Optimal Cluster sizes for SQL Server on SSDs – are 64K still important?

Lately, with the advance of SSDs, more and more administrators are wondering: Is the old rule to use a 64K Cluster size (aka “File Allocation Unit size”) for SQL Server still applicable on today’s hard drives, especially SSDs or even Flash? And: Does it apply to all RAID-types equally? This summer I took some time […]

Optimizing workflows with In-Memory and Natively Compiled Objects – or how it does not work

During the course of optimizing data-access-code with the In-Memory-functionalities in Microsoft SQL Server (memory optimized tables + indexes, memory optimized table valued parameters and natively compiled stored procedures), you may often realize that sometimes you go one step forward and then another one backwards.

Index-Cheat-Sheet. The complete Index-compatibility Matrix for SQL Server

With the total of 4 new index types we have gained since SQL Server 2012 now we also have a total of 4 basic formats (Heap, Clustered Index, Clustered Columnstore Index, memory-optimized “varheap”) for data storage in SQL Server. And what’s more, with SQL Server 2016, these can be combined in various ways.

The SQL Server 2016 In-Memory Evolution – from row-store to columnstore to in-memory operational analytics

SQL Server 2016 is finally available and, by extension, the “version 2” of the In-Memory OLTP Engine, if you will. At various international conferences and already at the IX in 2014 I have presented what is behind the In-Memory Engine of SQL Server introduced in SQL Server 2014. Only I had not yet found the […]

Conferences in SQL Server summer 2016

It feels like I have just been back from the SQLBits XV in Liverpool, where I introduced the Security Features of the SQL Server 2016 (SQL Server 2016 – Security Obscurity and Encryption), and next thing I know, I am already in the middle of planning the next SQL Server Master-Class on High Availability with […]

My conference sessions in 2015: from Extended Events over In-Memory to Security

Finally I get to write about my conference-talks in 2015. The year started really great with the German SQL Server Konferenz in Darmstadt with 2 sessions on In-Memory OLTP in SQL Server 2014 – one of them being even a full-day PreCon, which I co-presented with Niko Neugebauer, who was talking about Clustered ColumnStore Indexes.