CSS SQL Server Engineers

This is the official team Web Log for Microsoft Customer Service and Support (CSS) SQL Support. Posts are provided by the CSS SQL Escalation Services team.

SQL Nexus 4.0 Released to codeplex

We have just released SQL Nexus 4.0 (https://sqlnexus.codeplex.com/) which supports latest SQL...

Author: JackLi Date: 03/11/2014

sp_reset_connection – Rate Usage (Don’t fight over the grapes)

Discussions surrounding sp_reset_connection behavior and usage come up all the time and over the...

Author: psssql Date: 03/03/2014

Can’t Connect to SQL when provisioning a Project App in SharePoint

The customers issue was that they were trying to provision a Project site within the Project...

Author: Adam W. Saxton Date: 02/07/2014

As The World Turns: SQL Server NUMA Memory Node and the Operating System Proximity

It felt a bit like ‘As The World Turns’ as I unraveled how the following worked so the title is a...

Author: psssql Date: 02/04/2014

Spatial Index is NOT used when SUBQUERY used

I have found the following link to be invaluable when working with and tuning SQL Server Spatial...

Author: psssql Date: 12/09/2013

How Simple Parameterization works

Recently we got a customer who upgraded from SQL Server 2005 to 2008. But their performance degraded...

Author: JackLi Date: 12/04/2013

Kerberos Configuration Manager updated for Reporting Services

Back in may, we released the Kerberos Configuration Manager tool to help with diagnosing and...

Author: Adam W. Saxton Date: 11/22/2013

Spatial Indexing: From 4 Days to 4 Hours

Over the past month I have been involved in the optimization of a Spatial Index...

Author: psssql Date: 11/19/2013

All about RollbackSnapshotTempDB...

I’ve been recently involved in several cases where Databases named RollbackSnapshotTempDB...

Author: psssql Date: 11/07/2013

Cumulative Update 2 to the RML Utilities for Microsoft SQL Server Released

  Version 9.04.004 of the RML Utilities for Microsoft SQL Server has been released.  This...

Author: psssql Date: 10/29/2013

SQL Connection Pool Timeout Debugging

This is a follow up to two blog posts from back in 2009 which talked about leaked connections. In...

Author: Adam W. Saxton Date: 10/22/2013

Every time I ‘ATTACH DATABASE’ SQL logs error 1314 for SetFileIoOverlappedRange

Turns out this is an issue in the SQL Server code and the error is a bit noisy during attach...

Author: psssql Date: 10/16/2013

Microsoft CSS @ PASS Summit 2013

During October 15th-18th, the US PASS Summit 2013 will be held in Charlotte, NC at the Charlotte...

Author: Adam W. Saxton Date: 10/10/2013

Invalid or loopback address when configuring SharePoint against a SQL Server

I was presented with a connectivity issue when trying to configure SharePoint 2013 using a CTP build...

Author: Adam W. Saxton Date: 10/04/2013

Error during installation of an SQL server Failover Cluster Instance

A common issue I've run into while helping with SQL Server Failover Cluster (FCI) installations is...

Author: psssql Date: 09/30/2013

How It Works: Maximizing Max Degree Of Parallelism (MAXDOP)

I was working on an index build issue for an 80 CPU system and kept seeing that only 64 CPUs were...

Author: psssql Date: 09/27/2013

Interpreting the counter values from sys.dm_os_performance_counters

The performance counters exposed by SQL Server are invaluable tools for monitoring various aspects...

Author: psssql Date: 09/23/2013

[SQL 2012 query plan enhancement] I want to know why my query is not parallelized

In the past, we have got repeated questions from customers on why a particular query is not...

Author: JackLi Date: 08/28/2013

When is throttling in Windows Azure SQL Database really throttling….

During the course of this year I have spoken at several customer and internal events on...

Author: psssql Date: 08/27/2013

Service status watcher in SQL Server Management Studio – How it works

Have you ever wondered about the mechanism using which SQL Server Management Studio(SSMS) - Object...

Author: psssql Date: 08/21/2013

Power View display issues with Page Viewer Web Part

I ran into two separate issues this week that both dealt with displaying a Power View report through...

Author: psssql Date: 08/16/2013

Optimizing partition split when the partition is not empty

Some of our Field Engineers, Kal Yella and Denzil Ribeiro (@DenzilRibeiro) have posted a blog that...

Author: psssql Date: 08/13/2013

How It Works: SQL Server 2012 Database Engine Task Scheduling

Over the years the SQL Server scheduling algorithms have been documented in various...

Author: psssql Date: 08/13/2013

Error trying to access SharePoint List from Power Query

When trying to pull data from a SharePoint List Data Source, using the Microsoft Online Services ID,...

Author: Adam W. Saxton Date: 08/08/2013

After applying Service Pack 1 for SQL Server 2012 you may encounter a known issue! Details inside…..

