SQL Server DBCC Commands: DBCC DROPCLEANBUFFERS

DBCC DROPCLEANBUFFERS is a DBCC command in Microsoft SQL Server that can be used to remove clean buffers from the buffer pool, which is a region of memory used by the database engine to store data pages read from disk. Removing clean buffers from the buffer pool can be useful for testing the performance of a query or for simulating a cold cache scenario, where the data pages needed by the query are not in the buffer pool and must be read from disk.

To use DBCC DROPCLEANBUFFERS, you do not need to specify any arguments. Simply execute the command in a query window connected to the database you want to remove the clean buffers from.

Here is an example of how to use DBCC DROPCLEANBUFFERS to remove clean buffers from the buffer pool:

-- Remove clean buffers from the buffer pool in the "MyDatabase" database
DBCC DROPCLEANBUFFERS ('MyDatabase');

The output of DBCC DROPCLEANBUFFERS will be a message indicating whether the operation was successful or not. If the operation was successful, all clean buffers will be removed from the buffer pool.

It is important to note that DBCC DROPCLEANBUFFERS is an operation that can have a significant impact on the performance of the database server. It should only be used for testing and debugging purposes, and should not be used in production environments.

DBCC DROPCLEANBUFFERS is a useful tool for testing and debugging query performance in SQL Server, but it should be used with caution.

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