The art of SQL Server query tuning and execution plans (with Hugo Kornelis)

Engineering teams' time and money are often drained by mismatched tooling and poor habits, among other things. The Redgate Advocates share their own stories of this in reality - from a mysterious 47-second retry, to the one 'rogue' engineer who derails a team.   They also discuss how to get everyone pulling in the same direction without forcing everything to be identical, and whether AI helps or hurts.  Listen or watch to every episode of the Redgate Simple Talk podcast at https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/podcasts/ 

AI budgets are escalating rapidly, yet few teams measure the value of their spend – and who ends up paying, anyway? Steve Jones, Grant Fritchey, Kellyn Gorman, and Pat Wright discuss that and more. Also on the agenda: LLMs, data centers, regulation, and what happens to the next generation of engineers if they never learn to solve problems the hard way... Listen or watch to every episode of the Redgate Simple Talk podcast at https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/podcasts/

Heidi Hasting joins host Kellyn Gorman for a chat featuring Microsoft Fabric, real-time intelligence, and a permissions trap that hands your data to a coworker's chatbot...Also: what MVP status really means, and where you should visit in South Australia (snakes included)!  See Heidi's MVP profile here. Listen or watch to every episode of the Redgate Simple Talk podcast at https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/podcasts/ 

Pat Wright sits down with PostgreSQL veteran Hari Kiran – founder of OpenSource DB and co-organizer of PG Day Hyderabad, where this episode was recorded. They talk community building, mentoring the next generation of PostgreSQL contributors, and how a coffee chat with a friend turned into one of India's biggest PostgreSQL events.  For more on PG Day Hyderabad, head to https://2026.pghyd.in/  Listen or watch to every episode of the Redgate Simple Talk podcast at  https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/podcasts/ 

We catch up with Franck Pachot, a longtime database community figure who has moved through Oracle, CERN, Yugabyte, MongoDB and, most recently, the PostgreSQL team at Microsoft. Hear stories from Franck's varied career, learn what makes technical content genuinely useful to developers, how Postgres's MVCC and extension model differs from Oracle's, and what's really going on with Microsoft's growing family of PostgreSQL offerings (Flexible Server, Horizon DB, and DocumentDB).  Find Franck's written content at https://franckpachot.github.io/pages/  Listen or watch to every episode of the Redgate Simple Talk podcast at https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/podcasts/ 

How well do the Redgate Advocates know SQL Server? Find out in this quick-fire quiz, recorded live with an audience at SQL Saturday Day of Data Baton Rouge on July 18th!  Listen or watch to every episode of the Redgate Simple Talk podcast at https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/podcasts/ 

Grant is joined by SQL Server veteran and long-time Microsoft MVP, Hugo Kornelis, to talk all things SQL Server query tuning, execution plans, and more. You'll hear about some of the problems Hugo's encountered during his consultancy career, what SQL Server has in common with a highway, and Hugo's thoughts on AI – plus much more. Find Hugo at https://sqlserverfast.com/ Listen or watch to every episode of the Redgate Simple Talk podcast at https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/podcasts/

In a recent article, The Register suggested that SQL Server is "too lucrative to ditch, but too legacy to love" - but is that actually true?   With many years' SQL Server, PostgreSQL and Oracle experience between them, Steve Jones, Kellyn Gorman, Grant Fritchey, and Pat Wright offer their thoughts on the article, and the current state of SQL Server as a whole - including how it fares against other databases in 2026.  Read the full The Register article here.   DB-Engines: https://db-engines.com/en/  Listen or watch to every episode of the Redgate Simple Talk podcast at https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/podcasts/  Did you enjoy this episode and want to support us? Leave us a review or rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify! To review us on Apple Podcasts, simply head to our main show page (The Simple Talk Podcast) and scroll down until you see 'Ratings & Reviews.' From here, you can simply tap the 5 stars to rate us, or click 'Write a Review' to leave more detailed feedback! To rate us on Spotify, simply head to our main show page, hit the 'About' tab (to the right of 'Episodes'), and underneath the description you'll see our current rating in the left-hand corner. Tap that to leave a rating of your own! 

In this episode of the Redgate Simple Talk podcast, Kellyn Gorman is joined by veteran Data Platform Architect, David Klee, to talk all things SQL Server performance tuning. Learn why "it's slow" is the least useful thing anyone can tell a DBA, why you need a real baseline before diagnosing anything, and why a database is never 'just' a database - plus much more. Thanks to David for his time. You can find him at https://www.davidklee.net/ Listen or watch to every episode of the Redgate Simple Talk podcast at https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/podcasts/

Two major PostgreSQL community events took place recently: PostgreSQL Development Conference 2026 (Vancouver, BC, Canada), and PG DATA 2026 (Chicago, IL). Pat Wright and Kellyn Gorman attended both and, in this quick-fire episode, offer their thoughts and key takeaways from the events.  Recorded on-site at PASS Summit Europe in Frankfurt, Germany (June 11th, 2026).  PG Dev Conf 2026: https://2026.pgconf.dev/  PG DATA 2026: https://2026.pg-data.org/  Watch or listen to every episode of the Simple Talk podcast: https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/podcasts/