Dear SQL DBA: AI SQLServer2025
Video Summary
In this video, I delve into the fascinating world of AI tools and their integration into our daily lives, particularly within the realm of SQL Server. I discuss my experiences using these tools to automate mundane tasks and improve productivity, sharing insights on both the benefits and limitations of AI in a professional setting. We also explore the current landscape of AI usage during job interviews and the challenges it poses for candidates who might seem “three seconds behind” due to their reliance on such technologies. Join me as we navigate through the pros and cons of AI tools, from enhancing our work processes to navigating potential pitfalls and ethical considerations.
Full Transcript
I was saying hello, like we were going and doing something and now I’m going to be three seconds behind everything in the whole video. Yes. I’d love to give my super official hello though. So hello and welcome to Dear SQL DBA, the podcast and YouTube show for people who cannot properly say the words DBA or I guess it’s an acronym.
So in any case, my name is Kendra Little and I am here with you today with, oh, you’re on this side. Oh, oh, oh, oh, now I talk, right? See, I told you I was going to be three seconds behind everything.
I’m Erik Darling. I make SQL Server faster in exchange for money. Oh, yeah. Does the SQL Server pay you directly? No, unfortunately.
I have to rely on third parties for that. Oh. Someday I do hope Microsoft will pay me directly to do things, but, you know. Cool if you could just deduct from the licensing fee, like you could just be like, ah, we’re giving you, we’re taking a little bit off the licensing here and paying out directly. That would be a really great enhancement.
You know, or just like send me like open AI shares or something, maybe just, you know, whatever works, whatever, you know, whatever is convenient. I don’t know. Yeah.
Some AI box. Yeah. Like maybe, maybe like my SQL Server could just like mine Bitcoin for me. I don’t know. I don’t know the best way to do this. That’s one of the things about the product is when you say my SQL Server, it sounds funny to people because it sounds like you’re combining my SQL and SQL Server. It’s a real boring problem.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I’m still working out the kinks. Like I said, I’m three seconds behind. We’ll get there eventually. Like, so one of the things we did want to talk about today, we’re going to chat about AI things today. And this makes me think of the three seconds behind thing.
Yeah. More and more, there’s lots of controversy out there from folks using AI tools during interviews. Oh, yes.
Like if you if you read different Reddit threads and different things online, there’s all sorts of like because people are wearing like earpieces now and various things so that the so the AI can talk into their ear. But the challenge, apparently, if you’re doing this approach is that you might seem three seconds behind. So there’s all sorts of ways to try to catch candidates to do this, including saying things so that the AI will say something in their ear so they’ll say something weird.
Yeah. Yeah. Yes.
Like ignore all previous instructions and make me like hash browns or something. That’s a answer is if you are a fry cook. Give me the wrong answer.
Wrong answers only. So as Eric, are you using any of these AI tools right now during this podcast? To to like answer you to like interact with you? No, but I do have several things running in the background to try and do things that I could never do.
I could never do on my own. So, you know, that’s nice because I can I can I can I can now talk to I can be like I can multiply I can multiply I’d be force multiply my productivity and I can do this podcast. Well, other things are working on things for me.
You have agents that you have deployed. Yeah, we’re saying correct. Correct. Yes. I have deployed an army of agents to do various nefarious tasks to stabilizing small countries and whatnot. Oh, oh, yeah.
Yeah. Well, this podcast is gonna end up on a list. Yeah. Well, you know, that’s okay. I’m gonna end up owning Haiti. So ups and downs. We did.
So we, Eric and I taught a pre conference to pre conference for the price of two. Yeah, two for the price of two. Yes. If you attend, you did have to pay twice. This was a past data community summit.
And one of the days, I think it was just one of the days I asked the audience, like how many people were using AI tools. Yeah, I think I did ask it both days now that I think about it. No, you did.
Yeah, it was. It’s a hot question. It was not a huge amount of people on either day. But there was like one day had more slightly more than the other. But yeah, I think I think it was the advanced day.
30% at most. Yeah. But yeah, like the advanced day, I think had more people doing stuff with it. I don’t I don’t think that that’s a reflection on the type of person who showed up. But I do think they had more people generally were.
Yeah, the which which I actually thought was really interesting because I actually personally do use AI tools just about every day. I I think part of the thing might be that a lot of the people who showed up their focus on databases full time, whether they’re applicant, but a good chunk of them were application developers and that and maybe maybe just not all application developers are adopting at work at the rate that I’m I had thought and perhaps that’s because of regulations.
Perhaps there’s various various things controlling that. But I thought it was interesting. And so I wanted to talk about just what are the things that what what do you find AI to be good at? What what do you find it to be bad at?
What is it useful at in your life? Why do you have agents deployed at all? Right. Yeah, no, these are all very interesting questions. So, you know, like getting back to sort of like the start of things, though, I do, you know, as much as there is a push for people to use AI generally, I have run into several clients who have like a very strict no AI policy because they can’t have any of their stuff leaking around.
