Additional Articles

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External Article

Showplan Operator of the Week – BookMark/Key Lookup

Fabiano continues in his mission to describe the major Showplan Operators used by SQL Server's Query Optimiser. This week he meets a star, the Key Lookup, a stalwart performer, but most famous for its role in ill-performing queries where an index does not 'cover' the data required to execute the query. If you understand why, and in what circumstances, key lookups are slow, it helps greatly with optimising query performance.

2010-05-25

2,537 reads

Technical Article

Analyzing I/O Characteristics and Sizing Storage Systems for SQL Server Database Applications

Understanding how to analyze the characteristics of I/O patterns in the Microsoft® SQL Server® data management software and how they relate to a physical storage configuration is useful in determining deployment requirements for any given workload. A well-performing I/O subsystem is a critical component of any SQL Server application. I/O subsystems should be sized in the same manner as other hardware components such as memory and CPU. As workloads increase it is common to increase the number of CPUs and increase the amount of memory. Increasing disk resources is often necessary to achieve the right performance, even if there is already enough capacity to hold the data.

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2010-05-24

2,944 reads

Technical Article

Precompiling LINQ Queries

Did you know that by precompiling LINQ queries you might actually be degrading your app’s performance if you’re not careful? Julie Lerman explains how to ensure you’re not re-precompiling queries each time and losing the expected performance benefits across post-backs, short-lived service operations and other code where critical instances are going out of scope.

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2010-05-18

2,242 reads

Technical Article

Efficient SQL Server Indexing by Design

Having a good set of indexes on your SQL Server database is critical to performance. Efficient indexes don't happen by accident; they are designed to be efficient. Greg Larsen discusses whether primary keys should be clustered, when to use filtered indexes and what to consider when using the Fill Factor.

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2010-05-12

6,106 reads

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Symmetric Key Encryption

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Question of the Day

Symmetric Key Encryption

If I run this statement in SQL Server 2025, how is the password encrypted? 

CREATE SYMMETRIC KEY MySymmetricKey
WITH ALGORITHM = AES_256,
KEY_SOURCE = 'My secret key source passphrase',
IDENTITY_VALUE = 'My secret identity value'
ENCRYPTION BY PASSWORD = 'S&perS#cretP@ssword7';
GO

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