Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization in SQL Server 2022
Learn about a new feature of SQL Server 2022 - Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization(PSPO)
2025-09-15
1,735 reads
Performance and Tuning
How SQL Server 2025’s Optional Parameter Plan Optimization Works
SQL Server 2025 improved PSPO to handle multiple predicates that might have parameter sensitivity, and that’s great! I love it when Microsoft ships a v1 feature, and then gradually iterates over to make it better. Adaptive Memory Grants were a similar investment that got improved over time, and today they’re fantastic.
2025-07-02
Azure SQL Performance Tuning: Mastering Indexes, Partitioning, and Clustered Columnstore
Learn a few ways to improve performance in your Azure SQL Databases through better indexing, partitioning, and columnstore index consideration.
2025-06-09
3,429 reads
Index Scans and Table Scans
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
Improve Query Performance when SQL Server Ignores Nonclustered Index
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.
2025-03-03
Partitioning Data in Microsoft Fabric to Improve Performance for Lakehouses, Warehouses, and Pipelines
Learn how to implement data partitioning within Microsoft Fabric to improve performance for Lakehouses, Warehouses, and Pipelines.
2025-01-13
SQL Server OPTION RECOMPILE for Simple Queries
Learn about SQL Server OPTION RECOMPILE and if used on simple, frequently executed queries if it causes excessive CPU usage.
2025-01-08
The Paradox of NOLOCK: How Dirty Reads Can Sometimes Be Cleaner
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 […]
2024-12-09
5,079 reads
Distributed Monoliths
What is a distributed monolith vs. a microservice architecture? Steve has a few thoughts today.
2024-12-06
158 reads
Should That Be One Update Statement or Multiple?
Let’s say we have a couple of update statements we need to run every 15 minutes in the Stack Overflow database, and we’ve built indexes to support them:
2024-11-20
Blogs
AI: Blog a Day – Day 6: Embeddings – How AI Understands
By Vinay Thakur
Continuing from Day 5 where we covered notebooks, HuggingFace and fine tuning AI now...
The Book of Redgate: Mistakes
By Steve Jones
This is kind of a funny page to look at. The next page has...
ADF Pipeline Debugging Fails with BadRequest – The Sequel
A while ago I blogged about a use case where a pipeline fails during...
Forums
Dynamic Unpivot
I have a table I didn't design that has tons of repeating groups in...
Writing as an Art and a Job
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Writing as an Art and...
String Similarity II
Comments posted to this topic are about the item String Similarity II
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