Skip to content
SQL Server Radio podcast artwork

PODCAST · technology

SQL Server Radio

by Guy Glantser, Eitan Blumin

SQL Server Radio is a Podcast for SQL Server DBAs, database developers, architects, system administrators, and anyone else who is interested in the Microsoft SQL Server platform and the Microsoft data platform in general. As the data world changes, we also occasionally talk about other platforms and services like Azure and Amazon cloud services, Elastic Search, Hadoop, MongoDB, Machine Learning, and much more.

Publisher-supplied feed metadata · PodParley refreshed Sep 8, 2026 · Source feed

Episodes

  1. Episode 192 - What is new at SQLCon 2026 Barcelona

    Guy and Eitan are spiritually obligated to talk about Microsoft's announcements made at SQLCon/FabCon Europe 2026 that took place on September. UGH... FINE! Relevant links: What's new across Microsoft SQL at SQLCon/FabCon Europe 2026 - Azure SQL Dev Corner More performance and flexibility for…

    more
  2. Episode 191 - High CPU in SQL Server 2025

    Guy and Eitan discuss an interesting case study where crazy high CPU was detected after an upgrade to SQL Server 2025. Relevant links: SQL 2025 showing crazy-high CPU | LobsterPot Solutions Enable Automatic Tuning - Azure SQL Database & Azure SQL Managed Instance | Microsoft Learn Plan Forcing in...

  3. Episode 190 - SQL Server 2025 gains RDS but loses Web

    Guy and Eitan discuss news regarding SQL Server 2025, specifically that it's now publicly available on Amazon RDS, but also that Web Edition is now gone. Also, Guy shares an interesting use case with troubleshooting disk IO latency issues. And finally, Guy and Eitan discuss the differences…

    more
  4. Episode 189 - Top Ten SQL Server Performance Tuning Best Practices and More

    Guy and Eitan go over Paul Randal's article of "Top Ten SQL Server Performance Tuning Best Practices" (published in last March), and add their own input. We also talk about considerations of upgrading SQL Server to 2025, and we also learn something new about Temp Table Caching. Relevant links:...

  5. Episode 188 - Virtualization pitfalls and best practices with SQL Server

    Guy talks about an interesting incident involving performance problems in a virtual environment. And also, we talk about the SSMS StatisticsParser extension and the question of SSMS extensions in general. Relevant links: vmware.com/docs/sql-server-on-vmware-best-practices-guide Hyper-V and SQL...

  6. Episode 187 - Transactional Replication Between Availability Groups

    Guy and Eitan discuss a few new things in the latest SSMS update, and Eitan tells about a very peculiar use case involving transactional replication and AlwaysOn Availability Groups, and Guy talks about a use case involving deletion triggers. Important note: The part about SQL Server 2025 CU4...

  7. Episode 186 - Automatic Index Compaction and New DB DevOps Tooling

    Guy and Eitan discuss several very interesting new features recently announced by Microsoft. Relevant links for more info: Stop defragmenting and start living: introducing auto index compaction | Microsoft Community Hub Automatic Index Compaction - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn Database DevOps...

  8. Episode 185 - The Liar's Dividend

    Guy and Eitan talk about Erik Darling's new monitoring app, which reminds us of similar tools we had experience with long ago. And, again, it's time to talk about AI. Specifically, a side-effect of it called "The Liar's Dividend". Relevant links for more information: Free SQL Server Performance...

  9. Episode 184 - The Role of the DBA is Dead (Again)

    Looks like it's that time of the year again, to face the impending death of the DBA role! Or... Is it? Guy and Eitan discuss the topic and raise several interesting points you should listen to. Relevant links: sqlfingers.com: Death of the DBA (Again) (Reddit thread)

  10. Episode 183 - Azure SQL Managed Instance Next Gen

    In this year's first episode of the new year, Guy and Eitan discuss the new Next-gen General Purpose tier of Azure SQL Managed Instance, which is now GA. They also discuss a few interesting customer stories, how they were resolved, and how they're not actually SQL Server's fault. Relevant links:...

