Fundamentals of Index Tuning 2026

Fundamentals of Index TuningYou’re comfortable writing T-SQL queries, and now you want to make ’em faster – without changing the queries themselves.

In this course, you’ll learn:

  • How to design indexes for a query without looking at its execution plan
  • How to pick the order of keys in an index
  • How query parameter values can change which index is better
  • Where to find index recommendations using query plans, DMVs, and sp_BlitzIndex
  • How SQL Server’s index recommendations are built, and why they’re often wrong

Note: this course does not cover columnstore, In-Memory OLTP, XML, or spatial indexes. (Nothing against those – they’re just beyond fundamentals.)

Changelog for 2026-07-13: First live class rotation for 2026! Lots of changes:

  • “Good Defaults for New Tables” chapter – all new
  • “How to Visualize Indexes” chapter – all new
  • “Designing Indexes at Scale” chapter – all new, some taken from Mastering Index Tuning, some new about doing AI-driven index analysis
  • “How to Maintain Databases in 2026” chapter – all new, and I’m really excited about the new animations I built for this one
  • “Recap” chapter – all new

Even if you’ve been through Fundamentals of Index Tuning before in prior years, you’re going to want to restart this one from scratch.

Introductions

I introduce myself, the other attendees, and our goals for the class.