Unlike fine wine, database statistics do not improve with age. I recently helped out with a client who was having issues with poor query performance on a SQL Server 2005 instance on very good hardware. After having them run my standard SQL Server 2005 Diagnostic Information queries, nothing glaringly obvious… Read more

I am trying to gather some information about some of the newer Intel and AMD processors as part of my research for some upcoming presentations.  I am looking at the possible correlation between TPC-E scores and Geekbench scores. Matching TPC-E scores to Geekbench scores, I see some indications of a…

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Here are the diagnostic queries that I ran during my presentation at SQL Saturday #51 in Nashville on August 21, 2010.

-- SQL Server 2008 and R2 Diagnostic Information Queries
-- Glenn Berry 
-- August 2010
-- http://glennberrysqlperformance.spaces.live.com/
-- Twitter: GlennAlanBerry

-- Instance level queries *******************************

-- SQL and OS…

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I wanted to post the first T-SQL script from my DMV Emergency Room presentation on August 21 in Nashville. This is designed to help you gather initial triage information about what is happening on your database instance, and then start to gather more detailed information about a particular aspect (such… Read more

Since I finished upgrading the last of my Production environment to SQL Server 2008 R2 running on Windows Server 2008 R2 a couple of weeks ago, I have been spending some time re-evaluating which indexes can take advantage of data compression in SQL Server 2008 R2. By design, there is… Read more

I just got back from speaking at SQL Saturday #51 in Nashville, which was a lot of fun. I’ll write some more about SQL Saturday #51 later today.  In the meantime, I wanted to compile a list of the different events where I will be speaking, either physically or… Read more

Microsoft has released Cumulative Update 11 for SQL Server 2005 SP3, which is Build 9.0.4309. There are only four fixes in this cumulative update, which could mean that SQL Server 2005 SP3 is a very mature, stable product, or it could mean that Microsoft is not investing as many… Read more

Microsoft has released Cumulative Update 3 for SQL Server 2008 R2 RTM, which is Build 10.50.1734. I count 29 fixes in this cumulative update, including several for SSMS and for managing SQL Azure databases from SSMS.

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I am a pretty big fan of SQL Server Data Compression, especially the enhanced version found in SQL Server 2008 R2 that includes Unicode compression. If you have tables or indexes that are good candidates for data compression (because they are large, relatively static, and show good compression savings), you… Read more

It has been a couple of months since I have posted an update to my  “SQL Server 2008 and R2 Diagnostic Information Queries”, which are a series of mostly DMV queries that are used to gather information about the configuration, health, and performance of an instance of SQL Server 2008… Read more

One easy to use and useful tool that you can use to compare relative performance between different machines that are running any version of Windows 7 is the Windows Experience Index (WEI) that comes with the operating system. After you install Windows 7, this tool runs for several minutes to… Read more

I will be one of the presenters for the 3rd installment of the 24 Hours of PASS: Summit Preview, which will be held on September 15-16, 2010. This free event will be held in two twelve hour blocks on two consecutive days (instead of 24 hours straight for the previous… Read more

According to all of their public pronouncements and the flurry of recent activity, Microsoft seems extremely serious about Windows  Azure and SQL Azure. If you are interested in playing around with Windows Azure and SQL Azure for free, you can try the Windows Azure Platform One Month Pass, by following… Read more

SQL Server 2008 introduced native backup compression and data compression as features that were only available in the Enterprise Edition SKU. In SQL Server 2008 R2, native backup compression was added to the Standard Edition SKU, while data compression remains an Enterprise Edition feature, although it was improved with the… Read more

I will be presenting four sessions for the SSWUG Ultimate Virtual Conference that will be held online October 20-22, 2010. I get to fly down to the studio in Tucson in a couple of weeks to record my sessions. During the actual conference, I will be available in a chat… Read more

There are a number of pretty useful DBCC Commands that have nothing to do with checking the consistency of a database (and thus were probably not written by Paul Randal).  I have put together a few of them in the script below.  The first command is the only one that… Read more