- Steve Stedman / Mitchell Glasscock
- Topic: Database Health Monitor Rewards Program
- Recording Data: January 5th, 2026
- Listen on Spotify!
Stedman SQL Podcast Season 3 Episode 3 Database Health Monitor Rewards Program
In this episode of the Stedman SQL Podcast (Season 3, Episode 3), Steve Stedman and Mitchell Glasscock introduce the new Database Health Monitor Rewards Program, launched with Version 3 of Database Health Monitor. They explain how paid subscribers can unlock exclusive monthly rewards—including free SQL Server training courses like Aggregating Data, JOIN Types, and the T-SQL OUTPUT Clause, plus a 20-minute personalized configuration session with the Stedman team. As subscribers continue their membership, additional benefits roll out over time, such as advanced courses on blocking and deadlocking, indexing for performance, backups and recovery, common table expressions, performance tuning, and even one-on-one mentoring. The episode highlights how the rewards program turns a Database Health Monitor subscription into ongoing SQL Server education and professional growth, while helping DBAs and developers proactively monitor performance, avoid bottlenecks, and keep their SQL Servers running healthy and fast. They also preview the next episode on the “Seven Deadly Sins of Index and Statistics Maintenance” and encourage listeners to upgrade to Version 3 to take full advantage of the new rewards.
Podcast Transcript
Steve Stedman 00:16
Welcome to the Stedman SQL Podcast, season three, episode three. I’m your host, Steve Stedman, and today I’m joined by one of the Stedman Solutions team, Mitchell Glasscock, welcome Mitchell. Hey Steve. Glad to be here. Thanks for joining me. This is our third episode of season three, or our 43rd episode since we started the podcast. Thanks for joining. Check out some of these popular podcasts. If you’ve missed out on these previous episodes, please take a look at some of the most popular episodes from season one and season two. First off, we had our indexing episode, which was one of the most popular. And you can get that at stedman.us/episode2.4. Another popular one was the building your career episode. A short URL for that is stedman.us/episode2.22. Our third most popular episode was join types, and you can get that at stedman.us/episode1.12. All right. Well, this week’s topic is the Database Health Monitor rewards program, and this is something that we built in order to be able to thank loyal users with free courses, some extra training and other free bonuses. This was a feature that was added in version three, but before we get into the details, do you want to find out how to be a guest on our show? Are you interested in being a guest on the Stedman SQL podcast. If you are just reach out to us and we can talk about what topics, things you want to cover, or talk about anything relating to SQL server, Database Health Monitor or about our company. You can reach out to us at https://Stedmansolutions.com/guests or go to the podcast page and click on the guest link, fill out the form and find out if you’re going to be a guest on one of our future episodes. Okay, well, this is an exciting new feature that we added in Database Health Monitor version three, which came out a few months ago. And this is the rewards program, and this applies to any paying users. What exactly is the rewards program?
Mitchell Glasscock 02:26
So the rewards program is a way of us to just say thank you to anyone that has joined the Database Health Monitor community, and we’ll go over the things that we have that are already rewards. Each month, you can get a new reward through the rewards program, and then we have some upcoming ones that we’ll probably talk about soon.
Steve Stedman 02:49
Okay, great. So brief overview, if you’re not familiar with Database Health Monitor, well, you probably are, if you’ve been listening to the podcast, but in case you’re not, it’s a powerful SQL server monitoring tool that I’ve built, and then Mitch joined the team a couple years ago at Stedman solutions to help build it, and it basically is there to help DBAs spot performance issues, bottlenecks and SQL Server health problems, and to quickly find those and quickly address them. So the rewards program is for ongoing subscribers with exclusive courses and content each month, and it’s a great way to build your skills while using the tool. And like we said, this is part of the version three release, which the version three release had a lot of really new features, like DB assistance, enhanced reporting and much more. So what we’re going to do is jump into how the rewards program works. Like we mentioned, it’s only there for licensed users. Whether you’re paying for a monthly or an annual subscription, doesn’t matter, as long as you stay an active member, then over time, as long as you maintain that active license, you unlock new rewards about once a month for the first four months, and then more over time as well. We’re just four months into it right now, so we’re only going to show the beginning of it, but there will be more rewards that show up over time in the Database Health Monitor app. These show up under the reward section in the navigation tree. So the longer you stay subscribed, the more benefits you unlock. And the idea is, come back next month, or the month after or the month after that, and there’s going to be more rewards in this list for you to get some kind of a benefit. Now, the reason we’ve done this, it’s a sincere thank you from our team to you for helping support the application development and the development of Database Health Monitor by being a subscriber. Thank you for that. So what about benefits? What benefits do we have?
