If you’re joining Erik & me at our SQLBits precon, Expert Performance Tuning for SQL Server 2016 & 2017, you’ll be able to follow along with the demos on your laptop. We’re going to be showing you some common and not-so-common query anti-patterns, and explaining how they’re easier to solve with SQL 2016 & 2017.

We’re also giving you two workloads to troubleshoot: an easy set, where the queries are named with the anti-patterns they exhibit, and a not-so-easy set – where you have to figure out the problems yourself. You can work through these labs as we talk about the anti-patterns in class, and you can continue working through ’em after the conference.

To prep, here’s what you need – and we’ll also distribute USB drives with this stuff before class, but if you’ve already got it done, then you’ll be able to network with us & the other attendees before class starts:

SQL Server 2016 with Service Pack 1 or SQL Server 2017 with Cumulative Update 3 – these two updates add a lot of performance tuning capabilities, and our demos are going to flat-out require those patches. If you’re not patched, the demos simply won’t work.

SSMS 17.4 – Microsoft’s been adding all kinds of goodies in SSMS, too.

StackOverflow2010 (1GB zip) – this is a scaled-down version of the StackOverflow public data dump. It has exactly the same schema, but it only has data from the first few years of Stack (2008-2010), so it’s only 10GB in size. (You could actually follow along with the full-sized >100GB version too if you had a really beefy laptop, but it will take much longer for your indexes & queries to finish, so we’re using the smaller version for the live classes.). Remember to bump the compatibility level up to whichever version you’re following along on.

SQLQueryStress – open source load test app that lets you run lots of queries at once. If you’d like to learn more about it, here’s how I use it, and here’s the Github repo. It’s maintained by @ErikEJ, a Data Platform MVP from Denmark who’s definitely worth a Twitter follow.

Our First Responder Kit – download & install our scripts. Optionally, if you want to use the Power BI Dashboard for DBAs, then you’ll also need to install the Power BI Desktop, and set up the sp_BlitzFirst Agent jobs to collect data on your laptop during class. That part really is totally optional.

Join the Slack chat room – in large events, we handle Q&A and attendee chat using the SQL Server community chat. If you’re not already in it, get a free instant invite, and then join the #sqlbits-tuning room.

We’re excited! See you in London. If you can’t make it there, we’ve also got an online version of the course, too.