Sql-Server

When I first installed v21 of SSMS, I was puzzled that many of the connection options in Object Explorer were greyed out:

Because I had been working on a preview version, I thought it just wasn’t there yet. But when I checked the release notes, I saw it should be there. The issue is that I hadn’t added the Business Intelligence workload.

You don’t do that from within SSMS. Instead, you need to run the Visual Studio Installer:

2025-10-24

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Administration Level: Advanced

Question:

Several trace flags are in use on a server you manage.

You are concerned that a behavior that you are seeing in a session is being caused by an enabled trace flag. How can you determine which trace flags are enabled for a session?

2025-10-23

I’ve been learning Mandarin (Chinese) for many, many years. I’m determined to become as fluent in speaking as I can, but to also be reasonable at reading and writing.

One important aspect of doing this, is to make sure you use the language you are learning as much as possible.

A great advantage of SSMS is that it is available for use in many languages. Yet when you do this, SSMS ends up supporting both the target language and English. That means that I can work part of the time in Chinese (to force myself to learn) and the rest of the time in English.

2025-10-22

We spend a lot of time doing performance tuning work for clients. Inappropriate indexing strategy is often high on the list of issues that we identify. Most of these issues can’t be fixed by SQL Server itself and require a detailed understanding of both how the tables are structured and how they are accessed.

However, there is one very common problem however that I believe SQL Server could assist with.

2025-10-21

SSMS has a concept of channels that are used to control releases of the product. You can find them described here .

You can have both Release and Preview channels installed on the same system.

Most people who are using the product in production scenarios want to have a supported stable release. They should use the Release Channel .

Other people, however, are keen to try the latest features as soon as they are available, even if they aren’t at a Release quality bar yet. They can use the Preview Channel .

2025-10-20

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Administration Level: Medium

Question:

What are mirrored backups?

Do they increase or decrease the reliability of backups?

Answer:

Mirrored backups cause the same backup data to be written to multiple locations.

They decrease the reliability of backups, because if writing to any location fails, all backups fail.

2025-10-19

In the current version of SSMS, there is an option to provide feedback directly to the SSMS team. While you can just browse to the website, you can click this link in the top right-hand side.

At that point, you are given three options:

The first two end up in very similar locations, just with a different preselected context:

Make sure you search first to see if the problem has already been reported. As soon as you provide a title for your issue, the site does a search and shows you issues that are potentially related. If you see the same issue, you can click on it to go to the discussion and add your own comments there.   If the issue hasn’t already been reported, you can create a new issue. Make sure you provide a clear title, then detailed information about how to reproduce the issue. Finally, before submitting, make sure you indicate the impact you are experiencing:

2025-10-18

In SQL Server versions prior to SQL Server 2008, the database engine had always tried to provide balanced performance to all concurrent users. Most DBAs however have come across situations where they have wished they had control over the priority assigned to users or workloads as the balanced approach that SQL Server provided might not have suited their business needs.

Way back in SQL Server 2008, Microsoft introduced the concept of resource governance and allowed us to exercise a degree of control in this area. The implementation still has a number of limitations but what was supplied was sufficient to deal a large number of common scenarios. As an example of how this technology might be used, I’ll describe a scenario that I commonly encounter.

2025-10-17

When you start SSMS, the default action at startup is to open Object Explorer. But you can change that behavior. The options to do that are in Tools. Options, then Environment, and Startup.

These are the options that are provided:

One that is often surprisingly useful is to open an empty environment. You might want to use SSMS to edit files without any connection to a database and not want to waste time waiting for SSMS to open the connection dialog, just for you to close it again.

2025-10-16

This is a post in the SQL Interview series. These aren’t trick or gotcha questions, they’re just questions designed to scope out a candidate’s knowledge around SQL Server and Azure SQL Database.

Section: Administration Level: Medium

Question:

What are striped backups and why would you use them?

What do they need to be effective?

Answer:

Striped backups cause stripes of the backup to be written to multiple files. This is done to increase performance.

2025-10-15