  11. Episode 182 - Matan Yungman's Show-and-Tell of Rapido

    Matan Yungman is our special host for today, who came especially to talk about his special project called "Rapido", which is capable of automatically tuning SQL queries at scale. Perhaps there is some inspiration in it for us? Relevant links: Matan Yungman | LinkedIn Matan Yungman (@MatanYungman)…

    more
  12. Episode 181 - The new SSMS is still blue

    Guy and Eitan talk about the new preview version of SSMS, application locks, and stupid troubles with TempDB shrinkage. Relevant links: Announcing the Release of SQL Server Management Studio 22 Preview 3 | Microsoft Community Hub Release Notes for SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 22 Preview 3...

  13. Episode 180 - Computed Columns with PERSISTED and Indexed Expressions

    We let a dice roll decide today's topic, and the winner ended up being: Computed Columns with PERSISTED and Indexed Expressions. We give our thoughts about it, best practices, pit falls, and tips. Relevant links: SQL Server 2025 Preview RC1: Now Supporting Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 10 |...

  14. Episode 179 - SQL Server 2025 RC0 announced and weird latch timeouts

    Guy and Eitan discuss several interesting announcements and updates from Microsoft related to SQL Server and VS Code. And also Eitan talks about a weird issue he encountered involving page latch time-outs during DBCC CHECK command. Please fill out the SQL Server on Linux adoption survey here!…

    more
  15. Episode 178 - AI is another thing to babysit

    Guy and Eitan discuss security-related best practice scripts, and several interesting AI topics. Relevant links: microsoft-dbas-club/Security and Compliance/Check_Passwords_SQL_Server_Generated.sql microsoft-dbas-club/Security and Compliance/Best Practice...

  16. Episode 177 - Five and a Half Enhancements in SQL Server 2025

    Guy and Eitan discuss Stephen Planck's blog post "Five SQL Server 2025 Enhancements DBAs Will Notice", and add some of their own insights. Relevant links: Five SQL Server 2025 Enhancements DBAs Will Notice - SQL Table Talk Configure a flexible automatic failover policy for an availability group -...

  17. Episode 176 - SQL Server 2025 and more

    Many announcements and interesting releases came out this past month, so we got a lot to talk about in this episode! Relevant links: What's New in SQL Server 2025 - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn SQL Server 2025 - AI ready enterprise database from ground to cloud | Microsoft Community Hub…

    more
  18. Episode 175 - Migrating from on-prem to AWS RDS

    Guy talks about a recent migration project he was working on to move an on-prem SQL Server to AWS RDS. Eitan talks about a new AI-related feature in Azure SQL Databases. And we also discuss the new SNAPSHOT backup T-SQL command in SQL Server 2022. Relevant links: Importing and exporting SQL…

    more
  19. Episode 174 - Is SQL Server quality in decline? Or is it just friction?

    Guy and Eitan worry about the decline in SQL Server feature quality. But maybe there's something else behind it? Relevant links: Improving Azure SQL Database reliability with accelerated database recovery in tempdb | Microsoft Community Hub What the Decline of Sql Server Quality means for...

  20. Episode 173 - SQL Noir and the fate of Azure Data Studio

    Guy and Eitan discuss a few interesting topics. Including a fun new game called "SQL Noir", how to implement statistical clustering model in SQL, about surrogate and natural keys, and the recently announced deprecation of Azure Data Studio. Relevant links: SQL Noir - A Detective SQL Game How to...

  21. Episode 172 - Between SQL Squid Games and SSMS

    Guy and Eitan answer an interesting question from the forum regarding the logic of NOT BETWEEN. And also, checking out the SQL Squid Game, discussing SQL Audit, and sharing some tips for SSMS. Relevant links: SQL Squid Game SQL Server Audit (Database Engine) - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn...