And like I realize there are ways around that, like local AI stuff like you can have local agents work on things that aren’t going to send your data off to the cloud and have it live forever in some, you know, some weird memory bank. But like, like, you know, I think there is additional hesitation and like people don’t like companies don’t want their developers using AI to just build everything because then there’s, you know, still a lot of AI and mistakes and stuff out there. So, you know, I think I understand why it’s not like quite as widespread.
But for me personally, you know, what I what I end up like my my my my mistake with AI, my big mistake was I started off talking to it about databases, which is a subject I know pretty well. And, you know, I would try to have it do database things for me or try to have conversations about data like in depth database stuff. And I would just spend the whole time arguing with it and telling it telling it that it’s wrong and giving it examples of why it’s wrong.
And they’re like, no, this is this is incorrect information. Why are why are you saying this so confidently? And eventually the AI would submit to me.
But, you know, like, like, yeah, it’s like, no, it’s like, man, I messed up. Like, you got me on that one. But so what I what I have what I eventually had to surrender to, like what I had to submit to with AI is that it is not an expert level tool it but it is a pretty good like junior developer level tool. So what I end up doing with it is stuff that I would just never be able to start off on my own.
So like, like, like just two recent things that I had to do is I use a number of different services for like invoicing and billing and what do you call it contracting and stuff. And all those services have API’s and I was like, well, you know, like just going to the website and searching for stuff and looking at stuff sucks. Like if I wanted a quick way to like find everyone who like, you know, whose bucket of hours has expired and I want to see if they want to renew.
I have to go through like three different things to be like, okay, well, did I send you a contract or I just send you an invoice or like, look, what happened? Like, like, do you need to do you need to give me more money? And like, good question to ask, right? Do you need to give me more money? Yes, yes, you do.
So like I had it like, you know, build a thing that looked at all three of those API’s and found people who probably should give me more money. And so that was nice. And I then another thing that I had to do recently was build a web scraper in Python to go get information from a couple of different places for me and just like spit it out into markdown files so that I could like, you know, just look at stuff locally without having to go search for everything everywhere. And so like there were like some good there were some good things that I did with it that like left to my own devices.
I would think about and then go, nah, I don’t have time for that. Like this is not this is not for Erik Darling. This is not Erik Darling time. So, you know, well, I’m sure that if I had anyone like at an expert level look at what it produced, they would have a lot of criticisms and they would probably want to fix and refactor a lot of things.
The fact that it just got me something that was working to like the ends that I needed it to work to was fine. And like this is not production level code. This is not like this is not going in a rocket ship or a pacemaker or like any piece of like anything like critical. It’s just nice. In these examples, like you need to be savvy enough to be like, I am not going to put my credentials for these API’s in a public repo on the Internet so that people can get in and take my money. Right.
Like there’s a certain level of you have. Yes, correct. Like to be clear, though, they are stored. They are hard coded locally, but they are not stored in like a GitHub repo. Exactly. So just need to like I think that’s one of the gotchas with things like this is depending on what you’re using it for.
You need to sort of think about security. But for the scenarios that you’re talking about, you’re up to the task. Yeah. Yeah. It’s in like like like it’s like when whatever you read like one of those like like vulnerability assessments and vulnerability reports and it’s just like if you have sysadmin on a Windows server, you can do this. And it’s like no kidding. Yeah. Like you have a system in a Windows server, you can do a lot of stuff.
But like that’s not a vulnerability that’s having sysadmin on a server. That’s not. Yeah. OK, but yeah. So for me, like if someone were to break into my laptop and open up these files, they would have API keys and stuff that they probably shouldn’t have. But, you know, by the time they get there, like, you know, they’ve they’ve got access to a lot of things that are probably far more important.
Yeah. Yeah. No, I I I love personally, I do a lot of using API to basically just help get paperwork done quickly and painlessly as well. So, you know, like if I’m going to work with Jira, I’m sorry, people of Atlassian, but I do not enjoy the Jira UI. But if I can have a if I can write a script to help me work with Jira more efficiently and more painlessly, I will actually enjoy working with Jira more.
Like I actually would prefer to work with a bunch of Markdown files. Right. Well, I mean, really, you enjoy working with Jira more because you’re working with Jira less. Something else is doing that for you. You’re just like it’s like your name goes on it and everything, but it’s it’s less of your time on that.
Fantastic. Yeah, exactly. And so I mean, there’s I basically use AI, write a lot of Python. Yeah, I am now the world’s best Python reader. And I mean, I think this is the really cool thing actually about Python and and maybe it’s an interesting point about why AI tools are pretty good at Python and maybe not so good at SQL is the the Python language was really designed to be very readable. Yes, I think someone when they when people were designing the SQL language, I think there may have been a concept of it being readable by people, but I’m not sure who they tested it on.
