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Every Scooby-Doo episode has one thing in common — there’s always a fake ghost. Sometimes, that “ghost” is really just a guy in a mask trying to scare everyone with smoke machines and spooky sounds. In the SQL Server world, this ghost appears as the canned-query consultant. You’ve seen them. They roll in with a big name and an even bigger slide deck.

Welcome back, my fellow sleuths, to my mystery-inspired blog series! I’m having a ton of fun writing these, and I hope you’re enjoying the ride through SQL Server’s haunted hallways as much as I am. For this one, the “ghost” isn’t a person in a mask — it’s AI. AI has burst onto the SQL Server scene like a new member of Mystery Inc., promising to solve every problem, write all your code, and tune every query.

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If there’s one thing every Scooby-Doo episode teaches us, it’s that solving mysteries is a team skill. The gang doesn’t stumble onto answers by luck (well… except when Scooby and Shaggy fall into secret passages). They solve the case because they know how to spot the clues and put them together. Performance tuning in SQL Server works the same way. If you don’t know where to look—or how to interpret the trail of breadcrumbs—you’ll spend more time running from shadows than unmasking the real villain.

If there’s one thing every Scooby-Doo episode teaches us, it’s that solving mysteries is a team skill. The gang doesn’t stumble onto answers by luck (well… except when Scooby and Shaggy fall into secret passages). They solve the case because they know how to spot the clues and put them together. Performance tuning in SQL Server works the same way. If you don’t know where to look—or how to interpret the trail of breadcrumbs—you’ll spend more time running from shadows than unmasking the real villain.

Every Scooby-Doo adventure has its running gags. Shaggy and Scooby bolt from every ghost in sight, Velma’s always losing her glasses, and Scrappy jumps in yelling, “Let me at ‘em!” But in this episode, Scrappy’s favorite joke is about a villain he calls Jason. Of course, Jason isn’t really a monster at all—it’s JSON, the data type we’ve been wrangling inside SQL Server and pretty much everywhere else across our technology stacks.

No Scooby-Doo story is complete without footprints leading to a hidden passage. In SQL Server 2025, those footprints point us straight toward the next big feature: optimized locking. And like any good sleuth, we’re going to follow the trail step by step. But first, flip the levers that open the secret door: Turn on ADR before you hunt. Think of…

Every Scooby-Doo mystery starts with a haunted house, a strange villain, and a trail of clues. With SQL Server 2025 now reaching its first Release Candidate (RC0), it feels just like stepping into that creepy old mansion—except this time the mystery isn’t about ghosts, it’s about uncovering the powerful new features that go way beyond AI hype. And trust me, the clues are worth following.

Every Scooby-Doo mystery starts with a haunted house, a strange villain, and a trail of clues. With SQL Server 2025 now reaching its first Release Candidate (RC0), it feels just like stepping into that creepy old mansion—except this time the mystery isn’t about ghosts, it’s about uncovering the powerful new features that go way beyond AI hype. And trust me, the clues are worth following.

One thing I’ve always loved about the Scooby-Doo cartoon is that he never solved a mystery alone. Scooby and Shaggy could sniff out a clue between snacks, but it always took the rest of the Mystery Inc. gang to crack the mystery. Velma helped with her smarts, Fred with the traps, and Daphne with spotting the overlooked details—all of them used their skills to actually catch the villain.

(Continuing my Scooby theme 😊, I am on a roll) Zoinks! I feel like I’ve been chasing this ghost for years, and Microsoft finally pulled off the mask. With SQL Server 2025, we finally have what so many...

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in consulting, it’s that SQL Server, and other database performance tuning isn’t just about faster queries—it’s directly tied to your bottom line in the cloud. Databa...

Guest article by Michael Roth

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