Mitchell Glasscock 04:55
So the first four months of benefits we have for the first month that once you’ve subscribed, you have the aggregating data course, which is one of our Stedman SQL school courses. And you get free access to that after you’ve been subscribed for a month. Month two, we have a 20 minute configuring Database Health Monitor tutorial with the Stedman’s team. And then month three, we have the JOINs type course, another Stedman SQL school course. And finally, in month four, we have the T SQL output clause course. And then, like we said mentioned earlier, there’ll be more coming out soon, over the next year.
Steve Stedman 05:31
Okay, so to claim this, it’s as simple as just going to this page that we’re showing on screen right now and clicking the claim now button, and that will kick out an email with all the details on how to get instant access to that benefit. If it’s the well, we’ll go into more details on the benefits in a minute, but if it’s a class that’s going to be your coupon code to access the class at no charge. So the rewards build over time, starting in November 2025 Well, why November 2025 Well, that’s when we released Database Health Monitor. So they grow over time, depending on when you started paying for Database Health Monitor, or November 2025 whichever is later. So if you sign up in June, by July, you’ll have one benefit by August. You’ll have two that you can use, and it just grows over time. So let’s jump into the details. But first, don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast. Hey, listeners, if you’re loving these deep dives and mind blowing insights on the Stedman SQL Podcast, imagine getting even more exclusive episodes behind the scenes, bonus content and premium interviews you won’t hear anywhere else. Head over to our YouTube channel right now and hit that subscribe button turn on notifications so you never miss out on the content dropping every week. Join 1000s already unlocking the full experience, and don’t get left behind. Subscribe on YouTube today. Okay, so let’s take a look at the first four months rewards. Then maybe we’ll come back and do this again next year with like the first 12 or 14 months of rewards at that point, first month, month one. Once you’re a paid user of Database Health Monitor, you’ll see this. You click the link and you get absolutely free our aggregating data course. This is one of our SQL shorts. It’s a quick course targeted on a specific feature and that SQL Server data aggregation. What all does that include Mitch?
Mitchell Glasscock 07:35
So this is the course on aggregating data in T SQL, which is stuff like sum, average, group by Windows functions and more. And this is great because it’s essential for reporting, analytics and performance tuning, which are all common tasks for any DBA or developer using SQL Server. Yep.
Steve Stedman 07:54
And this class really has two sections. One section is just the basics, and then the other is more advanced windowing functions. And if you’re not, if you’re not familiar, familiar with the windowing functions, that’s where you’re using some kind of an aggregate with the over clause, where you’re saying, aggregate this over something different than what you’re normally grouping by. There’s a lot of value there. If you’re not super familiar with this, you can get through the class pretty quick and learn some things along the way. It’ll help you write efficient queries and hopefully avoid some bottlenecks and productions as well. That’s number one on the list. Number 2, 20 minute configuring Database Health Monitor tutorial with the Stedman team. You mean we’re giving away 20 minutes of our time to help out anyone who needs help with this in Database Health Monitor Mitch, is that right? That’s true. So with this, when you click the link, you get to claim it, you will get a link to a special invite where you can schedule time on my calendar and Mitchell’s calendar, and one of us will be able to jump in to help you with anything you need and getting Database Health Monitors set up for about a 20 minute tutorial, if you’re just going to ask like, what does this mean? Or how do I make this work? Or why am I not seeing this? We can get through all those kind of things with either me or Mitchell or maybe someone else on the team over time, depending on how things go there. So why is this valuable?
Mitchell Glasscock 09:20
I think this is great one, because Database Health Monitor is such a deep tool. There’s so many functions to Database Health Monitor that if you don’t really know where to get started, or if you have a specific problem, we can point you in the right direction, in what reports are going to be most useful in your area, or what what’s going to best fit what you’re looking for. I should say it’s also great because Database Health Monitor is such a community driven product, so it’s great to meet with users get their thoughts on Database Health Monitor, and it helps drive future development for the product.
Steve Stedman 10:01
So part of that value is there’s a lot going on in Database Health Monitor, and we can help show you the specific areas that you need for your specific environment. You get personal insights from Mitchell and I, who have helped build a lot of these reports, and there’s no way to really get this elsewhere without well, I guess there is. You can buy our mentoring program, or you can do other things. But this is absolutely free for anyone using, any paid user of Database Health Monitor. Next we’re going to talk about month three, our free JOINs type course. This is one of my favorites that I’ve done, gosh, I’ve presented this at past Summit. In the past, I’ve done it at SQL Server users groups. I’ve done live streams on we didn’t we even did a podcast on this. But what this is, is it’s our in depth course, covering SQL JOINs. If you’ve seen my SQL JOIN types poster, it covers a lot of that. But Inner JOIN, outer JOINs, cross JOINs, self JOINs, and a lot of advanced JOINing scenarios. Why is this one valuable?