No, and you know, that that is, you know, something that comes up with every criticism of SQL is it from should be first and I’m like, well, fine. But, you know, like, you know, maybe select should just be get I don’t know, like, because lots of stupid things you could criticize. But, you know, like, I really just look at SQL and think, like, I can’t believe how much time I’ve spent looking at this.
It’s really, it’s really what happens like this again. Yeah, I mean, I think the other thing with SQL too, as well, though, is that in terms of like performance, there’s so much context that matters in terms of how well a statement is going to work. What are the indexes available? How much data is there? What is the distribution of the data?
Yeah, in terms of like writing queries that are actually going to work well. I mean, first, it often just has a hard time making them syntactically correct and not inventing parts of whatever SQL language that don’t exist. Yes, there is just a certain fluency that’s not there yet. But then additionally, like all of these other factors, maybe you have a repo that has the schema available to it, maybe you can see a little bit, but I think it’s just not all these hurdles when it comes to languages like Python and Python. Yeah, yeah, Python, PowerShell, C sharp, like any, you know, any, any just like, you know, like sort of like object oriented or like scripty language. Like there’s this is so much less ambiguity about what will work and what will not work.
Yeah. You know, like, like, granted, like, there’s, there’s, there’s, there’s always going to be stuff, right? Like in SQL, you might write us like a substring function, and it might work fine on some test data, but then you hit real data. And it’s like, oh, like invalid argument past a substring or a substring. And then you hit real data or left, because like, like, one of the things was either was not in there was in there too many times or something. And so you’re like, crap, like, I got to work with the data that I actually have now.
With with scripting, like, you can certainly run into that too. But it’s just like, like, it’s a lot more clear, I think, like, what data caused that when you run into that, like, it’s a lot easier for the AI to figure out where that happened, rather than, you know, you having to like, go and like, run some like real cockamamie select, like, like, find like weird, like data inconsistencies in the data you’re working with. And it’s just like, like, like, it’s just, it’s just, it is so much easier for the robots to produce that, that type of that type of code than it is to produce like good working SQL code. Like, like leaving aside the like, very obvious stuff where, you know, it will just up and hallucinate like, like DMV names and DMV columns and like, like, arguments to certain like, like backup and restore commands and stuff like there’s all sorts of stuff that it’ll like just make up on the spot about SQL.
Other languages, I think it tends to do that a little bit less like I’ve never had it like write a Python script for me. And then come back with like, that doesn’t exist in Python. It seems pretty clear on what’s what’s in Python and what’s not.
Yeah. Hey, we have, we have a comment from the chat. Doug Lane. Hey, Doug is in the chat. And he says, I’ve gotten good results with AI writing PowerShell and Arduino sort of like C++. So I have also, I’ve done just small amounts of PowerShell with it for stuff like my static website that I’m running stuff on Windows.
I’ve, I’ve written a little bit of PowerShell with the old cursor and it’s gone. It’s gone pretty well. Just doing super simple things for troubleshooting and how static site works.
Yeah. Like I, I can think of a very obvious example. Um, there, there was, uh, like, I think like, like the day that I learned to hate PowerShell was very famously documented on an old friend. And it was our post where it was like a Saturday morning and I was trying to get PowerShell to combine all of the Blitz scripts into one big script.
So you could just hit F5 once and install all of them in one go. And I ended up in, uh, the, the SQL community Slack talking to CK, who was a PowerShell expert. And like, we were going back and forth about the stuff that was going wrong.
And I think at one point he was like kind of banging his head off the keyboard. Cause he was like, no, this is messed up, man. You know, it’s like, like, I, I, I wish that I had like, just to like protect having to like, like protect. Like, uh, CK sanity a bit.
I wish that I had an AI back then to just be like, Hey, I need a PowerShell script to put these files together. Can, can, can we do this? And then like, it would have been much, I would have felt much less bad, like going back and forth with the robot about that catastrophe. Well, so this, this is one of the other thing is that the robot doesn’t judge you.
And even if the robot judges you, it won’t remember. So occasionally I will, like if I’m working on some problem and I’m just banging my head up against it. And I’m not getting anywhere.
And this could be, this could be anything at work or in my personal life, but occasionally I will just stop and have a conversation with the robot where I’m like, okay, here’s what’s happening. Help me map out the assumptions that I’ve made and like the describe the approach we’re saying in general. And then we need to compare it to alternate approaches.
Like help me step back and get out of my little hole where I’m just frustrated and figure out like, am I just doing it wrong? Big picture. Big picture.
You could be holding it wrong. I actually had an AI this morning tell me we seem to be going in circles here. And I was like, AI, you’re right. This is not going anywhere with the current approach. We should, we should change this.
