People want to make things faster. It’s in our nature as IT professionals. What are you tuning for? I’ve been asking that a lot later. I have to sit back and ask some very basic questions to try to see where people’s IT-related pain is at. What is your end goal? In my world, I…
Category: Performance Tuning
Time Zones are a Drag ... Seriously
Time Zones were definitely being a drag today. I got an email from one of the developers at work asking about the performance difference between 2 queries. The only difference between the 2 queries is that one of them uses the AT TIME ZONE clause that was added in SQL Server 2016. I have not…
Why shouldn’t I shrink my database data file?
A while back I did a post about why you shouldn’t shrink your data file. This one is going to be similar in some ways, different in others. TL;DR: It’s pretty pointless and will almost certainly cause performance issues. Let’s start by asking why you might want to shrink your data file. It’s too big…
5 Tips for Friday: Waits and Queues
This Friday I want to talk about some best practices for troubleshooting queries using waits and queues. Waits and queues are excellent tools for trying to figure out why a query is running slower than you think it should be running. When a query has to wait for some reason, the query enters a suspended…
5 Tips for Friday: Massively Parallel Queries
My day-to-day jobs deals mostly with performance tuning queries that run massively parallel. Like hundreds or thousands of the same query with different parameter values. With a normal query, 1 extra second of run time does not matter much. If the query has 2000 versions running at the same time, that’s an extra 2000 seconds…
Which is the performance killer: SELECT INTO or INSERT INTO?
There are many ways to kill performance in a script or stored procedure. However, not many think about the possibility that adding columns to a temporary table can kill performance. Here, I’m going to show you how a simple design decision – using INSERT vs ALTER TABLE – can have a huge impact on your procedure…
5 Tips for Friday: Transaction Log
For this week’s 5 Tips for Friday, I want to talk about some best practices for the transaction log. The transaction log in SQL Server is a critical component of a database, and it can affect performance and recoverability of the database. It warrants special care and maintenance. Back it up often: The goal with…
5 Tips for Friday: Query Tuning
Time for another 5 Tips for Friday. Truth be told, I almost forgot that it was Friday so this week’s post is coming late int he day. This week’s fast, fun tips are all about tuning queries. Look at current waits, not total waits: I see it asked time and time again in the forums…
PASS Summit 2017 Precon – Virtual SQL Servers: Right to Ludicrous Speed
PASS has continues to ramp up the plans for the PASS Summit in Seattle this October, and my precon session, “Virtual SQL Servers – Right to Ludicrous Speed” has a few open slots for this Tuesday session. This topic is near and dear to my heart, and I’m thrilled to be able to present to the…
SQL Saturday Minnesota Preconference Training Session
This is just a quick reminder to encourage you to attend my next round of all-day precon training session at the upcoming SQL Saturday in Minnesota on Friday, October 6 called ‘The Complete Primer to SQL Server Infrastructure and Cloud‘. The focus of the course is to help those new to the enterprise server infrastructure concepts become familiar with the concept…