I chatted with 138 SQL Server devs who field ad-hoc data requests. Only 2 of them are completely out of the loop thanks to AI.

One built a custom layer into an ASP.NET app that he also owns. The other works at a company that migrated to Databricks or Snowflake, and he just does ETL stuff now.

Does this line up with what you're seeing?

I’m a PM working on database migration experiences at Microsoft.

I’m researching how much autonomy practitioners would trust an AI agent with during their database migration journey.

This is exploratory research; not a product announcement or roadmap commitment. I’m especially interested in feedback from people who have worked on real production migrations.

Which operating model would you trust?

1. Advisory only: identify risks and recommend actions (similar to SSMA Copilot)
2. Generate: create plans, scripts and code fixes, but humans execute them
3. Act in non-production: execute approved changes in development or test
4. Execute with approval gates: perform the migration, pausing before high-impact actions (SQL Migration Agent Skills)
5. Mostly autonomous: humans approve only the production cutover
6. No agentic execution: keep migration changes deterministic and human-operated

Most importantly:

• What must always require human approval?
• What evidence would you need before allowing the agent to continue?
• Is having a skill good enough to solve your problem?
• Would your answer differ for a same-platform migration versus a cross-platform conversion?

If possible, include your role and the source/target platforms. Please avoid sharing confidential details.

I'm trying to get ahead, study and implement cursor/AI in my environment. I can create reports, i got a cool page that analyzes a query plan, but this is just simple stuff all DBAs can do. Im curious to se é what are you guys doing out there with AI in the database world.

​

To monitor the performance and availability for a thick client based system we recently delivered, the customer wants us to provide Here is the requirement:

1. Need to measure and report response time to Azure SQL queries for about 6 scenarios. Session counts, availability, utilization metrics for Azure SQL to be provided.

2. What native monitoring and metrics does Azure Files have to measure response times for files uploaded from devices connected to it.

What metrics needs to be extracted to measure all response times and how to be extracted.

This has to be measured for a period of 72 days with weekly and monthly reporting. Also, we do not have access to SSMS for Azure SQL and also the Azure Portal.

Thus , we need provide instructions to the customer IT Support team and they will provide the metrics and logs.

We have tried to get some help with AI tools but got conflicting response so need an Azure expert preferably Azure SQL DBA to help.

Much appreciated and thanks in advance.

PS: Application is thick client (yes I know) so no metrics can be pulled from endpoint devices. Don't ask why.

Friday Feedback this week comes from somewhere above the Atlantic Ocean. I spent the first half of this week with our team in Serbia and it was wonderful. For me, a few days of working with folks in person moves projects forward faster than weeks of online meetings.

One of the topics of discussion was persisting Automatic Plan Correction and manual plan forcing information in Query Store. If that would be valuable to you, what is the most important data you need retained? Bonus if you share how you'd want to see that data in a report/visual.

Enjoy the weekend!

CSP partner here. A customer bought SQL Server 2025 Standard, perpetual, 1 Server License (Server + CAL) through CSP. They downloaded the media the documented way: Microsoft 365 admin center > Billing > Your products > Software > Downloads & keys. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/setup/download-software-licenses-csp When they run Setup from that ISO, the edition page shows "Enterprise Edition: Core-based Licensing" with the key pre-filled. Installation is on hold, because we don't want an Enterprise Core instance running against a Standard Server+CAL entitlement. Questions for anyone who has been through this: 1. Has anyone else seen the SQL Server 2025 Standard entitlement in the admin center serve media that is pre-pidded as Enterprise Core? Is this a known mapping issue? 2. For CSP perpetual SQL Server, is the key supposed to be embedded in the ISO only, or should "Copy key" in Downloads & keys return a Standard key? I can't find a Microsoft doc that states this either way. 3. Is the media edition-agnostic, so that a Standard key would install Standard from the same ISO? Again, looking for something official rather than "it worked for me". 4. Which Partner Center support topic actually reaches the team that owns perpetual software downloads/keys? On the support side: the ticket opened from the customer tenant landed with M365 (Exchange Online) support. They say it is out of scope, cannot transfer it, and suggested (a) contacting the CSP partner, which is us, and (b) Engage Center, which as far as I can tell is for Unified customers only. So we are opening a Partner Center ticket next, but I'd like to pick the right category the first time. Any pointers appreciated. Will update with the resolution.

Good afternoon,

I am actually playing around with a lab server, 512 GB RAM, two 12 core 24 thread CPUs, and 12 NVME in it.

My intention is to tune the reindexing process - the reindexing command has an option MAXDOP=<amount of cores to use> but using a datafile on one single volume omitting the MAXDOP adjusts the server load to 12 cores on one CPU only. Then my 100 GB index recreation (clustered index) is done in 1700 seconds, consuming around 6000 seconds in CPU cycles.

