Performance and Tuning

External Article

Index Scans and Table Scans

  • Article

There are several things that you can do to improve performance by throwing more hardware at the problem, but usually the place you get the most benefit from is when you tune your queries. One common problem that exists is the lack of indexes or incorrect indexes and therefore SQL Server has to process more data to find the records that meet the queries criteria. These issues are known as Index Scans and Table Scans.

2025-06-06

Technical Article

Improve Query Performance when SQL Server Ignores Nonclustered Index

  • Article

Do you wonder why SQL Server ignores an index? Do you think about how you can deal with this problem? When you include too many columns in a query you decrease index selectivity. So, if you write a query like “Select * From …” the chance of choosing your nonclustered index will decrease.

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2025-03-03

SQLServerCentral Article

The Paradox of NOLOCK: How Dirty Reads Can Sometimes Be Cleaner

  • Article

Every SQL Server developer has heard it: "Don't use NOLOCK in production!" But this common rule isn't as simple as it seems. Sometimes, what seems like a bad practice can actually be the right choice. Let's explain what NOLOCK really does in simple terms. When you use NOLOCK, you're telling SQL Server "just show me […]

(9)

You rated this post out of 5. Change rating

2024-12-09

5,079 reads

Blogs

Why I stopped using MCP for AI coding stuff

By

Something has shifted quietly in 2026. The developers I know/respect—the ones actually shipping, not...

AI: Blog a Day – Day 5: Notebooks, Hugging face models and Fine Tuning

By

Continuing from Day 4 where we learned Encoder, Decoder, and Attention Mechanism, today we...

AI: Blog a Day – Day 4: Transformers – Encoder, Decoder, and Attention

By

Continuing from Day 3 where we covered LLM models open/closed and their parameters, Today...

Read the latest Blogs

Forums

Dynamic Unpivot

By pietlinden

I have a table I didn't design that has tons of repeating groups in...

Writing as an Art and a Job

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Writing as an Art and...

String Similarity II

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item String Similarity II

Visit the forum

Question of the Day

String Similarity II

What is the range for the result from the EDIT_DISTANCE_SIMILARITY() function in SQL Server 2025?

See possible answers