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.

Server’s “Max Degree of Parallelism” setting, Resource Governor’s MAX_DOP and query hint MAXDOP–which one should SQL Server use?

SQL Server allows a user to control max degree of parallelism of a query in three different ways....

Author: JackLi Date: 04/28/2015

Forced parameterization to the rescue

Some of the features have been around for a long time.  But we keep seeing users not taking...

Author: JackLi Date: 04/22/2015

Pssdiag Manager update 12.0.0.1001 released

We just released a pssdiag Manager update to codeplex. Where to download You can download both...

Author: JackLi Date: 04/19/2015

What is RESOURCE_GOVERNOR_IDLE and why you should not ignore it completely

If you have query that runs slow, would you believe it if I tell you that you instructed SQL Server...

Author: JackLi Date: 04/10/2015

Understanding SQL Server’s Spatial Precision Filtering

A spatial index is not precise on its own. The spatial index is grid design requiring a precision...

Author: psssql Date: 04/02/2015

Does statistics update cause a recompile?

This my “statistics series” blog.   See “Statistics blogs reference” at end of this blog....

Author: JackLi Date: 03/16/2015

Reporting Services: Error creating HTTP endpoint - Access is Denied

I’ve seen this issue a few times.  We had a case come in where they were seeing a blank page...

Author: Adam W. Saxton Date: 03/13/2015

Moving Reporting Services off of a Cluster

We had a customer that had deployed Reporting Services to their Cluster. They now wanted to move the...

Author: psssql Date: 03/13/2015

Does rebuild index update statistics?

I recently did a talk to a group of SQL users. Quite a few facts ended up surprising the audience. I...

Author: JackLi Date: 03/06/2015

How It Works: MAX DOP Level and Parallel Index Builds

I have been working on an issue where rebuilding an index leads to additional...

Author: psssql Date: 03/02/2015

Running SQL Server on Machines with More Than 8 CPUs per NUMA Node May Need Trace Flag 8048

Applies To:  SQL 2008, 2008 R2, 2012 and 2014 releases Note:  The number of CPUs is the...

Author: psssql Date: 03/02/2015

Frequently used knobs to tune a busy SQL Server

In calendar year 2014, the SQL Server escalation team had the opportunity to work on several...

Author: psssql Date: 01/29/2015

Troubleshooting Memory Issues with Reporting Services

We had a case where Reporting Services was crashing with the following error. Failed allocate pages:...

Author: Adam W. Saxton Date: 01/29/2015

SQL Server and SSDs – RDORR’s Learning Notes - Part 1

I am very hesitant to post anything that I don’t have the full details on. However, with SSD...

Author: psssql Date: 01/28/2015

#Error When Rendering Report

Last week a case was brought to me where the customer was getting a #Error for a field within their...

Author: Adam W. Saxton Date: 01/27/2015

Do I really need to use DTC Transactions?

It is sometimes common practice to enable Distributed Transaction (DTC) behavior but it can be...

Author: psssql Date: 01/26/2015

A faster CHECKDB – Part IV (SQL CLR UDTs)

I have been working on the various aspects of DBCC performance and SQL CLR based User Defined Data...

Author: psssql Date: 01/26/2015

JDBC: This driver is not configured for integrated authentication

I’ve had about 4 cases in the last two months that centered around the following error when trying...

Author: Adam W. Saxton Date: 01/09/2015

How It Works: sp_server_diagnostics – spinlock backoffs

There are numerous articles outlining how spinlocks work so I won’t cover the details in this...

Author: psssql Date: 12/12/2014

How come sys.dm_exec_requests.cpu_time never moves?

Today, I want to point out another SQL Server 2012 SP2 fix that may affect your performance...

Author: JackLi Date: 11/11/2014

A faster CHECKDB – Part III

Bob Ward introduced Part 1 and Part 2 of ‘A faster CHECKDB’ as highlighted in the following links....

Author: psssql Date: 11/10/2014

SQL Server MAX DOP Beyond 64 – Is That Possible?

I recently posted a blog outlining how the partitions of a table can be used in the calculation for...

Author: psssql Date: 10/30/2014

SQL CLR assembly fails verification with “Unable to resolve token”

Recently we worked with a customer has an SQL CLR assembly. This customer decided to upgrade from...

Author: JackLi Date: 10/22/2014

A Partitioned Table May Limit the Runtime MAX DOP of Create/Alter Index

I was working with a 1.3 trillion row table in the Microsoft lab when I learned more about the ins...

Author: psssql Date: 09/04/2014

Power View in Excel won’t render from SharePoint

I originally encountered this issue back in May with a customer.  We had another customer this...

Author: Adam W. Saxton Date: 08/21/2014

VSS backup of AlwaysOn Secondaries

Hi Everyone, Today I’m going to highlight one of the changes brought by SQL Server 2012 SP2, which...

