It’s not difficult to set up an extended event session, but reviewing and saving the data can be complex. In this article, Edward Pollack demonstrates how to collect extended event data.… Read more
SQL Server perfmon counters provide a wealth of information about performance. In this article, Fabiano Amorim shows how current wisdom about one counter, SQL Compilations/sec, can sometimes be misleading.… Read more
Monitoring SQL Server for performance is a critical part of a DBA’s job. In this article, Edward Pollack explains some of the SQL Server performance monitor data and how to collect it.… Read more
SQL Server performance tuning can seem overwhelming when you don’t know where to start. In this article Robert Sheldon explains 9 best practices for performance tuning. … Read more
Edward Pollack demonstrates how SQL Server plan cache mining can uncover a wealth of information to help with troubleshooting performance issues. … Read more
Out-of-control tempdb growth must be managed to keep the server running. Monica Rathbun gives her strategy to handle unexpected tempdb growth. … Read more
Well tuned storage is essential for SQL Server performance. In this article, Robert Sheldon explains the metrics that are important to watch. … Read more
In this article, Edward Pollack describes some of the issues when querying against remote data sources. He covers remote SQL Servers and also connecting to a PostgreSQL database.… Read more
Computed columns may be the cause of hard to track down performance issues. In this article, Robert Sheldon reviews the issues and some ways to get around them.… Read more
All queries run fast against columnstore indexes, right? In this article, Edward Pollack demonstrates some query patterns that don’t perform well and how to get around the issues.… Read more
In this article of this series, Edward Pollack demonstrates the maintenance of columnstore indexes. He also takes a look at nonclustered columnstore and memory-optimized columnstore indexes.… Read more
In the second article of this series, Edward Pollack demonstrates some ways to design and populate a columnstore index to get even better performance. … Read more
Table variables can cause performance issues with joins when they contain a large number of rows. In SQL Server 2019, Microsoft has improved how the optimizer works with table variables which can improve performance without making changes to your code. In this article, Greg Larsen explains how this feature works and if it really does make a difference.… Read more
Most advice you see online about heaps is to avoid them. In this article, Uwe Ricken describes the basics of heaps so that you can determine when heaps are the best choice. … Read more
Microsoft introduced Columnstore with SQL Server 2012 and have improved the feature in every version since then. You may be wondering why they are different than traditional indexes and how they work. In this series, Edward Pollack explains the architecture of Columnstore indexes. In future articles in the series, he will describe best practices for Columnstore.… Read more
This marks the third year that Redgate have launched a survey to better understand how organisations monitor their databases. This year, 971 database professionals from around the world responded. Here are some of the key insights from the survey: Estates are growing more than ever Companies who reported over 1,000 SQL Server instances grew 9% … Read more
When the optimizer doesn’t estimate the correct amount of memory for a query, either memory is wasted that could be used for other processes or some operations will spill to disk. Microsoft has added Memory Grant Feedback to help overcome this issue. In this article, Greg Larsen explains what you need to know about this new feature. … Read more
Because of its many roles, tempdb is the source of performance issues in SQL Server, and there are recommended configuration changes to mitigate this. In this article, Fabiano Amorim demonstrates another issue with tempdb performance that you probably didn’t know about. … Read more
Microsoft introduced several features called Intelligent Query Processing for SQL Server in 2017 and 2019 that can improve performance without making changes to code. In this article, Greg Larsen demonstrates the feature Batch Mode on Rowstore. … Read more
Subscribe for more articles
Fortnightly newsletters help sharpen your skills and keep you ahead, with articles, ebooks and opinion to keep you informed.