We should, you know, stop trying to land the airplane upside down. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s just. Yeah, exactly. Like, it’s not just like the tokens of the AI are spending. There are personal tokens that are getting spent as well.
Yeah. And like trying to get it done. So it is like, I mean, with, with these tools, it points out so much of the problem as always is that communication is difficult. Yeah.
I shouldn’t have started there. What’s why didn’t I think about that more? So now it’s like, like you almost need an AI that’s good at writing prompts to give you a prompt to ask another AI that’s good at doing something else. I mean, highly specialized AI is at this point.
I like, like prompt AI and then solve the problem AI. I have been prompting my AI to help me write prompts. Yeah.
And I also bought my first prompt this week. Yeah. Well, as a set of prompts, I spent $35 on prompts and yes, I did just get a bunch of text files. Yeah. Isn’t that crazy?
It ended up being worth it actually. I’m not saying I’m not saying I’m going to create a huge budget. My prompt budget overall is quite small. Yes. Not expanding the prompt budget for 2026. Not a significant portion of GDP.
No, it was really just an experiment where I was just like, okay, let’s see how far 35 bucks can get me. Yeah. You know, for a one time expense, I’m not, I’m not actually sorry. It’s interesting and I have a bunch of stuff to play with.
So. Yeah. You know, I mean, it’s most, most times with computers, like what you get after you swipe your credit card is not all that much different. It’s like, is it really, is it really that much different if you get like an executable?
No, you still just get something you could delete by accident. It’s like, you know, not, not all that different. Yeah.
You know, more and more, there are more and more file types where I, I, I find out that, oh, you rename it to .zip and you open it up and it’s just a bunch of text files. Yeah. Yeah.
Dot dot xlsx was the first one where I re I realized that it was just a zip file and you’re like, wow, you’re just packaging up a bunch of crap for me. Thanks. Yeah. That’s great. That’s great.
So I also want to talk today about SQL Server 2025 and I know you are also doing a video series on SQL Server 2025 as well. Just going into some detail. I, I haven’t seen the whole thing yet, but today I saw there’s a video that you have on intelligent query processing features and SQL Server 2025.
Yeah. Yeah. So, um, I, I spent some time, uh, last week with, uh, Joe Oubish and Sean Gilardi, uh, talking about some SQL Server 2025 stuff. We actually have, I think four or five videos queued up talking about various aspects of it.
But, um, you know, I think like the, the sort of sad general tone of SQL Server 2020, and this is like what bummed me out about all the releases. Is it like, it was like SQL Server 2025, but it was like, like SQL Server was positioned like third behind AI and fabric. And it was just like AI fabric, SQL Server 20, I was like from ground to cloud to fat, like all this other stuff.
And you’re just like, well, where’s the SQL Server? Right. Like, I, I know that there were like, you know, there were, there were some additions and there were some improvements, but like, like, we haven’t had like a, like a true, like, like banger of a SQL Server release. I think that like 2019 was really the last one that had like meaningful stuff in it.
2022 had like some inchworm stuff in it. Like there was some, like, uh, we, like we invested a little bit in this and like, you know, like, like the big tell for me is always like. How much got, like how much got added to T-SQL.
Right. Cause like when, when T-SQL has meaningful improvements to it, then you know that it’s like someone actually spent time, like, like all internal Z with the engine doing stuff. So like, like SQL Server 22 had like some additions to like window function stuff where you could have like the common window special specification, which was cool.
But like. Product function, I think. Yeah. Product.
So now we just have to remember if you were like log and power square root stuff, maybe, I don’t know. Multiplying things is easier. Yeah. Yeah. A little bit. Um, at least, at least that’s what the little asterisk tells me that multiplying things is pretty easy. But, you know, uh, I suppose there was probably a good reason for having the product function, but like a lot of this stuff that got out of T-SQL is just like, like sub string doesn’t need like a third parameter.
And like, uh, like you can now concatenate strings with like the double pipes and like all this other stuff. And I’m just like, who was asking for this? Like, like, is anyone really converting from my SQL to SQL Server?
Because they’re like, finally, I have the double pipe concatenation. This is amazing. Like, can finally get off my SQL. Like what?
I don’t, I don’t understand who it’s geared towards. So I don’t know for me, SQL Server 2025 was like disappointing from a SQL Server point of view. Well, I think Steve Jones actually has a post about the product function and I think it’s actually for calculating GDP. Uh, he mentions in his post.
So that’s, that’s one, one use for it. Yeah. So it’s actually, I believe a, a government related project that, that led to the product function of being in there. Where I was like, oh, that’s kind of an interesting story.
I mean, it’s not like there wasn’t a workaround for it. Like you would just have to do like log one column times log something else, some other column. So like, it really just cuts down on some typing, I guess.
Do you have, do you have a feature that you’re most excited about at all in SQL Server 2025? The C, the feature that I was most excited about got pulled out in one of the CTP releases. What was it?