Author: psssql Date: 08/12/2014

Having performance issues with table variables? SQL Server 2012 SP2 can help!

In a previous blog, I talked about how table variable can impact performance of your query. The...

Author: JackLi Date: 08/11/2014

The Additive Design of SSAS Role Security

SSAS security roles are additive – that is, a user gets permission to access data allowed in any...

Author: psssql Date: 07/30/2014

How It Works: XEvent Output and Visualization

Each and every day I use XEvent more and more as I uncover the powerful feature set.   I...

Author: psssql Date: 07/25/2014

Read this if you have transactional replication configured and plan to upgrade from SQL 2008/2008 R2 to SQL 2012/2014

SQL Server online documentation makes very clear that you need to 'drain' your replicated...

Author: JackLi Date: 07/16/2014

Slow query using non-deterministic user defined function

Recently we worked with a customer who reported a query that used to run a few seconds in SQL Server...

Author: JackLi Date: 07/08/2014

Getting Cross Domain Kerberos and Delegation working with SSIS Package

I started working on this issue started by way of a Twitter conversation between myself, Jorge...

Author: Adam W. Saxton Date: 06/26/2014

Kerberos Configuration Manager updated for Analysis Services and SQL 2014

Kerberos Configuration Manager was released back in May of 2013.  It initially released with...

Author: psssql Date: 06/26/2014

These resources may help resolve your issue….

Some of you may have seen a list of links that pop up when opening a case through our Microsoft...

Author: psssql Date: 06/19/2014

Using SQL Server in Microsoft Azure Virtual Machine? Then you need to read this…

Over the past few months we noticed some of our customers struggling with optimizing performance...

Author: psssql Date: 06/12/2014

REPL_SCHEMA_ACCESS wait type

Recently we have worked with a customer on replication latency issue with transactional replication....

Author: JackLi Date: 06/03/2014

Capping CPU using Resource Governor – The Concurrency Mathematics

Here is what you need to know: A = πr2 Okay, not really as that is the formula for the area of a...

Author: psssql Date: 05/21/2014

How It Works: Behavior of a 1 Trillion Row Index Build (Gather Streams from SORT)

I ran into this behavior working on a 1 trillion row, spatial index build but the behavior can apply...

Author: psssql Date: 04/29/2014

How to grab multiple parent/child elements from XML Data Source

We had a question come up about why an XML query wasn’t pulling a 2nd Parent/Child element from the...

Author: Adam W. Saxton Date: 04/29/2014

SharePoint Adventures : Using Claims with Reporting Services

Back in February of 2011, I created a blog that walked through using Kerberos with Reporting...

Author: Adam W. Saxton Date: 04/28/2014

Version 9.04.0013 of the RML Utilities for x86 and x64 has been released to the download center

        X64:...

Author: psssql Date: 04/24/2014

RS, SharePoint and Forefront UAG Series – Intro

I have been working a fairly complicated case over the last year that involved running Reporting...

Author: Adam W. Saxton Date: 04/23/2014

RS, SharePoint and Forefront UAG Series – Part 2 (Operational Reports)

Part 1 – Intro Part 2 – Operational Reports (Classic RDL Reports) (you are here) Part 3 – Power...

Author: Adam W. Saxton Date: 04/23/2014

Part 1 – Intro Part 2 – Operational Reports (Classic RDL Reports) Part 3 – Power Pivot Gallery...

Author: Adam W. Saxton Date: 04/23/2014

RS, SharePoint and Forefront UAG Series – Part 4 (Power View - Export to PowerPoint)

Part 1 – Intro Part 2 – Operational Reports (Classic RDL Reports) Part 3 – Power Pivot Gallery...

Author: Adam W. Saxton Date: 04/23/2014

SQL Server 2014: TEMPDB Hidden Performance Gem

I ran across a change for TEMPDB BULK OPERATIONS (Select into, table valued parameters (TVP), create...

Author: psssql Date: 04/09/2014

How It Works: FileStream (RsFx) Garbage Collection–Part (2)

In a previous post I outlined the basics of File Stream, garbage collection:...

Author: psssql Date: 04/04/2014

I think I am getting duplicate query plan entries in SQL Server’s procedure cache

Before the post dives into the subject I need to point out that Keith did most of the work.  I...

Author: psssql Date: 04/03/2014

SQL Server 2014’s new cardinality estimator (Part 1)

One of the performance improvement in SQL Server 2014 is the redesign of cardinality estimation. The...

Author: JackLi Date: 04/01/2014

Don’t Rely On a Static IP Address for Your SQL Database

I’ve seen a number of customers open support incidents because they couldn’t connect to their SQL...

Author: psssql Date: 03/27/2014

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