Tony Davis Basic SQL Server Performance Troubleshooting For Developers The speed of a slow SQL Query can almost always be improved. In SQL Server, the query optimizer determines the... 14 August 2015 39 min read
Fabiano Amorim Never Ignore a Sort Warning in SQL Server It is always bad news if your SQL queries are having to use the SORT operator. It is worse news... 18 March 2015 9 min read
Dennes Torres SQL Server Index Scan: How to Find & Fix Scan Problems Find and fix SQL Server index scan problems using plan cache analysis. Covers identifying scans with DMVs, converting scans to... 10 March 2015 25 min read
Jonathan Watts The Promise – and the Pitfalls – of In-Memory OLTP When SQL Server 2014 was released, it included Hekaton, Microsoft's much talked about memory-optimized engine that brings In-Memory OLTP into... 04 February 2015 7 min read
Michael K Campbell The Importance of Caching Performance tuning and optimization definitely have their place in minimizing SQL Server Licensing costs - by helping keep CPU utilization... 04 February 2015 15 min read
Grant Fritchey SQL Server Execution Plans for Developers: Query Tuning Guide by Grant Fritchey Grant Fritchey explains why SQL Server developers need to read execution plans: identify N+1 problems from ORMs, diagnose poorly designed... 12 January 2015 31 min read
Dwain Camps The Performance of Traversing a SQL Hierarchy Dwain Camps show that, depending on the size and characteristics of some hierarchical data, six different methods of traversal can... 28 April 2014 16 min read
Robert Sheldon 14 SQL Server Indexing Questions You Were Too Shy To Ask One of the first things one needs to understand well about SQL Server is indexes, but somehow many of the... 25 March 2014 22 min read
Joshua Feierman Applying The Scientific Method to SQL Server Performance Tuning Database administrators tend to rely more on science than intuition, and may therefore seem exasperatingly cautious to other IT people.... 10 March 2014 14 min read
Fabiano Amorim Fixing Cache Bloat Problems With Guide Plans and Forced Parameterization Imagine it. You've been asked to fix a dire performance problem with a SQL Server database. You find a severe... 20 February 2014 10 min read
Gail Shaw SQL Server Deadlocks: Types, Causes & Prevention Guide Complete guide to SQL Server deadlocks with reproducible examples. Covers bookmark deadlocks, key-range deadlocks, cascade deadlocks, deadlock graphs, DEADLOCK_PRIORITY, and... 16 January 2014 55 min read
Alex Kuznetsov Lessons Learned from Six Years of Agile Database Development Alex Kuznetsov describes the agile principles, techniques and tools that allowed his development team to make frequent database refactoring a... 19 November 2013 26 min read
Nigel Rivett The ETL from Hell – Diagnosing Batch System Performance Issues Too often, the batch systems that underlie a lot of database processing just grow without conscious design. When runs start... 15 October 2013 17 min read
Seth Delconte Introduction to SQL Server Filtered Indexes SQL Server filtered indexes can save space and improve performance if they are used properly. Under what circumstances can they... 19 April 2013 13 min read
Erin Stellato Managing SQL Server Statistics Accurate statistics about the data held in tables are used to provide the best execution strategy for SQL queries. but... 03 April 2013 31 min read
Fabiano Amorim Join Reordering and Bushy Plans Normally, the query Optimiser won't consider 'bushy' plans, where both operands to a join operator could be intermediate results from... 05 March 2013 17 min read
Eugene Philipov Comparing multiple rows insert vs single row insert with three data load methods The performance of 'extract, transform, load' (ETL) processes for large quantities of data can always be improved by objective testing... 21 February 2013 15 min read
Grant Fritchey SQL Server Statistics Questions We Were Too Shy to Ask If you need to optimise SQL Server performance, it pays to understand SQL Server Statistics. Grant Fritchey answers the 18... 12 February 2013 17 min read
Louis Davidson Tim Ford SQL Server Index Tuning with DMVs: sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats, Missing Index Details, and Operational Stats Using SQL Server DMVs to tune your indexing strategy - identifying unused indexes (sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats), finding operational hotspots including latching and... 11 October 2012 42 min read
Grant Fritchey Seven T-SQL Performance Anti-Patterns: Wrong Data Types, Non-Sargable WHERE, Multi-Statement UDFs, NOLOCK, Query Hints, RBAR, Nested Views Seven classic T-SQL performance anti-patterns that cause slow queries: wrong data types forcing implicit conversions, functions in ON/WHERE clauses blocking... 31 July 2012 15 min read
