Microsoft SQL Server Consultant
Blog posts relating to SQL Performance Tuning.
SQL Server tuning is the process of optimizing the database’s configuration, queries, and infrastructure to ensure the system runs as efficiently as possible. The goal is to reduce resource usage, increase query speed, and improve overall system responsiveness. Performance tuning involves analyzing server performance metrics, identifying bottlenecks, and implementing solutions that range from hardware upgrades to query rewriting. These optimizations are crucial for maintaining a smooth user experience and supporting business-critical applications.
A key aspect of performance tuning is query optimization. Poorly written SQL queries, missing indexes, or incorrect indexing strategies often lead to slow query execution. By using tools such as execution plans and SQL Profiler, DBAs can identify and correct inefficiencies in SQL code. Techniques like index tuning, query rewriting, and partitioning can drastically reduce query execution times. Regularly updating statistics and reorganizing or rebuilding indexes further enhances query performance and ensures accurate query plans.
Beyond queries, performance tuning also focuses on the SQL Server environment itself. Configuring server settings, adjusting memory allocation, and fine-tuning I/O operations play a significant role in optimizing database performance. Monitoring tools like Database Health Monitor (available at DatabaseHealth.com) provide insights into server health and potential issues. Stedman Solutions offers comprehensive SQL Server performance tuning services, combining years of experience with specialized tools to ensure your SQL Server environment performs at its peak. Learn more about our managed services at Stedman Solutions.
Max Server Memory Setting Explained If you have more memory than your database and applications on the SQL Server will ever use than this is not a problem, but when you run into memory constraints this setting is much more important. SQL Server attempts to use as much memory as possible, and when there is no more memory available, SQL …
Tables, and indexes are organized in SQL Server into 8K chunks called pages. If you have rows that are 100 bytes each, you can fit about 80 of those rows into a given page. If you update one of those rows to have more data that contains a variable length field like VARCHAR, NVARCHAR, and others, that will cause the …
I/O is Frozen on Database. You are scanning your SQL Server Logs and discover the following error messages. There may be a long list of them, one frozen and one resumed for each database on your SQL Server. I/O Is Frozen On Database The error message doesn’t sounds good, I/O frozen… Your SQL Server needs its I/O, and how could frozen …
Some of the biggest performance tuning wins that I have had over my career have been related to performance tuning queries that are being called from SSIS. So often the actual query performance gets overlooked in the SSIS environment. A few years ago I was able to tune a query that was being called from an SSIS package and reduce …
Statistics IO and Statistics Time is another SQL Server Performance Tuning Tip to help you better understand performance bottlenecks. Have you ever wanted to know exactly how long it took for a query to run? Have you ever wondered how many I/O reads or writes were caused by your query? With Statistics IO and Statistics Time you can understand both of these. …
Statistics IO and Statistics Time are another SQL Server Performance Tuning Tip to help you better understand performance bottlenecks. Have you ever wanted to know exactly how long it took for a query to run? Have you ever wondered how many I/O reads or writes were caused by your query? With Statistics IO and Statistics TIME you can understand both …
Using Statistics Time for Performance Tuning in SSMS Read more »
SQL Server Performance Tuning Tips – Wait Statistics Wait statistics are commonly overlooked ways to quickly find out what is causing your SQL Server to be slow. One of the reasons is it’s difficult to see how they are trending over time. >>> It is not difficult with a monitoring tool. <<< When someone reports a slow database yesterday at …
When you are looking for deadlocks there are, like most things in SQL Server, more than one way to find the deadlocks. This article is specifically focused on using the SQL Server ERRORLOG file located in the LOG directory for the SQL instance. If you used the defaults on SQL Server 2012, this log would be at this location: C:\Program …
Most DBAs know the usual difference between TRUNCATE and DELETE FROM, however one not so obvious difference between the two is how things are handled if the table is corrupt. For instance, if you look at the corrupt database from the Database Corruption Challenge Week 1, you see the following If you want to clear out the corrupt Revenue table, …
Difference Between TRUNCATE TABLE and DELETE FROM Table Read more »
Today I had the pleasure of releasing Beta 9.3 of the Database Health Monitor. It has been a whole week since the last beta update, and here is the outline of the new features and bug fixes. Download at DatabaseHealth.com New Features New report, Partitioned Tables. This new report shows all of the partitioned tables in a database. Double clicking …