SQL Server Training

I’m not sure where this came from, and I had it in drafts forever ago. I figured might as well publish it to the world so someone else can use these links. I can’t vouch for if they are still available or not. I don’t take credit for any of the materials. This is just a list of what others have published that I’ve found helpful over the years.

Free Downloads for Powerful SQL Server Management – You’re responsible for managing and troubleshooting SQL Server. Good news: you’re not alone. The SQL Server community has banded together and built a bunch of cool stuff to help you do your job easier. In a one-hour session this morning for the PASS DBA Fundamentals online user group (free to join, of course), Ozar will show free tools.

DevOps 101 for data professionals – how your jobs will change

People who play an active role in delivering database schema updates and who are interested in what DevOps is and how it can help. Your role may be as a developer, DBA, manager or something entirely different since DevOps is not a responsibility of one individual, but a shared way of working that effects many different roles. This talk is called DevOps101 for a reason. It is an introduction to DevOps aimed at data folk. This session will be relevant to experienced and inexperienced data people alike – but if you have already adopted DevOps and are looking for advanced DevOps content or the answers to difficult DevOps problems you will probably be disappointed by this session.

How to Think Like the SQL Server Engine

Everyone should start with thinking like the SQL Server Engine. In this series of videos, you’ll learn how the SQL Server engine looks at your indexes and builds your query results.

Watch Brent Tune Queries

Watch over Brent Ozar’s shoulder for two different query and index tuning sessions

Ozar’s d-e-a-t-h method for tuning indexes

When someone hands him a database and tells him to make it go faster without changing the code, he start with his D.E.A.T.H. Method

Learn to use Ozar’s free tools

sp_BlitzFirst – Helps You Troubleshoot Slow SQL Servers
sp_Blitz – Health check that flags common issues, and for each warning, gives you a link to a web page with more in-depth advice
sp_BlitzIndex – Does a sanity check on your database and diagnoses your indexes major disorders, then reports back to you. Each disorder has a URL that explains what to look for and how to handle the issue. sp_BlitzIndex also saves YOUR sanity when index tuning, by giving you the option to see both the “missing” and existing indexes for a table in a single view– when prevents you from going crazy and adding duplicate indexes.
sp_BlitzCache – You have a SQL Server and you’re not sure which queries are causing your biggest performance problems. You don’t know where to start or if there are hidden queries that are making your main queries slower. You want a fast tool to find the worst queries in the SQL Server plan cache, tell you why they’re bad, and even tell you what you can do about them.

DBCC CHECKDB

Making DBCC CHECKDB Go Faster
Minimize Impact of CHECKDB
Consistency Checking Options for a VLDB – Great suggestions on how we can break up CHECKDB into smaller chunks to accommodate our larger dbs
Database Corruption Challenge – Great information on resolving corruption problems
Complete description of all CHECKDB stages
Why would CHECKDB run out of space? – In many cases, the amount of info being stored exceeds the available memory and the worktable needs to spill over to tempdb. (For example, running DBCC CHECKDB against a 1TB database on a machine with 16GB of memory – the amount of info that DBCC CHECKDB needs to store the intermediate pieces of info will likely exceed the memory available to SQL Server). So – if tempdb isn’t big enough to store the worktable, it has to grow. If it can’t grow, then DBCC CHECKDB will fail because it needs the worktable to operate.

T-SQL Level Up

This course is designed for junior SQL Server developers and app developers who want to take their T-SQL skills to the next level up, and have a little adventure in the process. They help you write efficient T-SQL code by covering thinking in sets, CASE expressions, computed columns, and windowing functions.

Why Did My Clever Index Change Backfire?

About great index ideas that accidentally backfire… and how you can avoid disaster.

Why Defragmenting Your Indexes Isn’t Helping

For years, you’ve heard that you’re supposed to reorganize your indexes to make SQL Server go faster. It sounds like it makes sense – keep things in order, right? But you keep doing it, and SQL Server isn’t getting any faster. You’ve even heard that setting fill factor will help prevent fragmentation, and you’re doing that too – but your indexes still keep getting fragmented every day, and users aren’t happy with performance. This advice made a lot of sense at the turn of the century, but today, things are different – and we’re not just talking solid state drives. In just the first 15 minutes, you’ll have a series of ah-ha moments when you realize that your daily index maintenance jobs might just be making the problem worse instead of better. Then, you’ll learn what you need to do instead.

Improving SELECT * performance

You’re a DBA or Developer, and you have a gut feeling that these simple queries with an egregious number of columns in the SELECT list are dragging your server down. You’re not quite sure why, or how to index for them. Worst of all, no one seems to be okay with you returning fewer columns. In this session, you’ll learn why and when queries like this are a problem, your indexing options, and even query tuning methods to make them much faster.

Management Studio level-up

Move up to Management Studio Superstar with these great productivity tips! We’ll explore stuff like keyboard shortcuts, configuration options, how to keep your SSMS settings synchronized across multiple environments and other really useful everyday tricks and hacks. Think “hey, wait, how’d you do that!?”

Good walkthroughs/articles:

Free books from Redgate:

Free server health check