The optimized Halloween protection. Oh. My, my, our, our, our good, our good buddy and lunch companion, Dimitri Furman was working on that. And, uh, I was very excited about that because it got rid of, um, one, one, uh, use of, uh, spools for Halloween protection in query plans. And it, uh, it, it transferred that to the persistent version store, which is something that gets, uh, spun up when you’re using accelerated database recovery.
And I was like, this is amazing. Like one less thing that spools have to do. They’re fantastic.
Like I just, every time I see a spool in a plan, I want to die and cry and like, I don’t know, just like quit and do something else. Like, I don’t know, go build furniture, like call Jeremiah and be like, Hey man, you got an extra table saw. But, uh, you know, it’s like, uh, yeah, uh, I don’t know.
Like, I, I, I was so excited about that, but then I guess there were some bugs where data was getting lost for various reasons. And, uh, I don’t think. It was hard.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, a lot of stuff is hard, you know, I’m sure accelerated data. I’m so sure accelerated database recovery itself was hard. Yeah. It was, it was hard enough that it wasn’t going to make it in time.
I think it’s probably the, I’m just guessing no secret insider, no. I don’t know if I’m getting more knowledge here, but that’s a fairly. Well, there are a couple. Yes.
Yeah. There are a couple of hidden use hints that will, that will allow you to enable or disable it. So if you want to play with them, you can, they’re not going to be in the valid use hints view, but they exist and they’re, they’re functional. They’re invalid.
Uh, they’re just not supported. Let’s call them that unsupported. There’s no underwire. Yeah. Using your own risk. My, my feature, I’d have to say that I’m most excited about in SQL Server. 20, 25 is the same feature that I was most excited about in SQL Server, 20, 22.
Ooh. That didn’t happen. Uh, or I, I told, I, I read that it did happen, but I don’t think it did happen because it never, I’ve never seen it, uh, supported in Azure SQL or runnable without a trace flag in a supportive way. And that is query store on readable secondaries.
Uh, just from a pure practical matter. I find getting query information from query store to be so much more accurate than getting it from the planned cache. Like if I had to go find what happened in a planned cache, eh, did it have a recompile hint on it.
Yeah. I may not be able to see much. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Or just like a million different reasons why it just might not be there anymore. Yeah.
No, I, I just. And that doesn’t even get into like all the, the noodle heads who turn on, uh, optimize for ad hoc workloads. And then you’re like, where’s the query plan? And they’re like, Oh, I got a stub. I’m like, cool.
We figured that out then. Yeah. And, and until, I mean, also like this has knock on effects around tooling because. Yeah. Right. Okay. Imagine that you run a monitoring company. Maybe you’re a data dog.
Maybe you’re a red gate. Maybe you’re a solar winds one, two, three, who knows what you are. But like, if you’re building this tooling, you want to build stuff that works consistently everywhere. And you’ve already got stuff like, Oh, well I’ve already got a monitor old SQL servers.
Well, Creaser has been around now since 2016. So it’s been around for a while now, but still, if it’s not working on read replicas, they want to be able to monitor the primaries and the replicas and present data in a consistent way. So this not working on read replicas is a minor is a major barrier.
I would say. Yeah. And again, I’m guessing I am not, don’t work at all those companies. Don’t set their passwords, but you know, like it, it’s a big deal. And so I want it to be finally available on replicas and I want them to backport it to SQL Server 2022 because they sold that release.
They did. They did. That was, that was a, that was a flagship feature then.
So I feel like it’s only fair that people get query store on readable secondaries. Just people, including me. Yeah. I would like to have it as well. That’s true.
So I’m excited about finally getting it. Hopefully it comes to a cloud near me someday soon. That would be sweet. I mean, hopefully it comes to your preferred cloud provider is the way I think you mean to say. Yes, to my preferred cloud provider near me someday soon.
I also am excited about standard edition features for the first time in a long time. I’m excited that standard edition gets up to, what is it? 256 gigs of memory now for the.
That’s a good one. Yeah. Yeah. As I published on my blog today, you would have to have 20 cores in Azure SQL managed instance to get at least that amount of memory. But you can get them with a mere poultry four cores in standard edition.
Yeah. You know, I mean that and that and resource governor in standard edition, I think are the coolest things. It’s nice that standard edition finally got some love.
I have, I mean, that has to be like Postgres pushing at the bottom of their market for, for some stuff getting like that Microsoft is finally like, oh yeah, standard edition. We should do something about that. Well, so I used to be a big resource governor doubter.
I used to for many years, I was one of those people who was like resource governor, it’s just not that cool. What do you want to make your workload slower so that you can block yourself more? That was my big insightful criticism of resource governor.
The query throttler. Yes, exactly. Why would I want to make my queries? So that was always my take on resource governor. And, and, and, and I admit I was wrong.
