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Three blog posts a week, plus a Monday roundup of my favorite database news from around the web. No fluff, occasional jokes.

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Recorded classes

The latest recordings are on sale now

The Fundamentals of Index Tuning, Query Tuning, and Server Tuning have all been updated as of July 2026, reflecting the latest advancements in the First Responder Kit, AI, and SQL Server 2025. They're perfect for folks who have never been to a formal training class, but are responsible for performance on SQL Server, Azure SQL DB, and Amazon RDS.

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Fresh from the blog

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Career & Community

Live Class Enrollment Opens Soon – For Just $995!

September 16, 2026

I teach Microsoft SQL Server performance tuning in a 4-class rotation. The winter rotation is getting ready to start:

Fundamentals Week - November 2-6
Mastering Index Tuning - November 30-Dec 4
Mastering Query Tuning - January 11-15, 2027
Mastering Server Tuning - February 8-12, 2027

Performance Tuning

“But NOLOCK won’t hurt me if I’m using an index!”

September 15, 2026

NOLOCK is bad and you probably shouldn't use it, but every time I mention that publicly, the pushback just keeps coming. I don't know why people so firmly believe that their situation couldn't possibly be affected by bad/random data from NOLOCK.

Today's misconception comes from a LinkedIn commenter telling me it's safe to use if you're doing index seeks. Hoo boy. Let's whip up a table with an index:

[Video] Office Hours on Mount Charleston

September 10, 2026

For this episode, I'm up in the mountains just outside Vegas, enjoying the nice cool temperatures, spending the weekend at Mount Charleston. Let's go through your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GN31TnYVdgI

Performance Tuning

Database Animations: How SQL Server’s JSON Indexes Work

September 9, 2026

By popular demand, SQL Server 2025 added JSON indexes. You can eat the cake of being able to store practically schema-less JSON blobs as part of each row, and have it too by querying specific values quickly. (The common phrase is to "have your cake and eat it too", but did you ever think about…