07Aug 2013 by Grant Fritchey 7 Comments

Be Cautious When Critizing About Guidance

T-SQL
I recently posted some comments about some guidance offered by Microsoft when talking about the CXPACKET wait type. Nothing I said was wrong, no. But, evidently there are a few whip smart and agile people who work for Microsoft. Specifically, Rick Byham, who works for the team tasked with taking care of the SQL Server Books Online. Why am I calling Mr. Byham smart and agile. Evidently he saw the blog post and has completely updated the description for CXPACKET at MSDN: Occurs with parallel query plans when trying to synchronize the query processor exchange iterator. If waiting is excessive and cannot be reduced by tuning the query (such as adding indexes), consider adjusting the cost threshold for parallelism or lowering the degree of parallelism. WHOOP! That's awesome work. Thanks Mr. Byham. Of…
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05Aug 2013 by Grant Fritchey 19 Comments

Be Cautious Offering Guidance

Azure, SQL Server, T-SQL
Guidance is hard. Seriously, you'd think it would be easy. You'd think you say things like, don't shrink your database, most tables should have a clustered index, never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line, don't mix sharks and tornados, and that would be it. You'd be done. But it's not that easy. Even worse, it's SHOCKINGLY easy to get stuff wrong. An example. I was looking at information over at Microsoft Developers Network (MSDN) in the SQL Server Books Online. I was reading through information about wait types when I found this little beauty: Occurs when trying to synchronize the query processor exchange iterator. Know what that is? Yeah, OK, a few of you who memorize wait stats do (shut up Tom), but most of us…
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