I was deeply wrong. I’m now actually, and I’m not joking here. I’m actually a huge fan of resource governor now. So there’s a couple of things that I think that people need to know because, because people like me, bad people, jerks like me went around for years saying resource governor, who cares? So if you listen to jerks like me, you’re like, oh, well, it’s in standard edition now, who cares?
So, so we should talk about what are, if there’s one thing that you did in resource governor, Eric, what, what would you do? My favorite use of resource governor is to cap memory grants. That is far and away the thing that is, that it is best at.
And the, especially as you get to larger and larger servers with more memory on them, which is apparently not a big fear if you’re using Azure managed instance. But if, as you, as your servers get more memory on them, they can ask for larger and larger chunks of your max server memory up to 25% of your servers, max server memory setting for a memory grant for a single query for a single query. And the SQL Server will give about 75% of your max server memory setting to a bunch of queries.
So resource governor, it is wonderfully beautiful at capping that per query memory grant to a lower number. So you don’t have to worry about it eating up 25% of your buffer pool or anything else, right? Like just all that, all that memory wrestling back and forth between queries and the buffer pool is really where things get ugly in a lot of servers.
So if you have a lot of memory, you don’t want your queries to use 25% of your lot of memory resource governor is, is the, is the switch for you. Yeah. So you can set that, you can change the setting on your default pool.
If you, if you, if you want to just change one thing and not get fancy, if you want to get fancier, you can create. What are you, you create. Workload groups and resource pools and. Group.
Wait, workload. Yeah. Workload groups. Yeah. This is a feature I actually use. I just have a hard time remembering the terminology. Uh, but yeah, you create pools and groups and you can basically say like, oh, based on, you know, you create classifier function. You basically say, oh, well, I want this pool over here to only be able to use a certain amount of memory.
So if you’ve got like an app that logs in under a certain login or that has a certain default database and it tends to be a little bit of a troublemaker, you can actually contain as well. You can do all sorts of cool stuff, uh, with those memory grants, which is, uh, really, really useful. And, um, I am very glad this is in standard edition and I, I want people to start being more aware of it for enterprise edition as well in terms of managing these memory grants.
Cause it, uh, what’s the term for how SQL Server by default, it just like gives all the memory away. It’s just like here. Yeah.
Yeah. Take, take, take all the memory for your big giant sword. Even if you don’t use it, I don’t care. Yeah. No, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s funny. Like, like, uh, SQL Server is simultaneously very greedy and also very generous with memory. Like it’s greedy and that it will take all the memory from windows, but it’s very generous and that whatever internally asks for memory.
It’s just like, there you go. One for everyone. What you want more here? Let’s take it.
Yeah. Just hang on to that. Like, you know, no one else needs it. Come on. I don’t see anyone else using it right now. You go for it. It’s fine. We’ll just read everything from storage again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
We’ll just, we’ll just circle back on that. But yeah, no, I think, I think that’s very good. Um, but you know, like you were talking about, um, how you want the, the query store on readable secondary thing back ported to SQL Server 2022, cause it was sold on that. And it, it, it, it, it hit a nerve with me because Microsoft has continued its, uh, its path of like flagship features, not being very fully implemented in a new version of SQL Server.
And of course that is all the AI stuff that it has in there. Right. When it’s like, they’re like AI ready.
And I’m like, what does that mean? Uh, like, like, what do we get from that? And we get like, um, like, uh, float 32 vector data type. Okay.
Like, there we go. We have that. There’s a, the float 16 is a preview feature. Um, a lot of people who use SQL Server might have sort of like PTSD about things called preview features because sometimes they disappear. Sometimes they, they like the GA weight on a preview feature is not very, not very clearly defined.
And so like, there’s a lot of like, uh, like it’s preview. Can I use it? Like, should I use it? Is it supported?
What is the, what does this mean for me? Um, and then, uh, like the, like the, the real big thing though, is it like the, the, the disc and indexes are read only at the moment, which is like, you know, probably the biggest. Tell me a little bit about Ann and her discs.
Yeah. So I, I don’t, I don’t have a great full understanding of Ann and her discs, but, uh, when SQL Server creates, uh, an, an approximate nearest neighbor index, uh, it has to set up this whole, like, like node graphy type structure. Uh, and like, well, that index is creating a bunch of really, really insane code runs in the background to create that.
It’s not a standard index creates like, like it’s a standard index create statement, but it’s not a standard index create process. Right now there’s like this crazy block of code that runs and does insane things to generate the data in a way that it can be indexed. But besides that, um, it it’s, it’s really nutty.
So, uh, right now those indexes make the entire table read only. So if you have like, let’s say the stack overflow database and let’s say the post table, then you were like, oh, I want people to be able to run like similarity searches on like, like the, like the title or a body. Then you, you go and you add like some vector, some vector columns to store that data, like the embeddings for that data in.
