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 this series of videos, you’ll learn how the SQL Server engine looks at your indexes and builds your query results.
In just one hour, 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 is absolutely critical to understanding these concepts.
Next Steps
When you’re ready to learn more, check out my one-day online course, Fundamentals of Index Tuning. 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