SQL Database Engine Blog

This is the blog of the engineering team managing and developing the Database Engine for SQL Server and Azure SQL Database

Now that we have Unicode compression available in SQL Server 2008R2 as described in, let me take a...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 08/16/2009

In my previous blog, I had mentioned that unicode compression will be available as part of next SQL...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 08/16/2009

As I described in my previous blog, the data compression feature has been very successful. We do...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 08/16/2009

It has been a while since I blogged about data compression so I thought it will be good to provide...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 08/16/2009

One of the key challenges in TempDB is that it is a common resource for all applications running on...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 01/11/2009

This blog continues the discussion on the common issues in TempDB that you may need to troubleshoot....

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 01/11/2009

This blog continues the discussion on the common issues in TempDB that you may need to troubleshoot....

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 01/11/2009

I hope my earlier blogs on TempDB...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 01/04/2009

In my previous blogs, I described the types of objects in TempDB and how they are managed. I hope...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 01/04/2009

Allocation bottleneck refers to contention in the system pages that store allocation structures....

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 01/04/2009

In the previous blog...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 12/31/2008

Now that we know a few things about Version Store, let us now look into its structure to understand...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 12/31/2008

In order to understand the version store, let me start with an example. I will use a database that...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 12/30/2008

Version store is a new entity in SQL Server 2005. It is used to store versions of data and index...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 12/21/2008

In the previous blog...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 12/21/2008

Over past few of years, I have given TempDB presentation in many conferences and the feedback that I...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 12/21/2008

In my previous blog...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 12/21/2008

I often get a question how to do enable compression on a table that is a heap (i.e. it does not have...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 12/19/2008

Based on the customer feedback, we have decided to make minimal logging functionality into a...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 10/23/2008

Lately I have been asked how data compression impacts fragmentation (i.e. does it cause more or less...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 08/06/2008

In SQL Server 2008 Feb CTP, there is a bug in the WMI provider for FILESTREAM, inside SQL...

Author: OmelJ - MSFT Date: 06/09/2008

As you know the tempdb is used by user applications and SQL Server alike to store transient results...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 03/30/2008

Last week I was teaching a class on snapshot isolation and we discussed the overheads of snapshot...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 03/29/2008

You may recall that starting with SQL Server 2005, you have an option available to enable CHECKSUM...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 03/23/2008

So far we had discussed...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 03/23/2008

In the previous example...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 03/23/2008

Please refer to the earlier post for the background information on minimal logging. Starting with...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 03/06/2008

FILESTREAM is disabled by default in SQL2008. Before you can start to use FILESTREAM, you must...

Author: OmelJ - MSFT Date: 03/03/2008

This blog shows a very simple example to illustrate data fragmentation, measuring it, seeing behind...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 02/29/2008

In the previous blog I had listed all bulk import optimizations. Now, I will describe each of these...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 02/04/2008

Bulk import provides an optimized insert path that minimizes this overhead with following...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 02/04/2008

Most IT shops using SQL Server need to load/import large amount of data obtained from external...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 02/04/2008

In the previous blogs, I had described the data compression in SQL Server 2008 and its implications...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 01/26/2008

In the previous blog, I described column-prefix compression that is done as part of PAGE...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 01/18/2008

In the previous blog, I had mentioned that the PAGE compression is used to “minimize the data...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 01/17/2008

Thanks to all who have contacted me for their interest in the data compression...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 11/20/2007

Like I had indicated in my previous blog, it is recommended that you estimate compression savings on...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 11/12/2007

SQL Server deploys two strategies to compress the data · First, it stores all fixed length...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 11/12/2007

When we think of compressing the database, one of the first question that pops up is why not used...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 11/11/2007

I was talking to a customer the other day who had an interesting problem: Successful...

Author: Kevin Farlee [MSFT] Date: 10/30/2007

So what’s a “fuzzy backup” and how does it relate to STOPAT? There has been some...

Author: Kevin Farlee [MSFT] Date: 10/26/2007

Ok, now that we have sort of agreed...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 09/30/2007

As announced in Tech-Ed 2007, data compression is a new and exciting feature targeted to be...

Author: Sunil Agarwal Date: 09/29/2007

My new blog's not active until September 1st but I wanted to blog about something cool - and totally...

Author: Paul Randal - MSFT Date: 08/23/2007

Hey folks,This is my last blog post on the SQL Server Storage Engine blog as I've made the decision...

Author: Paul Randal - MSFT Date: 07/30/2007

The session I gave at TechEd this year on 'Secrets of Fast Detection and Recovery from Database...

Author: Paul Randal - MSFT Date: 06/27/2007

Here’s a topic that’s cropped up several times during Q&As at TechEd this year...

Author: Paul Randal - MSFT Date: 06/07/2007

This year at TechEd there's been even more interest in database mirroring than last year -...

Author: Paul Randal - MSFT Date: 06/06/2007

Very exciting!!! On Monday at TechEd we announced the official name of the next version of SQL...

Author: Paul Randal - MSFT Date: 06/05/2007

So I learned something about SQL Server at TechEd today. In Kimberly and Bob Beauchemin's pre-con,...

Author: Paul Randal - MSFT Date: 06/03/2007

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