Indexing is important for improving performance, but do you know that a lack of indexes might actually cause things to stop working? Alok Dwivedi brings us a very interesting scenario where the lack of an index causes a problem with concurrency.  Read more...

The next time you are tempted to hammer a performance problem with hardware, why not instead invest that time in hammering and refining your SQL queries? There are rich rewards to be had.  Read more...

Enable Lock Pages in memory on Standard edition was ONLY an Enterprise feature until now. Read this article to see how you enable this setting in SQL Server.  Read more...

SQL WHERE clause optimization is important to get maximum performance from a query. If an index exists on a column you obviously want the query to use it...   Read more...

Change data capture is a new feature in SQL Server 2008 that provides an easy way to capture changes to data in a set of database tables so these changes can be transferred to a second system like a data warehouse. This document provides guidance on how to configure change data capture parameters to maximize data capture performance while minimizing the performance impact on the production workload. The scope of this document is limited to the capture of change data and the cleanup process. Querying the changed data is out of scope for this white paper.  Read more...

Whether a query uses Scan or Seek can have a big impact on the cost of excuting that query. This article examines when each is used and which is optimal.  Read more...

In this white paper we discuss two of the new features in SQL Server 2008, Star Join and Few-Outer-Row optimizations. We test the performance of SQL Server 2008 on a set of complex data warehouse queries designed to highlight the effect of these two features and observed a significant performance gain over SQL Server 2005 (without these two features).  Read more...

Partition alignment is a well documented best practice, but does it have any benefit on an HP EVA?  Read more...

Previous T-SQL best practices articles have discussed different coding styles that led to slow and fast query executions, and ways to minimize cached plans. This article will be an extension on those concepts, focusing on how the SQL Server optimizer tries to parameterize a query if it can, as well as how you can build your own parameterized query.  Read more...

Theoretical performance issue handling or handling theoretical performance issues from new author R. C. van Dijk.  Read more...

When created and maintained correctly, indexes help SQL Server retrieve data quickly. See how to ensure your SQL Server environment is running up to speed.  Read more...

An in-depth analysis on how to store IPv4 addresses to achieve maximum efficiency and performance in both storage and queries  Read more...

Disk partition alignment is a powerful tool for improving SQL Server performance. Configuring optimal disk performance is often viewed as much art as science. A best practice that is essential yet often overlooked is disk partition alignment. Windows Server 2008 attempts to align new partitions out-of-the-box, yet disk partition alignment remains a relevant technology for partitions created on prior versions of Windows.  Read more...

This article will provide some useful information to write a SP. I have emphasized on performance.  Read more...

Because Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services query and processing performance tuning is a fairly broad subject, this white paper organizes performance tuning techniques into the following three segments.   Read more...

This white paper provides step-by-step guidelines for diagnosing and troubleshooting common performance problems by using publicly available tools.  Read more...

SQL Server 2008 introduces a new feature, the Resource Governor, which provides enterprise customers the ability to both monitor and control the way different workloads use CPU and memory resources on their SQL Server instances. This paper explains several practical usage scenarios and gives guidance on best practices.  Read more...

The goal of this post is to understand the procedure cache and execution plans to ensure we use fewer resources and that queries run better. Better means higher throughput, more concurrency and fewer resources – as described by MVP Joe Webb during SQLTeach in Vancouver just last month.  Read more...

New author Nilav Ghosh brings us a performance tuning article to help your queries run better. This article examines how indexes can help reduce blocking.  Read more...

In this article, Edward Elliot shows us how to capture the types, size and location of SQL Server I/O requests.  Read more...

This article will provide some useful information to write a SP. I have emphasized on performance.  Read more...

This article describes a utility that allows you to inspect cached plans and extract information that can be useful in improving the performance of your SQL.  Read more...

New author Nilav Ghosh brings us a performance tuning article to help your queries run better. This article examines how indexes can help reduce blocking.  Read more...