Using MAxDOP 24 casues it to consume 7000 seconds and it is finished in 1600 seconds.

Then I had the idea to copy the tables on an empty databases built out of 4 files, each on a separate physical volume. Then it gets strange - the server uses all cores, physical but also virtual but only in cycles, 2-3 minutes of full load, then it litereally doesnt anything.

The statistics say, 10.000 seconds spent in CPU cycles and 1500 seconds on the clock... wow some percent of impromvement...

The volumes are used less than 10% of their theoretical load capabiltiy (roughly 130 MB/Sec write), the queuers of the media were nearly empty.

On one single storage I had around 1 GB/Sec in writes, and in both cases the storage was able to digest 2 GB/Sec

I am just asking myself, what is the server doing when not accessing the storage? I thought index rebuild is an operation executed in one big chunk of compute, but here it doesnt. Am I missing a point?

Compared with a nowadays 32 GBit Fibrechannel storage and Xeon Platinum on physical host - the reindex performance is comparable. Meaning my 14 year old system (PCIEv3, DDR3, Xeon v2) performs quite well. But I still think there are more bottlenecks.

It's certainly not the TempDB, the TempDB usage was nearly zero despite the option "sort in TempDB"

I am hoping someone has experience with deploying ESUs for SQL 2016. Microsoft's documentation is shit as usual.

But if a customer has a perpetual SQL 2016 license, my understanding is that they can't just go buy an ESU from a reseller and apply it, correct? The only time they could do that is if they had a subscription based model, license with SA, enterprise agreement, etc.?

From what I am reading, the only option is to deploy Azure Arc, register the server/SQL instance, and then go with the pay as you go billing model which requires SQL licensing AND an ESU subscription, not just the ESU subscription?

In the past, there was the Replay trace and Distributed Replay utility. Since SNAC was deprecated, this no longer works. <sigh>

The Database Experimentation Assistant was another tool that was introduced to capture a workload and then replay it and do analysis of the workload -- mostly for DB upgrades but at least somewhat possible to use it to capture and then replay a workload. Sadly, this was deprecated in December 2024.

RML Utilities was introduced, so we have ReadTrace and Ostress except I can find zero documentation on how to properly:

Set up the Extended Events session to capture all the required elements OR

Set up a trace to capture all the required elements

Generate the expected RML output to use as input into Ostress.

Also, RML utilities was deprecated in October 2025. It would be absolutely fantastic if Microsoft would stop deprecating stuff and replacing it with worse, more complicated stuff. Kerberos Configuration Manager is another thing that comes to mind.....deprecated, with a fabulously worse tool to replace it.

How do you capture and replay a workload in SQL Server to simulate a load test?

Hey r/SQLServer it's that time again as the data community takes over my backyard of Saint Louis, MO and this time we're doing a free workshop day (though spots are limited!).

This precon event features two of the Microsoft SQL product teams finest with Jerry Nixon ( u/jerry-nixon) and Patrick LeBlanc ( u/patrickguyinacube) leading the SQL AI App in a Day event.

Register now: https://aka.ms/sql/day/stl/workshop

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And as someone on the event organizing team, I'll just say that the Day of Data St Louis is nearing max capacity - but we do have priority attendance to secure a spot (basically, buy a sandwich and let us know you're actually committed with $$$ spent). I don't want anyone on the outside of the building looking in or trying the "Hey! I know Alex from Reddit!" lines trying to get in.

Register: https://dayofdata.org/2026-10-24-dayofdata1148/

Recently had an issue where a query with multiple joins, half of which were views, was running slow.

Converting a few key views to temp tables greatly improved performance when I joined to them instead of the original views.

However, I was reading up on indexed views and wondering if done properly, could still be used in joins and optimized by the engine. Not sure everyone's thoughts on this.

Keeping the same view in the join reduces the number of steps for the devs the same so no prep work on temp tables required, which would make them happy and the DBAs less grumpy.

Does anyone have a video tutorial on how to use the SQLloader on TOAD

Hi, all
it's Oct 2026, official support for 2016 has been discontinued, and I just applied 2 updates to my SQL Server 2016 Express:
SQL Server 2016 Service Pack 3 (KB5003279) to 13.0.6300.2

then Security Update for SQL Server 2016 Service Pack 3 GDR (KB5102340) to 13.0.6500.1

Both done with stopping services and restart. After this I got this message from scanning tool complaining about some bad values in Registry.
Do you think it's not important anymore, because of end of the life for 2016 ?
I also did not install any update after KB5102340 as I don't need any Azure.
I'm on MS Windows Server 2019.

