Brent Ozar — creator of the SQL Server First Responder Kit and a longtime skeptic of AI for query tuning — recently published a workflow using ChatGPT with sp_BlitzCache to fix slow queries. This post explores his approach and how AI SQL Tuner Studio delivers a similar outcome with fewer steps.
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Why Brent Ozar’s AI pivot matters
For those that don’t know, Brent Ozar is one of the leading consultants focusing on SQL Server performance. He is well-known as the developer of the SQL Server First Responder Kit, a great set of scripts for diagnosing SQL Server issues.
He posted an article yesterday, “Get ChatGPT’s Advice On Your Queries with sp_BlitzCache“. He shared the following:
I vividly remember one gig where a client had been struggling with memory starvation for months, and on the call together, we identified the query with sp_BlitzCache, then pasted the query into ChatGPT. It found the query’s problem in minutes, rewrote the query to work around the problem, and then we got started testing the changes to make sure they worked the way we needed ’em to work.
Seeing Brent embrace AI reminds me a bit of the old “even Mikey likes it” Life cereal commercial. Everyone thought Brent would hate AI, but even Brent likes AI now.
Brent is now enhancing his tools to incorporate AI. Unfortunately, versions of SQL Server prior to SQL Server 2025 can’t access AI endpoints directly, so you need to take the tool output and paste it into your favorite AI tool.
A turnkey alternative for AI SQL Server tuning
If you want to roll up your sleeves and use Brent’s scripts, the enhancements that are coming are great. But, if you want a more turnkey approach that will give you results in minutes, consider one of the AI SQL Tuner Studio editions.
I’ve made enhancements to AI SQL Tuner’s index tuning process to bring in some additional details from the plan cache and adjusted the prompts to consider code changes as well as indexes. I also added instructions for it to consider columnstore indexes for tables with more than 1 million rows.
I did some testing with HammerDB and got some good results. I’ll do some additional testing and then post the new release shortly. Update 12/6/25: New release has been published.
See it in action
Take a look here for examples of the reports produced by AI SQL Tuner Studio.
Also check out a more in-depth comparison of AI SQL Tuner Studio and Brent’s First Responder Kit.
