We recently worked on a SQL Server Performance Assessment for a client and during that we assisted with the upgrade from SQL Server standard edition to SQL Server enterprise edition. Part of the upgrade was an attempt to make use of more cores on the server. They were using Standard Edition of SQL Server which was fully utilizing 48 cores …

Are You Using All Your CPU Cores Read more »

I received this question from someone visiting the blog, and realized that rather than just replying to them, it might be good to put the options out there for everyone to see. Hello, I came across your website and it seems that you are an SQL expert, I’m just getting started. I was wondering can you please give some guidance on …

Guidance on Query Optimization Read more »

After my post yesterday on the performance implications of concatenating long strings with the + operator and the CONCAT function, today I am following up with a way to speed up concatenation if you need to build really long strings. What the previous show as that the longer the string gets the slower the concatenation is. So instead we declare …

Performance: Faster way to concatenate longer string Read more »

String concatenation in SQL Server can be pretty quick but under certain circumstances it can really slow down. Something to be aware of if you are working with larger varchar(max) values that need to be appended to using concatenation in TSQL. The experiment: Using a VARCHAR(MAX) variable, start with it empty, then in a loop concatenate another string to it …

Performance: String Concatenation in SQL Server Read more »

The team at Stedman Solutions, LLC (Steve, Bill, Derrick, and George) offer a variety of services, but one that I particularly enjoy is the performance tuning work. This usually involves initial contact with a new client who is having performance problems. From there it leads to a quick 30 to 45 minute call to discuss the problem, then a proposed …

Do you need SQL Server Performance Tuning Help? Read more »

This Friday, October 14th I will be presenting at the Centricity Healthcare Users Group (CHUG) conference in Austin TX. The session is on “Tune, Monitor and Analyze the Health of Your Centricity SQL Server” and I will be co-presenting with Derrick Bovenkamp. Here is the session abstract: Misconfigured SQL Servers can slow down your overall system performance. Sometimes making a …

Presenting this Friday at the CHUG Conference Read more »

One way to improve performance on SQL Server is with IFI or Instant File Initialization. Normally files are zeroed out on a database growth during an AUTOGROW, RESTORE, CREATE DATABASE or ALTER DATABASE. This is done by SQL Server when the file grows, it runs through that file and writes zeroes to the entire new allocation in the file. The …

Instant File Initialization (IFI) Read more »

Here is an error that popped up in the SQL Server error log today: 5/6/2016 10:10:10 AM spid22s Database [DatabaseName] has more than 10000 virtual log files which is excessive. Too many virtual log files can cause long startup and backup times. Consider shrinking the log and using a different growth increment to reduce the number of virtual log files. Virtual …

How Many VLFs is Too Many? Read more »

Updating SQL Server statistics may not be as obvious as it may sound. Imagine this scenario. I invite you over for dinner and a game of Scrabble. After dinner, I start to do the dishes, while you set up the game. Rather than just doing the dishes that are dirty from our dinner, I decide to take all the dishes …

Updating SQL Server Statistics Read more »