Performance

Esat Erkec
SQL Server Query Tuning: Use the UNION ALL operator instead of to UNION operator

Getting started with SQL Server Query Tuning

April 21, 2020 by

This article will cover some essential techniques for SQL query tuning. Query tuning is a very wide topic to talk about, but some essential techniques never change in order to tune queries in SQL Server. Particularly, it is a difficult issue for those who are a newbie to SQL query tuning or who are thinking about starting it. So, this article will be a good starting point for them. Also, other readers can refresh their knowledge with this article. In the next parts of this article, we will mention these techniques that help to tune queries.

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Jignesh Raiyani
Thread distribution with SQL Server Degree Parallelism

Importance of SQL Server Max Degree of Parallelism

April 21, 2020 by

In this article, we will discuss how the Max Degree of Parallelism works in SQL Server and how does it improve the query performance. SQL Server Degree of Parallelism is the processor conveyance parameter for a SQL Server operation, and it chooses the maximum number of execution distribution with the parallel use of different logical CPUs for the SQL Server request. Microsoft SQL Server allows setting this Degree of Parallelism parameter value at the SQL Server instance level or Query level. If you do not specify the SQL Server Degree of Parallelism value at the SQL Server instance, then each request or operation has to rely on SQL Server default value and random CPU allocations.

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Jignesh Raiyani

SQL Server Hardware Performance Tuning

April 14, 2020 by

SQL Server Performance Tuning can be a difficult assignment, especially when working with a massive database where even the minor change can raise a significant impact on the existing query performance. Performance Tuning always plays a vital role in database performance as well as product performance. A query can be optimized with the proper evaluation of a piece of code or SQL Statements. The important thing in Query Optimization is to understand, which process or expression needs evaluation in the piece of code. Everyone expects to get a quick response from the query on the production, but How?

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Ben Richardson
Example Of Records Using A Clustered Index

Using SQL CREATE INDEX to create clustered and non-clustered indexes

January 10, 2020 by

The SQL CREATE INDEX statement is used to create clustered as well as non-clustered indexes in SQL Server. An index in a database is very similar to an index in a book. A book index may have a list of topics discussed in a book in alphabetical order. Therefore, if you want to search for any specific topic, you simply go to the index, find the page number of the topic, and go to that specific page number. Database indexes are similar and come handy. Particularly, if you have a huge number of records in your database, indexes can speed up the query execution process. There are two major types of indexes in SQL Server: clustered indexes and non-clustered indexes.

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Jignesh Raiyani
Ranking Function Query with Result

Replace a SQL While loop and a cursor with ranking functions in SQL Server for better query performance

December 19, 2019 by

SQL While loop and cursor are the most common approach to repeat a statement on condition-based or determined limits. Loop and cursor can be utilized in a circumstance to deal with row-based processing in T-SQL. We generally observe moderate execution of old made procedures, which are composed of using loop and cursors. Those procedures take time, especially when the number of iteration count is big for the execution.

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Jignesh Raiyani

Query Performance Issues on VARCHAR Data Type Using an N Prefix

December 6, 2019 by

In this article, we’ll discuss data type VARCHAR and query performance issues associated with utilizing the lower level VARCHAR data type. CHAR, VARCHAR and NVARCHAR are data types that support storing information in text format in a SQL Server database. These data types allow a wide assortment of character sets in the defined field or column in the database table.

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Ed Pollack
Execution plan when using a system DMV instead of COUNT.

SQL Server Database Metrics

October 2, 2019 by

Summary

There is a multitude of database metrics that we can collect and use to help us understand database and server resource consumption, as well as overall usage.

This data can include hardware statistics, such as measures of CPU or memory consumed over time. We can also examine database metadata, including row counts, waits, and deadlocks.

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Ed Pollack
Row Count Metrics

Using SQL Server Database Metrics to Predict Application Problems

September 27, 2019 by

Summary

Database metrics can be collected, maintained, and used to help predict when processes go awry so problems can be resolved before they become severe. Understanding when an application or process misbehaves is not always easy. We are often left waiting until a server, application, or service breaks or enters an undesirable state before we know something is wrong. At that point, we are forced to rush and resolve a production problem quickly, before its impact becomes severe.

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Ben Richardson
Screenshot of Query Store fully enabled.

Performance Monitoring via SQL Server Query Store

August 19, 2019 by

SQL Server Query Store is a performance monitoring tool that helps us evaluate the performance of a SQL query in terms of several different performance metrics such as CPU and Memory Consumption, execution time and the I/O cycles consumed by the query. Query store is similar to the windows “Task Manager”. A task manager provides information about the CPU, Memory, Network and Disc consumption of a process. