Calling AI from T-SQL: Real-Life Lessons from sp_BlitzCache

Proposed session for SQLBits 2026

TL; DR

Brent Ozar cuts through AI hype with real-world lessons from calling LLMs inside sp_BlitzCache. Learn how to pick models, write effective prompts, pass the right context, handle failures, and use AI safely from your own stored procedures.

Session Details

Brent Ozar hates the AI hype just as much as you do, but the thing is, there are useful real-world places where AI's advice is quick, easy, and cheap.

In this session, Brent Ozar shares hard-won, real-world lessons from integrating AI into the widely used open-source tools sp_BlitzCache and sp_BlitzIndex. He'll show how those stored procedures call AI models such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Anthropic, and even local models—then turn those responses into actionable performance advice.

You’ll see what worked, what failed, and what surprised him in real production environments. You'll learn how to choose the right model for the job, craft prompts that return useful answers, decide what additional context to send (and what to leave out), and see how to safely integrate AI calls into dynamic SQL. You’ll even learn how to handle API failures, unpredictable responses, and the very human support questions that came up once real DBAs started using AI-assisted performance tuning.

If you’re curious about calling AI from your own stored procedures—but want practical guidance, realistic expectations, and enterprise-ready patterns—this session will give you a clear, usable roadmap.

3 things you'll get out of this session

Learn how to pick a model and craft a good prompt Understand what context needs to be sent along with the prompt Learn how to integrate it all with dynamic SQL

Brent Ozar's other proposed sessions for 2026

20 Years of the Cloud: What Changed, What Didn’t, and What’s Next - 2026

AI in Your Career: Sidekick, Hero, or Villain? - 2026

Pokémon Battle, Choose Your Index: You Can’t Have Them All - 2026

The Big Red Button: How to Use sp_Kill - 2026

Watch Brent Tune a Query in SQL Server 2025 - 2026

Brent Ozar's previous sessions

300-Level Guide to Career Internals: Planning Your Career

A roadmap of options for your career.

Fragmentation Explained in 20 Minutes

What do index rebuilds and defrags really do?

Fundamentals of Stored Procedures

How to write stored procedures that have a high likelihood of performing well and are easy to troubleshoot.

300-Level Guide to Career Internals: Planning Your Career

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500-Level Guide to Career Internals: Building a Brand

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Deadlocks: Lets Do One, Understand It, and Fix It

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"But It Worked in Development!" 3 Hard Performance Problems

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Easy Performance Tuning: an Intro to Wait Statistics

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Virtualization and SAN Basics for DBAs

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SQL Server Storage - 1,000GB Level

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