  22. Episode 171 - Clueless about SQL Server 2025

    Guy and Eitan talk about SQL Server 2025 (well, they try to, at least), and its various interesting upcoming features. Relevant links: Announcing SQL Server 2025 – SQLServerCentral What's New in SQL Server 2025 - Brent Ozar Unlimited® Optimized Locking - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn SQLBits is...

  23. Episode 170 - Interesting topics from PASS 2023 sessions

    Guy and Eitan go over the most popular sessions released from the SQL PASS archive of 2023, and discuss some other topics. Relevant links: Announcing Microsoft SQL Server 2025: Enterprise AI-ready database from ground to cloud - Microsoft SQL Server Blog Sessions Archive for 2023 - PASS Data...

  24. Episode 169 - Resumable Incremental Database Integrity Checks

    Guy and Eitan discuss the common challenge of long-running database integrity checks (DBCC CHECKDB) and a solution to resolve it, and why do we need integrity checks at all? Relevant links: PASS Data Community Summit Incremental Integrity Check for Large Databases - Eitan Blumin's blog SQL Server...

  25. Episode 168 - New data types in SQL Server and a question about index fragmentation

    Guy and Eitan discuss some interesting news from Microsoft regarding SQL Server, and also about the right way to handle index fragmentation. Relevant links: Resources from Microsoft: Preview release of SDK-style SQL projects in Visual Studio 2022 - Microsoft Community Hub Native JSON support now…

    more
  26. Episode 167 - Let's Troubleshoot SQL AG Synchronization Latency

    Fair warning for all listeners! Before starting to listen to this podcast, very strongly recommended: Have the diagram at the bottom of this page ready in front of you, so that it'll be easier for you to follow along: Common Causes and Troubleshooting Solutions for SQL AG Data Synchronization...

  27. Episode 166 - DR Planning for SQL Server and Loading Large CSV Files

    Guy and Eitan discuss the recent CrowdStrike incident and what it would mean for DBAs, and discuss options to load huge CSV files into SQL Server as fast as possible. Relevant links: 101 of Troubleshooting SQL Server on Linux - Microsoft Community Hub bcp utility - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn...

  28. Episode 165 - News in Azure SQL and Woes of Excel

    Guy and Eitan discuss some important and interesting news from Microsoft about SQL Server, Straight Path Solutions publish 30 articles about SQL Server security checks, Guy talks about his experience with Excel, and Eitan is irritated about people still not doing SQL jobs correctly in AlwaysOn...

  29. Episode 164 - The Good the Bad and the Ugly Transactional Replication

    Guy and Eitan continue discussing HADR solutions. But this time focusing on Transactional Replication, its cons and pros and potential use cases. Also, some important announcements from Microsoft about Azure SQL! Relevant links: Data API builder General Availability (microsoft.com) Build REST API...

  30. Episode 163 - When and Why to HADR

    Guy and Eitan discuss the various High Availability and Disaster Recovery options available to us in Microsoft SQL Server, their main advantages, limitations, and when it's most suitable to use or not to use them. Relevant links for further reading: AlwaysOn Basic Availability Groups / Database...

  31. Episode 162 - Backups and Recovery, RTO, RPO, and RCO

    Guy and Eitan talk about some interesting news from Microsoft about SQL Server in Azure. And also discuss the topic of Backups and Recovery, RTO, RPO, RCO, and database Integrity Checks. Relevant links: Microsoft Copilot in Azure extends capabilities to Azure SQL Database (Private Preview) -...

