Today at SQL Saturday #220 in Atlanta I presented a new brand new session, ''SQL Server Query Plan Analysis: The 5 Culprits That Cause 95% of Your Performance Headaches.'' This session is designed to help people quickly analyze query plans and find likely culprits without being query tuning experts; I find that in a huge number of cases the root ...

A week ago I gave my session on the subject. It is only first part of the two – second will be next time when there is an open slot. Demos from my session are available here.

I am super-excited to visit New Orleans next month for Microsoft TechEd; it will be my sixth time speaking at the show. My session takes an in-depth look at some of the techniques I've developed for using SQLCLR modules -- and some of the great performance gains I've been able to achieve. Hope to see you in NOLA! If you're not attending the ...

Let's talk about database application benchmarking.This is a skill set which, in my opinion, is one of the major differentiators between a journeyman-level DBA and a true master of the trade. In this article published in my monthly column at Database Trends & Applications magazine, I'll give you a brief introduction to TPC benchmarks and, ...

Storage has changed dramatically over the last three years driven by SSD developments. Most of the key components necessary for a powerful storage system are available and the cost is highly favorable for direct placement of data files. Some additional infrastructure elements could greatly enhance the flexibility of storage systems with ...

I have just published a four-part series for SQLPerformance.com on the Halloween Problem. Some of you will never have heard of this issue, and those that have might associate it only with T-SQL UPDATE queries. In fact, the Halloween problem affects execution plans for INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE and MERGE statements. This is a topic I have been ...

One of the things that separates a good programmer from a great one is a firm understanding about what is going on inside the computer. For some programming languages, it is very obvious what is going on inside the computer because you are working at a very low level. For example, if you are a C/C++ programmer writing an OS, you will know a lot ...

It’s very easy to get in the habit of imagining the way that a query should work based on the Logical Order of query processing – the idea that the FROM clause gets evaluated first, followed by the WHERE clause, GROUP BY, and so on – finally ending with whatever is in the SELECT clause. We even get in the habit of creating indexes that focus on ...

I'm doing two new webcasts next week on Wednesday, December 19th, one in the morning and the other after lunch.   SSDs are a Game Changer for SQL Server Storage No, session is not exclusively about SSDs.  But this is my first session on IO and storage tuning that emphasizes SSDs over hard disks.  As Bob Dylan said ''Times, they ...

Recently sp_blitz procedure on one of my OLTP servers returned alarming notification about high latency on one of the disks (more than 100ms per IO). Our chief storage guy didn’t understand what I was talking about – according to his measures, average latency is only about 15ms. In order to investigate the issue, I’ve recorded 2 snapshots of ...