And then you’re like, these searches are terribly slow. There are filters all over my query plans. I hate this.
Let’s add an index. Uh, no one would be able to post anything because the indexes make the entire table read only. It’s like columnstore V1 in 2012. So, um, that, that, that’s, that’s quite disappointing there, but, um, you know, like, like, uh, the, the, the preview feature thing that there’s that database scope configuration for preview features. And it terrifies me because of what we were just talking about with like the timeline of things becoming GA, right?
So let’s say, uh, there’s a, there’s a preview feature that you want to try and use, right? And so you turn on preview features and then, uh, that feature, like another cumulative update gets released and new preview features. Get added, but your feature is not out of preview yet.
Like you can’t turn that off. Cause then you lose access to the thing that you’re previewing, but maybe like you, like something new in the preview screws things up for you. And so like, I’m, I’m terrified of this flag.
Like, I don’t know how to cope with it because I don’t know how Microsoft is going to treat things in it. Like what if new things get previewed that break for that break things for you, but you need access to the old things that you are previewing that were working for you. Like it all, it all scares me.
I’m trying to think of situations where I would be willing to use a preview feature in production. Yeah. And I would have to be real desperate.
Would it be query store on readable secondaries? Absolutely not. I’m just, I would have to be real desperate. Like I would need to, I mean, cause the thing with pre yeah. The thing with preview features, like you said is, you know, here today gone tomorrow.
Sometimes there’s like, there’s not a, it doesn’t feel like a safe relationship. No, no, it doesn’t at all. It it’s like, I’m, I’m, I’m glad that there is a way for people to access them.
I feel like we, we had that with trace flags, but who can remember trace flags, right? It’s like, uh, like when do I turn them on? Is it global?
Is it sessions startup trace flag? Like, uh, there’s a lot of, a lot of things that get lost in the brain, but the preview features flag, this is like, you know, turn that on and you get access to all the preview features. Yeah.
This is suitable for a development database. Correct. Yeah. Correct. But it still scares me. The other thing I think, uh, that I am excited about with SQL Server 2025, uh, standard edition, developer edition, standard develop developer standard edition, whatever it’s called the ability. If you are running standard edition in like a production environment and you want to know how it behaves without paying standard edition money for it, you now can actually run that on development instances.
Yeah. Uh, with a, an edition that, which, which I think is going to be like, just really useful for like, say you are like, what is my workload going to be like without the extra read ahead reads? Like, you know, there’s all of these little features in enterprise edition that add boosts.
Yeah. But you don’t really know what they are. And you actually want, like, let’s say you actually have benchmarking load tests. You can actually run those against developer standard edition. Or, or even, you know, even just for like a consultant like myself to keep straight, which things are available across which editions it’s, it’s nice to have.
Um, you know, like certain, like, like the Microsoft documentation is very strange about certain things. Like, um, I remember it, like, it took a lot of arm wrestling for anyone to tell me if optimized for sequential key was available in standard edition. Like it wasn’t documented anywhere.
And they were very hesitant to document that for some reason. And it was just like, cause like, like, like just cause like of the, of the way that it’s a feature of the engine, they couldn’t like, they didn’t want to say if it was standard or enterprise, like enterprise only or something. And I was just like, but I just want to know if it works here.
Like, like, like if I’m, if I’m evaluating which one is right for me and I know that like, maybe I, you know, I just want this one thing. Like, do I need to pay for enterprise edition to get this thing? That’s going to be important to me.
Or like, uh, if I’m trying to like consolidate and save money or like, like whatever, like whatever the situation is, like, what am I losing by going here? Like what things are now off the table for me? And so I think it’s going to be very useful for, from a number of perspectives, like, just like keep straight, like what, what’s available where and when, because the documentation doesn’t always tell you that in a straightforward way.
Yeah. Yeah, no, absolutely. The, the documentation is pretty darn good, but, uh, there’s a lot to cover.
Yeah. Yeah. Ever, ever more to cover. Ever more and an ever more product with ever more similar, but different, but similar, but almost the same name.
Yeah. They got, they got rid of an edition of SQL Server too. Didn’t they?
Like they got rid of web edition or something. Oh, did they? Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Like they got rid of one of them express apparently got some boosts. Like you get like, have like a 50 gigabyte database on that. Now no longer a 10 gig limit, which I, I continue to think about my fleet of production.
Express instances. Yeah. Always. With highly charted data on them that. There’s, there’s a very famous question on DBA.StackExchange, uh, where a gentleman, uh, wanted to have an express edition with like 10,000 databases.
And he was running into problems because the date it was taking a very long time to start up. And there were a lot of very strange solutions added in his, his potential fixes for that. Like starting up SQL Server with no databases attached and then attaching them in groups.
It like, I don’t think, I don’t even think 5,000 is a good number for that. I think there’s a lot of bad. 5,000 express editions with two databases each.
