Top all-time · #768
Brent Ozar Unlimited®
Company blog · brentozar.com/archive · on HN as BrentOzardataprogramming
Brent Ozar Unlimited® is the company blog at brentozar.com, writing about data and programming. Since 2009, 86 different Hacker News readers have linked it 120 times, most often “GDPR: Why We Stopped Selling Stuff to Europe”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 5 of 36 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Brent Ozar's blog for SQL Server and database advice, including the DeWitt clause post on licence benchmarking limits, and for his sp_blitz scripts and video series.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 36 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Brent Ozar Unlimited's specialized experts focus on your goals, diagnose your tough database pains, and make Microsoft SQL Server faster and more reliable.
Most-linked posts?
- /archive/2018/05/the-dewitt-clause-why-you-rarely-see-database-benchmarks/9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2018-09-21
- GDPR: Why We Stopped Selling Stuff to Europe7 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2017-12-18
- /archive/2015/10/how-to-download-the-stack-overflow-database-via-bittorrent/4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-07-28
- The problem with SQL servers licensing costs4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-03-05
- What Does a Database Administrator Do?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-03-16
- Database Development with AI in 20262 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-01-09
- Non-SARGable Predicates2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-02-19
- Microsoft SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn AGs at StackOverflow2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-09-24
- Fact-Checking Microsoft's "PostgreSQL to SQL Field Notes: Connections"2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-10-14
- What Queries Does Microsoft’s Telemetry Service Run on Your Sql Server?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-02-08
What Hacker News says?
If it's in the contract not a lot you can do ... https://www.brentozar.com/archive/2018/05/the-dewitt-clause-...
Comment linking /archive/2018/05/the-dewitt-clause-why-you-rarely-see-database-benchmarks/
on “Amazon’s Consumer Business Turned Off Final Oracle Database”Submitted Things Developers Should Know About SQL Server (2013) as a story · 136 points
HN discussionSRE who deals with some .Net stuff that uses MSSQL but is converting to MySQL. so I feel somewhat qualified to talk about MSSQL. TL;DR: Nothing interesting going on. There is nothing to talk about here. It's boring database engine that powers boring business applications. It's pretty efficient and can scale vertically pretty well. With state of modern hardware, that vertical limit is high enough most people won't en…
Comment linking /archive/2023/11/the-real-problem-with-sql-servers-licensing-costs/
on “Databases in 2024: A Year in Review”Submitted How StackOverflow Scales with SQL Server as a story · 132 points
HN discussionOn Kiwix, the entire english Wikipedia with images but not videos is 90gb. 6.3m articles. You can pick and choose categories to some degree (e.g. I’m downloading some to get the videos as well), but I think this leads to some redundancy. 134gb for stackoverflow, but it's from 2019. This guy does sql files, but viewing is another story: https://www.brentozar.com/archive/2015/10/how-to-download-th... There are torrent…
Comment linking /archive/2015/10/how-to-download-the-stack-overflow-database-via-bittorrent/
on “Internet in a Box”Submitted SQL Server 2014 Standard Edition Sucks as a story · 123 points
HN discussionThe GDPR is pretty bad for under 5 engineer startups. They can be very privacy respecting small businesses that charge for their product, like sql training courseware[0], and wouldn't mind clearing what little personal data they had on you (user server logs, billing info, etc). But being privacy respecting and properly complying with GDPR with audit log systems, etc are 2 different things that require hiring 1 or 2…
Comment linking /archive/2017/12/gdpr-stopped-selling-stuff-europe/
on “Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law”Submitted Fabric Is Just Plain Unreliable, and Microsoft's Hiding It as a story · 117 points
HN discussionThe “DeWitt Clause” or sometimes also known as the “Oracle Clause” has been a fixture of ToS for years. The fact that it features in Cloudflare’s docs only serves to remind us that entrenched practices die hard. https://www.brentozar.com/archive/2018/05/the-dewitt-clause-...
Comment linking /archive/2018/05/the-dewitt-clause-why-you-rarely-see-database-benchmarks/
on “Debunking Cloudflare’s recent performance tests”Submitted SQL Server App Store Reviews (If SQL Server were an app:) as a story · 86 points
HN discussionMy experience in writing a technical book 8 years ago was the same: https://www.brentozar.com/archive/2010/01/the-economics-of-w... I made more money from Amazon affiliate fees linking to our book than I did the actual book. Way more. If you’re out to make money short term, you’re better off writing book reviews then books. Having said that, the book gave me some credibility with clients for a couple of years when I…
Comment linking /archive/2010/01/the-economics-of-writing-a-book/
on “The Economics of Writing a Technical Book”Submitted Why Aren't People Going to Local and Regional In-Person Events Anymore? as a story · 56 points
HN discussionThey do have a cluster: http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2012/09/microsoft-sql-serve... They just run everything through one live database all the time under normal conditions. Personally, I think this is much simpler to manage than to be regularly spreading out queries over many queries.