  32. Episode 161 - EXCLUSIVE: Announcing the Biggest Innovation for Azure SQL Managed Instances (Codename: Hermes)

    Niko Neugebauer and Vladimir Ivanovic are our esteemed guests for today, and they have a HUGE announcement to make about Azure SQL Managed Instances. Extra! Extra! 🗞 Hear all about it on this exclusive scoop here at the SQL Server Radio podcast! Relevant links: Azure SQL Managed Instance…

    more
  33. Episode 160 - OPTION RECOMPILE and the magical Turbo button

    Guy tries to convince Eitan that OPTION(RECOMPILE) is the ultimate "Turbo" button in SQL Server, and that it's strongly underappreciated. Relevant links for more info: OPTION(RECOMPILE) (Transact-SQL) - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn Recompile a Stored Procedure - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn…

    more
  34. Episode 159 - Select * Wastes Money

    Guy and Eitan discuss various practices in SQL Server that hurt performance and possibly waste money, negative VarDecimal numbers, renumbering Identity columns, and the new Azure Database Fleet Manager. Relevant links: SQL Server IN Clause With Multiple Literal Values Performance Behaviour |…

    more
  35. Episode 158 - Reverse Engineering Table Relations based on SQL Plans

    Guy and Eitan talk about some great things about SQL Server, and mostly Guy's experience in digging into execution plans and generating synthetic IO workloads. Relevant links: What's new in SQL Server and Azure SQL 2023 Year in Review Multi-Tenancy in the Real World | Eitan Blumin (Data Weekender...

  36. Episode 157 - Let's Talk Some Hardcore SQL Server

    Guy and Eitan go back to their SQL Server roots and go hardcore into execution plan analysis and database corruption. Relevant links: Health Check Scripts/Find_Top_Exec_Plans_to_Optimize.sql SQLServerFast.com Database Corruption Challenge by Steve Steadman A DBA's Guide to the Proper Handling of...

  37. Episode 156 - Back to School with Encryption as a Tool

    Guy and Eitan celebrate resuming the school year with some learning of their own. This time, focusing on encryption types in SQL Server. Relevant links: External REST Endpoint Invocation is now GA! Types of Encryption in SQL Server PWDENCRYPT and PWDCOMPARE Dynamic Data Masking And also, don't...

  38. Episode 155 - Kevin Chant

    Today we have Kevin Chant as our guest! We talk about Kevin's favorite topics: Microsoft Fabric, Azure DevOps, SQL Server, and more. Relevant links: https://www.kevinrchant.com/2023/06/13/create-your-own-microsoft-fabric-environment/

  39. Episode 154 - Beavers and very loud farts

    Guy and Eitan discuss several interesting topics and recent experiences that you'd want to hear about! Relevant links: Trigram Wildcard String Search in SQL Server The Story of DBeaver, PostgreSQL, and the silly data engineer SQL Server Error Log Management High VLF Counts Got You Down? Here's…

    more
  40. Episode 153 - Erik Darling Is Our Guest For Today

    As promised in the previous episode, Guy and Eitan interview an actual human this time! The one and only, the famed Erik Darling is our guest for today! Check out his official website: Erik Darling Data Erik Darling's YouTube Channel We apologize in advance for Guy's occasional audio glitches, as...

  41. Episode 152 - We interview ChatGPT

    Guy and Eitan try something new for today's show - we interview ChatGPT as our guest for today, and make it pretend that it's a SQL Server expert! Let's see how it does. Relevant links: Monitor performance by using the Query Store Brent Ozar Unlimited SQLSkills Scary DBA SQL Authority PASS Data...

  42. Episode 151 - Tales from the SQL Bits of 2023

    Guy and Eitan share their experience from SQLBits 2023 and some of their favorite sessions. Relevant links: Official SQLBits Website SQLBits Content Library SQLBits YouTube Channel SQL Server Debugging with WinDbg – an Introduction Join #TeamHugo and Help Fight Leukemia Parameter Sensitive Plan...

  43. Episode 150 - Artificially Intelligent Query Processing

    Guy and Eitan discuss some new and existing capabilities in the SQL Server engine related to Intelligent Query Processing, and whether our job positions as DBAs are at risk due to the imminent takeover by our robot overlords. Relevant links: Intelligent Query Processing Adaptive Joins (Batch)...

