Performance Studio: A Cross-Platform SQL Server Execution Plan Analyzer You have a slow query. You pull the execution plan in SSMS. You stare at the arrows. Some are thick, some are thin. There's a yellow triangle somewhere. You're pretty sure the problem is "in there," but translating a ShowPlan…

Performance Monitor: Free SQL Server Monitoring That Doesn’t Phone Home I spend a lot of time on this blog talking about tools. Some of them are good. Some of them are overhyped on LinkedIn. This one is neither overhyped nor underpowered. It's the real deal. Performance Monitor is a free,…

to celebrate cracking 10,000 downloads AND my first colonoscopy, i'm gonna do something crazy and have another clearance sale. the next 10,000 downloads of my free sql server performance monitoring tool will also be free. thank you for your attention to this matter. github.com/erikdarlingd...

well, okay, you asked for it. this procedure will protect your special session at your desired level of risk: gist.github.com/erikdarlingd...

friday fun: i had to write a stored procedure that protects a specific session from being blocked by other sessions. it kills anything that gets in the way. would anyone else find this useful?

PerformanceMonitor: Release v2.11.0 - All You Need Is Me: github.com/erikdarlingd...

Why would anyone migrate from Databricks to Fabric? That’s like uninstalling seven years of Databricks updates.

PerformanceStudio: Release v1.11.0 - Taco Tuesday: github.com/erikdarlingd...

Data Saturday Croatia ran free for seven years. This year it's €10 — less than a sandwich most places. The pre-con (a full day of mine on T-SQL refactoring) is separate, but if you're anywhere in central/southern Europe on June 12-13, this is a great weekend. events.3nf.hr/Seminar.aspx...

Doing some Friday index maintenance.

This issue’s status changed to under review. If you think it’s a good idea, give it an upvote or three: Add option to keep actual execution plans enabled for all tabs developercommunity.visualstudio.com/t/Add-option...

Do widzenia, Poland! Hope to see you next year!

I am sad to report that Erland no longer uses Comic Sans.

Fun fact for fellow stationery dorks: Zagreb is where the mechanical pencil and solid-ink fountain pen were invented. Slavoljub Penkala, 1906–1907. Croatians still call any pen a "penkala." Fitting place to spend a day teaching people to rewrite their queries. June 12. events.3nf.hr/Seminar.aspx...

Poland ain’t bad.

expect to hear from my lawyers.

Heading to SQL Day! Can’t wait to finally see Poland!

June 12 in Zagreb: I'm running my full-day Advanced T-SQL Triage workshop as a pre-con for Data Saturday Croatia. MERGE misuse, JOIN pitfalls, broken paging, scalar UDFs that wreck plans — the whole tour. Workshop: events.3nf.hr/Seminar.aspx...

Infinite recompile bug when querying sys.dm_db_partition_stats: feedback.azure.com/d365communit...

to celebrate 333 github stars i’m giving away the next 100 downloads of my free sql server monitoring tool for free: github.com/erikdarlingd...

I assume most of you like seeing odd things about SQL Server, so here’s a fun one: gist.github.com/erikdarlingd...

A couple days early because I'm traveling, some fun new bits for all my F5 Friends out there: github.com/erikdarlingd...

Performance Monitor Release v2.9.0 - Get Some Exercise github.com/erikdarlingd...

it's music to my very ears.

May 1 in Jacksonville: I'm running a full-day pre-con on fixing terrible T-SQL. Paging, window functions, scalar UDFs, indexed views, dynamic SQL — all the patterns that make production slow. Register:

Performance Monitor 2.8.0 is released! github.com/erikdarlingd...

Performance Studio 1.6.0 is released! Some visual polish, some bug fixes, and a whole lot of smart query plan analysis from Joe Obbish. github.com/erikdarlingd...

A special 4.20 release of my SQL Server performance troubleshooting scripts: github.com/erikdarlingd... Aside from bug fixes and performance improvements, you can now log sp_QuickieStore output to tables, and sp_HumanEventsBlockViewer will show you top blocking queries in the analysis results.

May 1 in Jacksonville: I'm running a full-day pre-con on fixing terrible T-SQL. Paging, window functions, scalar UDFs, indexed views, dynamic SQL — all the patterns that make production slow. Register:

Performance Monitor 2.7.0 Release! github.com/erikdarlingd...

Performance Studio 1.5.0 released! github.com/erikdarlingd... Got a bunch of cool feedback from Joe Obbish to make the plan analysis smarter and less noisy. And in case you missed it, I'm putting all the analysis into a website: plans.erikdarling.com

Want to have a say in how my performance monitoring tool moves forward? Head here to give me feedback: github.com/erikdarlingd...

There's a new version of sp_WhoIsActive, for those who celebrate: github.com/amachanic/sp...

Hear, hear! WorkloadTools 1.7.3 is out! github.com/spaghettidba... Many fixes to replay code

i've never seen this site before, but it's making me happy in the moment: howfuckedismydatabase.com/nosql/

Making A Website For Tracking My GitHub Stats Making A Website For Tracking My GitHub Stats GitHub only keeps 14 days of traffic data. If you don't capture it, it's gone. I got tired of losing that... https://erikdarling.com/making-a-website-for-tracking-my-github-stats/

In case anyone is interested, I built a site for my GitHub repo stats: stats.erikdarling.com

New Performance Monitor release! Version 2.6. is out and ready for your monitoring pleasure. github.com/erikdarlingd...

Free SQL Server query plan analysis, right in your browser: plans.erikdarling.com Powered by the same analysis engine as Performance Studio. XML doesn't leave your browser, so you can stay private.

Performance Studio Release v1.4.0 github.com/erikdarlingd... As always, a big MERCI is due to MON AMI Romain Ferraton for all the nifty UI/UX tweaks he's been making. For my part, I mostly tried not mess anything up, while adding in some stuff that I think is pretty handy.

For all my F5 friends out there, here's a new release of my SQL Server performance troubleshooting stored procedures: github.com/erikdarlingd...

Performance Monitor 2.5.0 Release (FREE|MIT) This release represents the most powerful and capable release since the last release. Game changer. Literally transformative. It will rock you to your very core. github.com/erikdarlingd...

New Performance Studio Release: 1.3.0 (FREE|MIT): github.com/erikdarlingd... Thanks to Romain Ferraton for the continued Query Store prettification.

Back in Chicago to bring human-generated joy to the people for PASS Data Comunity SUmmit East! Register here: click.red-gate.com/ODA4LUlURy03... #PASSDataSummit

Hyper-threading on Azure VMs is a SQL Licensing Trap Azure VMs with hyper-threading enabled are sized according to logical cores instead of physical cores. These logical cores can perform with 50% of the power of...

top microsoft man strikes again: seangallardy.com/non-yielding...

my proper friend forrest wrote a great post©️ forrestmcdaniel.com/2026/03/23/i...

Been having a few chats about tech debt recently, everyone seems to have a different view so I have pulled this survey together. forms.cloud.microsoft/e/a7Bx2U4tXd It would be great to get your thoughts & feedback. My plan is to publish the response data under creative commons for everyone to use.

jafar, why do you disapprove of the paloma?

And so it begins. www.popsci.com/technology/d...