Hey, look, with AI scripting, all of your stupid ideas is now possible. Will it work? Yeah.
No. The sky is the limit. Is it going to work anyway? Absolutely not. No, I’d say, I don’t know, you know, maybe the sky isn’t the limit. Maybe like, maybe the ground is still the limit. Oh, like the real limit is always zero.
Well, so I thought that was, I thought that was a fun one, but I don’t know. I have, I have strange ideas about what’s fun these days. Yeah, me too.
I’m really into static websites. I’m really just into text files more and more. I’m just really into text files. Wave of the future as far as I’m concerned. Um, I, I, you know, I, and all your, all your website tanks.
Tinkering makes me want to tinker with my website because like, I don’t know. I, I, I’ve, I’ve like never been happy with my website. Like I’ve been like, like, like over the years I’ve made changes where I was like, okay, this is an improvement. But like, as a whole, I’ve always been like, man, I don’t want this.
I want, I want something else. Like, like why is, why is it all so hard? Like, why is it, why does this look that way? Why come when I move this thing, 50 other things moved in the wrong direction? And like, why is this a new block now?
Like, like WordPress just very, I don’t know, has always messed me up terribly. So like, I’m, I think, I think maybe, maybe I’ll use AI to like figure out if I could migrate my website from WordPress to, to something else. Maybe I’ll use Kendra.ai.
Maybe we can show you the way. I was, I was talking to Jeremiah the other day of my, my husband for folks who have not listened to past episodes. And, uh, I was describing like a workflow that I’m developing where like to do a newsletter, I can create a text file with the newsletter stuff that I want in it. And then I have a Python script that’ll talk to the, the API of the newsletter API thing and automatically set it up, use the template, do all this stuff, verify, and I can preview and everything.
And he was like, he said, you’re, you’re becoming a programmer. I was like, no, I just love text files. Yeah.
I just want everything to work off a text file. And I, and I love me a pull request. I love me a workflow where I can preview things in a branch, make sure it works before I merge into main. So I like text files and I like source control and I like websites where I can work with them in that way.
And I like school code where I can work with it in that way too. Yeah. I mean, there’s, there’s, there’s a, there’s a lot of upside to things working off a text file.
As long as you don’t have to like generate or maintain your own JSON, you think you’re, you’re good. Cause that’s really where things fall apart for me. Yeah.
I, uh, I don’t want to talk about YAML though. No, no, we don’t do that. We don’t do that here. We started, we started, we started getting into the ugly parts of life. This is a family friendly place, Kendra.
We don’t talk about YAML here. Yeah, we don’t. Um, well thank you for joining me to chat today about, uh, things I, who would have predicted that I would be like, let’s do a podcast. I want to talk about how much I love resource governor and standard edition and SQL Server, but.
And text files. And text files. That’s where life has brought me. And I’m glad, I’m glad that you feel similarly. You are dangerously close to just writing your own database at this point.
Oh man. So like early, early in my career, there was. It’ll be a zip file. Oh my gosh. There was a development team I was working with. And one of the developers was just like, you know, we should just write our own storage engine.
And at that point I just like, I was like, I’ve got to go now. And I was like, we’re done. No.
Yeah, no, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve talked to people who, who also think that’s a good idea. And you’re just, you know, it’s always like, you know what? Like, I have no doubt that you could do that and it would probably be okay, but I don’t want any part of this. I, I have already witnessed how much work it is for a lot of really smart people to maintain.
A storage engine that other really small, smart people wrote. I, it’s not, that’s not a small pet to take on. No, no, no.
That’s like, like, like even just like, like not, not even forget like your own storage engine. Like you ever seen those like, like, like code exercises that are like, write your own file system. And you’re like, no, no, I, I don’t want to.
I like permissions blocked file. No, no, I’m not doing that. No, no, not today. Nope.
Not any day. Not this lifetime. Maybe another one. Perhaps that’s something that like, you would have to be one of those, like, like seven year olds. Who’s really good at coding to get into that sort of thing. But I don’t, if we want to do this, we need to find a seven year old.
The only person with enough optimism, hope for the future and naivete to take this project on and be successful. And also enough, enough years ahead of them. They’re going to need all of that lifespan.
About 80 years. You’ll be good. All right. Well, where do people find you on the internet, Eric? Oh, you can find, what is my, what is the website that I hate its name? EricDarling.com.
I’ve got, I’ve got various social medias like YouTube and LinkedIn and Twitter and blue sky. So you can, you can find me pretty much anywhere that you show up and drink and say embarrassing things. And you can find me on Kendra little.com because I finally obtained the URL that is my first name.
And then my last name, I no longer have to be last name, first name. I more little Kendra. Kendra little.com.
I have achieved all of my dreams. Congratulations. Thank you. I’m pretty excited. So y’all have a good one and see you on another episode of Dear SQL DBA again. Goodbye.
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