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How to Think Like the SQL Server Engine

You’re a developer or a DBA, and you’re comfortable writing queries to get the data you need. You’re much less comfortable trying to design the right indexes for your database server. In my totally free How to Think Like the Engine class, you’ll learn how the SQL Server engine looks at your indexes and builds your query results.

You’ll learn:

  • The differences between clustered and nonclustered indexes
  • How (and when) to make a covering index
  • The basics of execution plans

Print out this 5-page PDF built from Stack Overflow’s database pages. Sounds crazy, but having these pages in hand helps you understand these concepts. You can also download the slides.

How to Think Like the Engine: Written Version

Both the videos and the written articles cover the same basic topics – it just comes down to how you prefer to learn:

  1. How to Think Like the SQL Server Engine: Introduction
  2. Why Query Plans Can Look Different on Different Servers
  3. Adding an ORDER BY
  4. The Perils of SELECT *
  5. What Happens When You Run a Query Repeatedly
  6. Adding a Nonclustered Index
  7. So Index Seeks are Great, Right?
  8. What’s a Key Lookup?
  9. The Tipping Point: When a Scan Makes More Sense
  10. Using Statistics to Build Query Plans
  11. When Statistics Don’t Help
  12. Building Wider Indexes to Deal with Bad T-SQL
  13. Should Columns Go in the Index Key or Includes?
  14. Included Columns Aren’t Free
  15. Index Key Column Order Matters a Lot
  16. When a Seek Isn’t: Scan/Residual Predicates