Stuff That Crashes SSMS 18.1

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Video Summary

In this video, I demonstrate a couple of issues that can cause SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 18.1 to crash, particularly when using Extended Events. I start by showing how creating and attempting to configure an Extended Events session can lead to significant CPU spikes and the application freezing, often forcing me to forcibly close it. The video then moves on to illustrate another scenario where simply switching tabs or closing a window can cause SSMS to become unresponsive, sometimes even restarting entirely. These issues highlight ongoing challenges with SSMS 18.1 and prompt me to hope that the development team will investigate these crashes to improve future versions.

Full Transcript

So this is a hopefully short video to illustrate a couple things that will crash SQL Server Management Studio 18.1. I am using 18.1 because I am, at least I think, a pretty decent human being when it comes to updating software. Often that comes back to bite me, but besides the point. So anyway, the first thing is if I go into extended events and I click on new session, and I will name this session, I don’t know, something, because whatever, it’s gonna crash anyway. And then I go into events. This doesn’t ever actually fill out. And if I sit around waiting long enough, CPU will spike up very, very high, and this will die terribly. So I’m just gonna kill that off. We’re already not responding. Get rid of you. Go, go, go, go, go away. Alright, so, uh, let’s open this back up. And, uh, hopefully, show you the second part. There we go. We are booting. We are coming into existence. We are being birthed into life. Ah, there we go. Okay, still waiting a little bit. Alright, let’s, let’s resize you. Let’s fit you perfectly into the 1920 by 1080 screen space. Don’t look at my password. It’s not a good one.

It’s very secret. Ah, loading master. There we go. Nice advertisement for SQL prompt. You owe me $30, Steve Jones. So anyway, the next thing, let’s just pretend that, uh, I had, uh, the extended events session that I wanted, uh, which is to look at hash spills already written. Um, alright, so I’ll, I’ll actually script this session out so you can see what it looks like. It’s not doing any, any weird hanky-panky. And I’ll give you a, I’ll give, I’ll give SQL prompt another nice, uh, plug here. Steve Jones now owes me $60. Uh, so this is just creating a session to look at hash spills. Uh, and if I start this thing up, and I, let’s say, watch live data.

And then I run the, where’d that, where’d that query go? Oh, that’s the other thing. Uh, when you switch tabs, sometimes it doesn’t show you which query you, you, you, you wanted immediately. So now I’m going to run this. And we should start getting some live data in. Hopefully. If I’ve written this query properly, which I’m pretty sure that I should have. Uh, we’ll see. I don’t know. Maybe. It’s been better. It’s been worse. Sometimes it takes a minute. Not a, not a full minute. Sometimes it takes some time. I don’t know how long, though.

Da-da-da. Da-da-da. Da-da-da. Alright, I’m going to pause this and wait for some data to come in. I’ll be right back. Alright, as soon as I hit pause, we had data start coming in. Wasn’t that lucky for us? But now let’s say, okay, I’m sick of watching this. I don’t want to, I don’t want to watch this thing spill anymore. I’m just going to close, I’m just going to close this window.

Uh, eventually this will make Management Studio, uh, go away too. And we’re not responding. And again, if I, oh, there, it just disappears on me. So I don’t even have to intervene to have that. It just restarted. Anyway, uh, I’m recording this in hopes that someone on the Management Studio team can look into why so much Extended Events stuff crashes. And SSMS 18.1, because I’d really love to uninstall SSMS 17.9 and use 18.1 exclusively, because I really like those operator time things.

Anyway, uh, bye. Bye.

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