How SQL Server compiles, optimizes, and executes individual queries.
573 associated posts292 primary posts
Building an execution plan is a lot like going shopping. Before I leave the house, I need to think about a few things: How many items do I need? I take a glance at my grocery list to see roughly how many things I'm shopping for. What stores am I going to visit? I can't…
The fastest query is one you never execute. The premise is that one of the slowest parts of starting up an application isn't starting the application itself, it's loading the initial application state. This can become a problem when you're loading many copies of your application on many servers, especially you're in the cloud and…
So you're lazy and you're company's broke - what to do? Here's my favorite free downloads to help manage SQL Server: Understand execution plans with SQL Sentry Plan Explorer - I dunno about you, but viewing execution plans in SQL Server Management Studio is a pain in my rear. The scrolling sucks, the cost numbers…
StackOverflow went through a few infrastructure upgrades this week. Jeff Atwood blogged about the changes, and Kyle Brandt goes into more detail. Here's a short recap of some of the SQL Server changes: Changed physical server models (from IBM/Lenovo to Dells) Went from two quad-core Xeons to two six-core Xeons Enabled hyperthreading (so it looked…
People love to search. Google has us addicted to fast, easy search functions. Users expect every application to have a built-in blazing-fast search functionality. To pull that off, developers build search queries that let users enter a string, and we ask SQL Server to find matches. For example, say our users need to find some…
Crystal meth helps you lose weight and feel better about yourself. It's true. Wikipedia says so. Sure, the side effects of methamphetamine are more than just anorexia and euphoria, but if you're looking to be an upbeat, skinny person, meth gets the job done. SQL Server has a couple of similar features that might make…
If you're hiring someone who will be storing data in a database, here's how to find out if they know what they're doing. Includes questions like, "Explain referential integrity and where it can be enforced," and "What's the fastest way to get a thousand records into the database?"
My gauge of an amazing book is simple: if I've got a question, and I reach for the book BEFORE I search the web, then it's an amazing book. Several times in the last two weeks, I reached for this book first.
StackOverflow users often ask, "I've got this query that runs slow - can you help?" Here's a few tips to get better, faster answers, including getting the execution plan and relevant Perfmon data.
Whew - the Microsoft folks really came through on this one and tracked down the problem pretty quickly. I want to personally thank Denis Churin, Nikita Shamgunov and Sundaram Narayanan for their detailed investigation into the issue and helping us get it fixed. I'm going to explain the issue to help anybody else get through…
This month's Redmond Mag glows about some new features in SQL 2008, and yes, it does have a lot of cool tricks up its sleeve. But before you go upgrading your servers to get those new features, there's one thing you need to know. New versions of SQL Server are not always faster for every…
I've mentioned Jeff Atwood of CodingHorror.com a few times over the years here, and it bears repeating: he writes a great blog for developers, and DBAs need to read it too. I also follow him on Twitter, and a couple of weeks ago he mentioned he was having problems deciphering execution plans: Holy cow -…
Here's my favorite SQL Server books for 2016-2014:
T-SQL Fundamentals - (updated for SQL 2016) - don't be fooled by this "fundamentals" title, because everybody who writes T-SQL queries needs this book. It's the manual we should have been given when we started, and everyone's going to learn something about concurrency, performance, and updates here.