I’d like to make you aware of an issue that may occur after installing Service Pack 1 for SQL...

Author: psssql Date: 07/31/2013

Tracking down Power View Performance Problems

The scenario was that we saw sluggishness on the initial load of a Power View Report and also when...

Author: Adam W. Saxton Date: 07/29/2013

When Does sp_prepare Return Metadata

I was running an RML Utilities Suite test pass and encountered varying behavior from our sp_prepare...

Author: psssql Date: 07/23/2013

DReplay Message: “Active connections exceed 8192, connection 8409 is waiting.”

This message was an interesting dive into the DReplay, session boundary logic that I thought I would...

Author: psssql Date: 07/23/2013

High CPU Troubleshooting with DMV Queries

High CPU Troubleshooting with DMV Queries [View:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDOTzeut4lw]...

Author: psssql Date: 06/17/2013

A performance issue involving CLR garbage collection and SQL CPU affinity setting

We have been troubleshooting a customer’s case and uncovered a GC behavior with SQL Server CPU...

Author: JackLi Date: 06/11/2013

Getting a SharePoint List Data Source to work with Reporting Services Native Mode

A case came up where the user was trying to use Report Builder in a Reporting Services instance that...

Author: Adam W. Saxton Date: 06/11/2013

How It Works: The I/O Path: SQL Server Running in Windows Azure Virtual Machine (IaaS)

Note: This blog is based on behavior as of June 2013.  At Microsoft we continue to evolve and...

Author: psssql Date: 06/03/2013

Why won't my PowerPivot for Excel 2010 workbook upgrade to Excel 2013?

Recently we've seen an issue where some Excel 2010 workbooks containing PowerPivot models encounter...

Author: psssql Date: 05/23/2013

SharePoint Adventures : Claims, Named Pipes and Kerberos

I ran into a new Kerberos Scenario that I hadn’t hit before when I was working on the cases related...

Author: Adam W. Saxton Date: 05/17/2013

SharePoint Adventures : When connectivity is not connectivity

I’m always amazed that issues usually come in batches.  I was looped into a few cases that had...

Author: Adam W. Saxton Date: 05/17/2013

SQL Server–Storage Spaces/VHDx and 4K Sector Size

This blog outlines a new twist to my previous blog outlining issues with 4K sector sizes. SQL Server...

Author: psssql Date: 05/15/2013

Using PowerShell to discover Reporting Services 2012 in SharePoint

I was recently going through an exercise of documenting how to discover certain aspects of Reporting...

Author: Adam W. Saxton Date: 04/30/2013

AlwaysON - HADRON Learning Series: lock_redo_blocked/redo worker Blocked on Secondary Replica

The topic I received most in my inbox this week was redo blocked on a secondary while attempting to...

Author: psssql Date: 04/26/2013

AlwaysON - HADRON Learning Series: HADR_SYNC_COMMIT vs WRITELOG wait

The distinction between these two wait types is subtle but very helpful in tuning your Always On...

Author: psssql Date: 04/26/2013

How It Works: Always On–When Is My Secondary Failover Ready?

I keep running into the question: “When will my secondary allow automatic failover?”  ...

Author: psssql Date: 04/22/2013

SQLIOSim Checksum Validations

I had a very specific question asked of me related to the SQLIOSIM.exe, checksum validation...

Author: psssql Date: 04/05/2013

The Case of Anti-Virus filter drive interference with File Stream Restore

"Denzil and I were working on this issue for a customer and Denzil has been gracious enough to...

Author: psssql Date: 03/29/2013

PowerPivot Table Import Wizard cannot find provider

The data source provider list in PowerPivot can often be a source of confusion for users since they...

Author: psssql Date: 03/25/2013

System Center Advisor is now free

It has been well over a year when I wrote a series of blog posts about a product called System...

Author: psssql Date: 03/20/2013

SQL Server 2012 partitioned table statistics update behavior change when rebuilding index

In this blog, I will talk about a couple of things related to statistics update when rebuilding...

Author: JackLi Date: 03/19/2013

switchoffset built-in function can cause incorrect cardinality estimate

Recently, we received a call from a customer reported that a query was slow.  Upon further...

Author: JackLi Date: 03/02/2013

Temp table caching improvement for table valued parameters in SQL Server 2012

I wanted to point out a nice performance improvement related to table valued parameters (TVP) in SQL...

Author: JackLi Date: 02/26/2013

Unable to register .NET framework assembly not in the supported list

SQL Server has supported CLR usage since version 2005. But support of .NET framework assemblies...

Author: JackLi Date: 02/23/2013

RS: Database Engine does not meet edition requirements

I've ran across the following error a few times and thought I would post this out there for people...

Author: Adam W. Saxton Date: 02/20/2013

Breaking Down 18056

We have had two blog posts on this blog regarding the 18056 error. Two from Bob Dorr (and part 2)...

Author: Adam W. Saxton Date: 02/13/2013

<Previous Next>