This week is Thanksgiving in the United States, so I thought it fitting to write a quick blog on what I am thankful for as a DBA. These are in no particular order and feel free to respond with something you are thankful for. I’d love to hear it.

1. Glenn Berry’s Diagnostic Scripts- (B|T) Used these for years. Really a great set of scripts and explanations that we all should be grateful for.
2. Ola Hallengren’s (B) Maintenance scripts. Index Optimization, Backup, and Integrity Checks for all! They have become an industry standard and continue to get better and better.
3. RCSI (Read Committed Snapshot Isolation) –My Readers can stop blocking Writers! Thanks to Kendra Little (B|T) for this great blog.
4. SSMS Results to grid and copy with header- I do this a million and one times a day. Ctrl+Shift+C .
5. Query Store – Having the plan run stats and being able to force a plan, LOVE IT! Thanks Conor Cunningham and Microsoft for that one.
6. Availability Groups – Easy setup and trustworthy. And, well, I like the name better than Mirroring.
7. DMV’s (Dynamic Management Views)- Show me the money! It has all the SQL Server Internals goodies, mine for the taking.
8. Profiler– #ProfilerForLife nuff said, my most trusted friend.
9. Columnstore Indexes – I feel the need, the need for speed! Who doesn’t like up to 10x Query Performance gains and 10x the data compression?
10. Paul Randal’s Waits Library (B|T)– I can’t tell you how many times I’ve referred to this. So much useful information!
11. Adam Machanic’s SP_whosisactive (B|T) – This is my GO TO, for seeing what’s actively going on, it’s the first thing I run.
12. Sentry One Plan Explorer– Execution Plans on STEROIDS! Yes, please. Love the detail and ease of use.
13. RedGate’s SQL Prompt- My coding is downright ugly. With a quick Ctrl+K, Ctrl+Y my code is sleek and readable. Not to mention I love the code snippets.
14. Grant Fritchey’s (B|T) Execution Plans book- I can’t wait for 3^rd Edition, someone took my very loved highlighted, tabbed, marked up copy. I need another!
15. Power BI – It puts the slicing and dicing into the user’s hands, giving Management easy visualizations of their data for analysis. Less reports for me to write, yippie.  Thank you Microsoft.
16. dbatools – Great Power Shell Modules for migrating databases. No more doing it the hard way.

Last and most importantly I am grateful for #SQLFamily, Bloggers, and Twitter. I learn from you every damn day!

Happy Thanksgiving!

~Monica