  44. Episode 149 - 8 Common DBA Mistakes in SQL Server

    Guy and Eitan list several common mistakes done by DBAs in SQL Server. Some relevant links: Architecting Database Dev and Test Environments: Best Practices and Anti-Patterns for SQL Server Ola Hallengren's Maintenance Solution HADR My Jobs - Open Source Solution by Madeira Columnstore Indexes:...

  45. Episode 148 - Rob Sewell and SQLBits 2023

    Today we have the pleasure of hosting Rob Sewell, and talking about the upcoming SQLBits event of 2023! Relevant links: SQLBits 2023 agenda, speakers, pricing, and registration - events.sqlbits.com/2023 YouTube playlist of all 195 sessions from SQLBits 2022 - available for free! SQLBits helpers...

  46. Episode 147 - Congratulations! It's an RTM!

    Guy and Eitan finally celebrate the generally available release of SQL Server 2022! And also discuss other announcements from PASS Data Community Summit, and also various interesting news and features of Azure SQL announced in November 2022. Relevant links: SQL Server 2022 is now generally...

  47. Episode 146 - New DMVs and Application Reliability

    Guy and Eitan play a game of word associations to spout a bunch of stuff about SQL Server features - mostly reviewing new system objects that replaced old DBCC commands, useful scripts in our toolbox, and talking about Application Reliability Errors. Relevant links: Buffer Pool Extension SQL…

    more
  48. Episode 145 - Itzik Ben-Gan Strikes Back

    Today we're pleased to have the one and only Itzik Ben-Gan hosted at our show again! We talk about interesting SQL/T-SQL related topics, the experience of teaching, his new upcoming book edition of T-SQL Fundamentals, and more. Relevant links: Itzik's personal web page at tsql.lucient.com Itzik...

  49. Episode 144 - Getting Locked Outside Without Your Keys

    Guy and Eitan discuss a few new features in SQL Server 2022, and Guy tells a story about an interesting use case where a customer accidentally dropped their encryption keys in production. Relevant links: SQL Server 2022 RC0 is now available! Azure Active Directory authentication for SQL Server…

    more
  50. Episode 143 - A mash-up of mistakes all in one place

    Today, Guy has a lot of tips to share after reviewing one of those... "problematic" customer environments. Let's just say that he's got his hands full. But it's still fun, and you get to learn as well! Relevant links: Forced Parameterization | Microsoft Docs Forced Parameterization Can Lead to…

    more

Type above to search every episode's transcript for a word or phrase. Matches are scoped to this podcast.

Searching…

We're indexing this podcast's transcripts for the first time — this can take a minute or two. We'll show results as soon as they're ready.

No matches for "" in this podcast's transcripts.

Showing of matches

No topics indexed yet for this podcast.

Loading reviews...

ABOUT THIS SHOW

SQL Server Radio is a Podcast for SQL Server DBAs, database developers, architects, system administrators, and anyone else who is interested in the Microsoft SQL Server platform and the Microsoft data platform in general. As the data world changes, we also occasionally talk about other platforms and services like Azure and Amazon cloud services, Elastic Search, Hadoop, MongoDB, Machine Learning, and much more.

HOSTED BY

Guy Glantser, Eitan Blumin

Produced by Guy Glantser

CATEGORIES

Frequently Asked Questions

How many episodes does SQL Server Radio have?

SQL Server Radio currently has 182 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.

What is SQL Server Radio about?

SQL Server Radio is a Podcast for SQL Server DBAs, database developers, architects, system administrators, and anyone else who is interested in the Microsoft SQL Server platform and the Microsoft data platform in general. As the data world changes, we also occasionally talk about other platforms...

How often does SQL Server Radio release new episodes?

SQL Server Radio publishes regularly with 182 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.

Where can I listen to SQL Server Radio?

You can listen to SQL Server Radio on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.

Who hosts SQL Server Radio?

SQL Server Radio is created and hosted by Guy Glantser, Eitan Blumin.
URL copied to clipboard!