By Brent Ozar · September 24, 2026 · 4 comments

A couple times a year, I go away for a week to think about what’s working well, what I need to change, where our industry is going, and how I need to react. I usually do it on a cruise because the crappy internet makes it easier to disconnect and reflect, hahaha, and that’s where you find me this week. As the cruise sails out of LA, let’s go through your top-voted questions from https://pollgab.com/room/brento. We even get to watch the pilot disembark from the cruise ship!

Here’s what we discussed:

• 00:00 Start
• 01:35 DBAInAction: Hi Brent, our goal is to shrink the 25 tb db. With archive and shrinking the db isn’t feasible without perf impact, does building a fresh db seeded with just the last two years of data (considering business is ok) and cutting over sound like the right path, or any other approach?
• 04:26 racheld933: My role is slowly changing from a traditional DBA to developmental DBA (mostly mssql on Azure) and I’m wondering if there are any specific folks in the SQL world you recommend I look at for that type of content.
• 05:35 mpasharp: Hi Brent, now that AI is used in developing software, do you think we will see more frequent release of SQL server in future?
• 09:09 DGWinOK: How does pricing compare (off the top of your head) between Azure SQL and Oracle cloud database for say a 100 GB instance?
• 11:01 Trying_To_Keep_Production_Up: Hi Brent! CDC falls behind under load. DB is ~5 TB with high transaction volume. After load drops, sp_cdc_scan stays hours behind with low-ms disk waits, then suddenly catches up fast. maxtrans=5000 helped slightly. What specific diagnostics would you check next?
• 12:19 Watching the pilot board the ship
• 13:36 Proof as a Proxy: You’ve mentioned the great importance of reading documentation. I’ve long had a goal to read *all* of the SQL Server documentation. Is that crazy? Doing it for availability groups took a long time.
• 15:47 Detroit DadJoker: With Microsoft not shipping SSRS in SQL2025, what are the paths forward? Are there solution for both SQL and PG?

Free, 3× a week

Three posts a week, plus a Monday roundup of the best database news from around the web.