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2021-03-22: Ten Years of Blitzing
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@BrentOzar BrentOzar released this 22 Mar 05:09
· 837 commits to main since this release
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Learn about vigilant mode.

Ten years ago, I unveiled sp_Blitz at the 2011 PASS Summit, in front of a live audience.

Remember the PASS Summit?

Remember live audiences?

<sigh>

Anyway, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of BrentOzar.com, I've thinking back about the last couple of decades to reminisce about what I've learned, what's changed, and so forth.

Open source kinda sorta existed when I got started with computers as a kid way back in the 1980s. I would buy a programming magazine, prop it up in front of the computer, and actually type programs in by hand on my Commodore 64. Lemme just tell you, that sucked. I've been bad at debugging for four decades.

Today, anybody in the world can install open source utilities in a matter of seconds, make their job easier, increase their value as a professional, and give back to those same open source projects. It's not fair to say that your Github profile is the new resume - most folks just don't have the time to contribute to open source, nor are they allowed to at your day job. However, I think it's fair to say that your Github profile is one of many possible advantages when competing for a job. When someone asks, "Do you have experience with X?" it's amazing to be able to answer, "Yes, and I've even contributed code and documentation to X. Here's my Github profile, and here are some of my interactions with the team."

So with that said, here's this month's new version of the First Responder Kit. It's free - free as in speech - and it thrives thanks to the community members mentioned in the changes below. They're real people just like you with day jobs, and they decided that they wanted to contribute or fix something. They're the heroes that make this whole thing work.

When you find a bug or want something changed, read the contributing.md file.

To get the new version:

Consultant Toolkit Changes

I updated it to this month's First Responder Kit, but no changes to querymanifest.json or the spreadsheet. If you've customized those, no changes are necessary this month: just copy your spreadsheet and querymanifest.json into the new release's folder.

sp_Blitz Changes

  • Improvement: we ignore databases named DBAdmin, DBAtools, and DBMaintenance. (#2787, thanks Erik Darling.)
  • Fix: made all of the scripts consistently refer to https://www.brentozar.com rather than variations without https, the www domain, etc. (#2808, thanks John D. Ballentine III.)
  • Fix: removed the checks for active & inactive heaps in user databases. This is covered really well by sp_BlitzIndex now, and it's slow in sp_Blitz. (#2818, thanks Erik Darling.)

sp_BlitzAnalysis Changes

  • This is the second release that includes sp_BlitzAnalysis by Adrian Buckman. If you want to install this script, install sp_BlitzAnalysis.sql - it's not included in the normal installation scripts yet just to limit the blast radius in case something goes wrong. For tips on how to use it, check out the documentation. For questions or problems, see the "For Support" section of this doc.
  • Fix: expanded one of the columns from the money datatype up to decimal(38,2) to handle big data. (#2807, thanks Ian Menton.)

sp_BlitzCache Changes

  • Improvement: when @IgnoreSystemDBs = 1, we ignore queries with a context of databases named DBAdmin, DBAtools, and DBMaintenance. (#2787, thanks Iomckee.)
  • Improvement: @OutputType parameter now accepts 'NONE'. (#2817, thanks Jefferson Elias.)

sp_BlitzFirst Changes

As we mention in the documentation, Azure SQL DB isn't technically supported by any of the First Responder Kit scripts because Azure SQL DB doesn't have all of the cool diagnostics stuff that we get on-premises, like sp_MSforeachdb. However, at some point in the future, we'll officially support a lot of them up there, and this month's changes inch us towards that.
  • Improvement: in Azure SQL DB, we now sys.dm_db_wait_stats instead of sys.dm_os_wait_stats. (#2821)
  • Improvement: pass @OutputType parameter to sp_BlitzCache so if you specify 'NONE', there really is no output. (#2817, thanks Jefferson Elias.)
  • Fix: insert of changed statistics would sometimes fail. (#2738, thanks Jefferson Elias.)
  • Fix: Azure SQL DB was erroring out due to addition of sp_MSforeachdb in the recently changed statistics check. (#2819)

sp_BlitzIndex Changes

  • Improvement: we ignore databases named DBAdmin, DBAtools, and DBMaintenance. (#2787, thanks Erik Darling.)

sp_BlitzLock Changes

sp_BlitzWho Changes

  • Fix: in the deltas view, expanded one of the columns from the money datatype up to decimal(38,2) to handle big data. (#2813, thanks Ian Menton.)

sp_DatabaseRestore Changes

  • Improvement: you can now move the full text catalogs with the new @MoveFullTextCatalogDrive parameter. (#2805, thanks Frederik Vanderhaegen.)

For Support

When you have questions about how the tools work, talk with the community in the #FirstResponderKit Slack channel. If you need a free invite, hit SQLslack.com. Be patient - it's staffed with volunteers who have day jobs.

When you find a bug or want something changed, read the contributing.md file.

When you have a question about what the scripts found, first make sure you read the "More Details" URL for any warning you find. We put a lot of work into documentation, and we wouldn't want someone to yell at you to go read the fine manual. After that, when you've still got questions about how something works in SQL Server, post a question at DBA.StackExchange.com and the community (that includes me!) will help. Include exact errors and any applicable screenshots, your SQL Server version number (including the build #), and the version of the tool you're working with.

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