Comment linking /archive/2012/09/microsoft-sql-server-alwayson-ags-at-stackoverflow/
on “StackOverflow Update: 560M Pageviews a Month, 25 Servers”Submitted GDPR: Why We Stopped Selling Stuff to Europe as a story · 53 points
HN discussionFor Microsoft SQL server, I recommend reading all things what Brent Ozar [1] has to say There is also another blog from Dr. DMV on SQL Server performance [2] [1] https://www.brentozar.com/ [2] http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/glenn/category/dmv-queries/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What is the best online resource to learn advanced SQL?”Submitted It's Been Decades. Why Don't Databases Manage Themselves Yet? as a story · 11 points
HN discussionThe Stackoverflow database is available for download, no need to scrape the site. https://www.brentozar.com/archive/2015/10/how-to-download-th...
Comment linking /archive/2015/10/how-to-download-the-stack-overflow-database-via-bittorrent/
on “Tell HN: Stack Exchange (Stack Overflow) is now blocking Tor”Submitted What Queries Does Microsoft’s Telemetry Service Run on Your Sql Server? as a story · 8 points
HN discussionThat is my understanding. [0] [0] https://www.brentozar.com/archive/2018/05/the-dewitt-clause-...
Comment linking /archive/2018/05/the-dewitt-clause-why-you-rarely-see-database-benchmarks/
on “Problems with Oracle SQL”Submitted For Technical Interviews, Don’t Ask Questions. Show Screenshots as a story · 8 points
HN discussion> There's basically 0 chance this would be legal if you're a private company. In the USA it would absolutely be legal and you would be bound by a binding arbitration clause and a non-disclosure + non-disparagement clause. You might even be bound by a license / ToS which prevents you from comparing the capabilities of that system against a better system[1]. [1] https://www.brentozar.com/archive/2018/05/the-dewitt-cla…
Comment linking /archive/2018/05/the-dewitt-clause-why-you-rarely-see-database-benchmarks/
on “Government’s PACER Fees Are Too High, Federal Circuit Says”Submitted Let's Corrupt a SQL Server Database Together as a story · 6 points
HN discussionInstead of joining tables and using distinct or similar to filter rows, consiser using subquery "columns", ie in SELECT list. What does this mean? Running SELECT column1, ( SELECT column2, column3, ... FROM table_b WHERE table_a.id = table_b.a_id ) FROM table_a Results in "subquery must return only one column" as I expected. You mean returning the multiple columns as a record / composite type? Keep in mind GROUP BY…
Comment linking /archive/2015/06/indexing-for-group-by/
on “SQL Tips and Tricks”Submitted Plagiarism Week: Outwit, Outplay, Outlast as a story · 6 points
HN discussion> Mind sharing a link to your blog (if it's still active)? Thanks :) It seems to be there: https://www.brentozar.com/blog/ Bam. Inbound marketing seems to go well, a HNer just linked to the blog by inspecting the HN profile the consultant put on HN ... ;)
Comment linking /blog/
on “Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?”Submitted The problem with SQL servers licensing costs as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThe single biggest thing that helped me speed up my queries and lower resource usage on the server was focusing on making my queries more sargable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sargable https://www.brentozar.com/blitzcache/non-sargable-predicates...
Comment linking /blitzcache/non-sargable-predicates/
on “SQL Anti-Patterns”Submitted What Queries Does Microsoft's Telemetry Service Run on Your Sql Server? as a story · 5 points
HN discussion> Every single company on that list deserved to die. Hi, I'm Brent Ozar, the cofounder of the first company in the list. (Ah, the joys of alphabetical sorting.) I've written a big long post[1] about why we stopped selling to the EU, but here's the short story: the EU only represented 5% of our revenue, and for that small of revenue, I wasn't prepared to risk the GDPR's fines if any one of the third party tools we us…
Comment linking /archive/2017/12/gdpr-stopped-selling-stuff-europe/
on “GDPR After One Year”Submitted SQL Server 2016 and the Internet: Forced Updates, Phoning Home as a story · 5 points
HN discussion