Mitchell Glasscock 11:04
The well, I’ll just say the SQL Server JOINs type poster is one thing that I’ll always keep coming back to. That’s one thing that I will always refresh myself on, and I will not lose the knowledge on it. But the JOINs type, course, is super valuable because it helps master JOINs, what prevents common querying mistakes, improves your performance and avoids Cartesian explosions?
Steve Stedman 11:29
Yep, wow. Cartesian explosions. That’s quite a mouthful there. I think that what that implies Cartesian product of JOINs that are going to bring in, like, way more data than you’re ever expecting. Understanding how your JOINs work correctly can make a big difference in that now, Mitch also mentioned the JOIN types poster, which is something we can you can buy online, that we sell, but there’s also a PDF version of it you can download. And so many people have downloaded this and just printed it out on a normal sized piece of paper and hung it up on the wall behind their monitor, or something like that that they can quickly reference. I know I have that in my office. Here, right behind my monitor, is the large poster of that. It’s great for intermediate users looking to level up your query writing. And if you ever, if you’re one of those people that ever looks at a query and thinks, Gee, I wonder what’s happening with that specific JOIN, or that cross apply, or outer apply, or something like that. This will help you understand all of that so you can better make smarter decisions when you’re creating queries going forward. All right, that’s one of our full courses, the JOIN type course. I forget exactly long. It’s probably over an hour’s worth of content. There maybe a couple hours.
But month four is one of our SQL shorts, which is one of our short classes, and it’s on the T SQL output clause. And I don’t know most people I talked to have not used the SQL server output clause, but this is one of those classes that I’ve had more people at the end of the class, or after I’ve shown someone how to do it, just say, Wow, I didn’t know SQL server could do that. And it’s one of those things that, after learning how to use the output clause, you’re going to want to use it quite a bit, quite a lot. So this is one of those things I don’t know you’ve done the output clause class, Mitch. What do you think of it?
Actually, I think the output clause class is one of my upcoming ones. It’s Oh, one that I done. That one just about to start actually, okay, well, I’m flying solo. Then on describing this one, yeah, that one’s all you, yep. So with the output clause, you can do some really cool things, like, normally, if you’re doing an update on an UPDATE statement, you don’t see what was updated, or you don’t see the before and after. You can get all of that with the output clause. Or one of the things we oftentimes see is like, if you want to move data from one table to another, you’ll select it from one and do a temp table and then put it in the other table, or maybe select it directly into the other table and then delete it from one well, that can all be in one single statement. If you’re using the output clause, you can say, delete from one table, output everything that was just deleted and insert that into another table. And it’s really useful for moving data or updating data. Super powerful for auditing, tracking changes or merging data without extra steps. So that’s one of those you need to be on month four in order to be able to claim that one. And yeah, totally all of these are totally free. We’re not asking anybody for anything extra on any of them. It’s just a way to be able to say thank you to the subscribers of Database Health Monitor, and just give you a little bit more value. So how about a word from our sponsors on Database Health Monitor? Since we’re here, is your SQL Server slowing down your business, slow queries, bottlenecks and unexpected issues, eating up your time, introducing database health. Monitor the powerful tool built by our team at Stedman solutions, get real time insights into performance with over 100 built in reports, index analysis, wait, stats tracking and proactive alerts, quickly diagnose and find problems before they impact your operations with an easy to use interface for DBAs and developers, monitor unlimited servers, tune queries and keep your databases running healthy and fast. Download a free trial today at Databasehealth.com and take control of your SQL server performance.
Steve Stedman 15:42
All right, so what’s next? And how do we maximize the rewards here? Well, there are future rewards coming. They may not be every single month, like the first four months, but there are more coming soon, and this is going to be at month six or month seven or month eight, or whatever month it is, but that’s after you’ve been using Database Health Monitor that long you get access to it. So here’s some of the upcoming rewards based on different demand, and some of my ideas on what I wanted to include. So one of our after month four rewards that’ll be coming soon is a daily, weekly monitor and Email Setup. And what this is, is we’ll give you guidance on configuring the automated email alerts from Database Health Monitor so that you can get a couple of things. One, you can get alerts from the system, but you can also get our daily or weekly email that will send you a report that gives you overall health assessment and overall performance assessment of your SQL servers. That’s one of those things that I think it’s normally I think it’s $1,000 a year for that, and you’re going to get that as for free as a Database Health Monitor subscriber. We’re working on a blocking and deadlocking course, and this is going to be a deep dive into identifying and analyzing and resolving blocking chains and deadlocks and to help with real world troubleshooting using Database Health Monitor. That’s going to be a really interesting course, it’s not yet created, but we’re going to be building that soon. And what’s next, Mitch.
