When you need to measure how long a query takes and how many resources it uses, STATISTICS TIME and STATISTICS IO are great tools for interactive testing in SQL Server. I use these settings constantly when tuning indexes and query.
I like SQL Server’s new Live Query Statistics feature a lot for testing and tuning large queries. One of my first questions was whether this could replace using actual execution plans, or if it’s useful to use both during testing.
Finding: Both are useful. And both can impact query performance.
Never, ever, disable backups to fix a performance problem.
If you’re not having a performance crisis, you might look at that sentence and say, “Wow, that’s super dumb! Who would ever do that?”
Well, a lot of people, actually. It’s pretty common.
SQL Server 2016’s new Query Store feature makes it easier than ever for DBAs and developers to identify the most important queries to tune– and perhaps apply a quick fix by pinning an execution plan.
Hindsight is everything. I was lucky to be trained by a great team of DBAs back when I first started with SQL Server. But it’s hard to know exactly what you really need to know, particularly as new tools are becoming available.
Wednesday, May 4, 2016 Liverpool Exhibition Centre One day session* *£349 until April 9, 2016. £399 thereafter – This training day has sold out!
I will be presenting this session in a Training Day at the SQLBits conference in Liverpool, UK. Reserve your seat for this one day session here.
Recompile hints have been tough to love in SQL Server for a long time. Sometimes it’s very tempting to use these hints to tell the optimizer to generate a fresh execution plan for a query, but there can be downsides.
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