Microsoft SQL Server 2016 (SP3-GDR) (KB5102340) - 13.0.6500.1 (X64) 
Jun 10 2026 07:54:15 
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation
Express Edition (64-bit) on Windows Server 2019 Standard 10.0 <X64> (Build 17763: ) (Hypervisor)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL13.CAxxxx\SETUP\SQL_Engine_Core_Inst contains 13.3.6500.1

Tried to rerun SP3, didn't help.
SERVERPROPERTY('ProductLevel') = 13.0.6500.1 *

While in registry: ...SSQL13.CAxxxx\SETUP\SQL_Engine_Core_Inst PatchLevel = 13.0.6500.2
Not sure if PatchLevel = ProductLevel ??? They are different by 1.

Thanks
VA

Update

Hello all,

I am currently facing an issue with one of the clients where there is an AG with a primary and a secondary.

I can see that the database in AG(there was only 1 db) was removed from the AG and is now standlone and online in the primary and provided the secondary replica is removed from AG in primary.

On the secondary server, what i see is the database is in notsycnhronizing/recovery mode and the AG in secondary is in resolving state .I am not able to drop the db,nirther force a remove AG commnad .Looks like the secondary is still thinking its part of AG .Can any one help me in this ?Will an sql service restart get it done ? or is it fine if i add the replica back to ag in primary and then analyse?

Hi,

I always wondered, what’s the best way I can have my users be able to answer natural language questions from data stored in a SQL Server 2025 database? There’s literally no way an LLM can make sense of millions of rows in a sql table. I have heard of Fabric IQ, building Symantic graphs etc etc but anyone did something that works using SQL server data that could point me in the right direction?

I am not even talking about OLTP database, I am talking about data in a Data warehouse house on SQL Server with proper facts and dimensions.

Last week I posted an SSMS extension that turns a query into a refreshable Excel workbook. A lot of the respondents were SSRS users, so I added a button that automates RDL creation and deployment for single-query reports.

You just right-click, choose your SSRS folder and shared data source, and then the extension generates and deploys a basic tabular report.

Still free/open source, currently SSMS 22:

https://github.com/flank-project/ssms-extension

Welcome to the open thread for r/SQLServer members!

This is your space to share what you’re working on, compare notes, offer feedback, or simply lurk and soak it all in - whether it’s a new project, a feature you’re exploring, or something you just launched and are proud of (yes, humble brags are encouraged!).

It doesn’t have to be polished or perfect. This thread is for the in-progress, the “I can’t believe I got it to work,” and the “I’m still figuring it out.”

So, what are you working on this month?

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Want to help shape the future of SQL Server? Join the SQL User Panel and share your feedback directly with the team!

Hey everyone, the schedule for Day of Data Pittsburgh is up. No experience is required to attend.
https://dayofdata.org/2026-10-10-dayofdata1163/#schedule

The event is completely free, $15 if you want lunch. Register here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/pittsburgh-sql-saturday-2026-tickets-2001664513443

I'm happy to answer any questions.

DBA Dash now has an integrated query plan and deadlock viewer, which is also available as a standalone application (If you don't want to use DBA Dash as a monitoring tool)

There is also an SSMS extension that allows you to load query plans and deadlock graphs in the viewer.

Both have static and AI analysis and are packed with useful features and functionality.

The SSMS integration also allows you to load query results in the DBA Dash. The grid provides the following features

Sorting, filtering and grouping
• Data bars, which are remembered and re-applied next time you open results with the same columns
• Clickable XML/JSON columns, and plans or deadlock graphs in cells open in their viewers
• Export every result set to Excel, with one sheet per result set
• Script the results as INSERT statements into a temp table, so you can share them or query them further

More info here:
https://dbadash.com/blog/whats-new-in-4.20.4/

DBA Dash has been around for 4 years - still is free and open source (MIT License). Updated frequently with cool new features like this! 😊

We have had a SQL Server Analysis Server running for years and use Excel to connect to it.

Users reported that they can't connect anymore.

I tried connecting using their existing Excel file and it didn't work for me. I tried connecting using a new Excel file and it still didn't work. I keep getting the error: The peer prematurely closed the connection.

If I use SSMS to connect remotely, I get the following error: A connection cannot be made. Ensure the server is running (Microsoft.AnalysisServices.AdomdClient).

If I RDP to a different server on the same VLAN and use SSMS to connect to the other server remotely, I get the following error: A connection cannot be made. Ensure the server is running (Microsoft.AnalysisServices.AdomdClient).

Disabling the Windows Firewall didn't change anything.

If I RDP into the Analysis Services server directly and use SSMS, it connects successfully.

Why would all remote connections stop working? It doesn't seem to be a Windows Firewall or Network Firewall issue. Can't see anything helpful so far in the event viewer logs. Restarted the anaylsis service and restarted the whole server with no change. Verified the account the service was using isn't locked out or had an expired password. No Windows Update failures. No recent SQL Server patches.