Mitchell Glasscock 17:21
The next item that we’re looking at is indexing for performance. This is a an email based course, or, sorry, is this another one that we’re looking to add to the SQL school?
Steve Stedman 17:35
Yep, it’s a little bit different than the SQL school. So this one is an email course. And if you’ve seen my SQL performance email course, it’s basically you sign up for it and you get, each week an email with specific content on how to go do an exercise or how to practice or learn something that will help you with indexing or performance training. And then with this, there may also be an option there for a personal consultation along the way, but that one might be a separate reward as well. We’ve got a lot of these that we’re working on. And then next is the performance tuning class. That’s one of the bigger classes that I’ve built that covers a whole lot of stuff out of Database Health Monitor as well as a lot of just general performance tuning, things around indexing, wait stats, parameter sniffing and overall server tuning techniques that I think, is $199 course, and just for being a subscriber to Database Health Monitor, you’re going to have the opportunity to get that for free backup and recovery course, Mitch. You want to talk about that one?
Mitchell Glasscock 18:39
Yeah, this is another one that is on our stem and SQL school. So this one is a step by step strategy for building not only your most backup plans, but how to implement these backups and what to do when disaster strikes. So this is navigating all those disaster scenarios.
Steve Stedman 18:58
And the next one is our common tables expression course, which is a class on how to use CTEs or common table expressions, again, absolutely free way to write cleaner and more efficient queries, including the ability to do recursive CTEs with hierarchical data and alternatives to using sub queries. And I don’t know if you’ve been following me for long enough you know that CTEs is one of those things that I wrote a book on years ago, and it was one of the very first classes that I ever built. So this is one of those things that I don’t know. Some people say maybe I’m addicted to common table expressions or use them too often, but it’s a pretty cool feature. You might as well take advantage of it again. Free there as well, and then somewhere around the one year point, we’re going to have one hour of personal mentoring. This would be for those longer term subscribers, direct one on one team with me or someone on the team to tackle your toughest SQL challenges with that we may we’ll help you review queries or look at. Very plan optimizations or other things that you need in order to be able to improve the performance on your SQL Server. Now, Database Health Monitor, version three came out in November of 2025 and if you’re one of those people that’s still running an older version of Database Health Monitor, well you don’t get any of this. Sorry. You got to upgrade. You got to use the latest version in order to be able to take advantage of that. And in that version three release, we also had updated schema drift integration. We had updated reports, including some changes to, well, gosh, there were dozens of reports that were changed there, and a lot of enhancements to the quick scan report as well. So if you’re on the free version with limited instances for a limited trial, considering upgrading and with what Database Health Monitor costs, it’s almost cheaper to pay for Database Health Monitor and get all these things for free than it is to go buy these things individually. Well, it certainly is cheaper to do that.
So the other thing is, you want to check back regularly on that new reward section. It might be that today you look at it, and you’ve got two months worth of rewards there, and if tomorrow goes past your anniversary data when you signed up, you might have three months. There’s a lot going on with this rewards program, and we just really want to say thank you for being a Database Health Monitor, licensed, paying user, and we’re going to give you a whole bunch of bonus free stuff just for doing that. All right, yeah, quick recap. Then the Database Health Monitor program turns your subscription into ongoing education and just a way to say thank you for your loyalty, this will help build your SQL skills while keeping your servers healthy. And just want to make sure that you’ve updated to the latest version, as long as your title bar and Database Health Monitor shows version three and a title version three. Dot something. Then you know you’re on the latest version, you’ll be able to have or at least you’re on a version that can access this you can start or renew your license to check the rewards section. All right, next episode. Next episode is The Seven Deadly Sins of index and statistics maintenance. This is a big one. There’s a lot of stuff that you can do wrong around indexes and statistics, and we’re going to show you how to not do those and look at other options. Mitch, anything else to add or does that wrap things up?
Mitchell Glasscock 22:16
Wraps everything up. On my side, I’m looking forward to the next episode. Indexing is one of those things that I’m always working to improve on.
Steve Stedman 22:23
Yep, all right. Well, thank you everyone for listening. Please subscribe and like this episode and keep those databases healthy. Have a great day.
Steve Stedman 22:50
Thanks for watching our video. I’m Steve, and I hope you’ve enjoyed this. Please click the thumbs up if you liked it. And if you want more information, more videos like this, click the subscribe button and hit the bell icon so that you can get notified of future videos that we create.