remote Blob Storage (RBS) Credential Store Symmetric Key Rotation
The SQL Server team would like to advise RBS admins on security procedures for rotating the...
Author: Ajay.MSFT Date: 02/23/2016
Windows Enforcement of Authenticode Code Signing and Timestamping impact on SQL Server
Windows Enforcement of Authenticode Code Signing and Timestamping has recently announced a change...
Author: Amit Banerjee Date: 01/05/2016
SQLIO Disk Subsystem Benchmark Tool is being retired
We are retiring the “SQLIO Disk Subsystem Benchmark Tool” and the download will no longer be...
Author: Ajay.MSFT Date: 12/11/2015
SQL Server 2016 – Added information on TempDB Spill events – xEvents
My previous post was about new information added to spill warnings. Those are visible at the query...
Author: Pedro Lopes (PL) Date: 11/02/2015
Transactional Replication to Azure SQL DB is now in public preview.
As announced yesterday during my presentation at Pass Summit 2015, you can now configure Azure SQL...
Author: JYDevant.MSFT Date: 10/29/2015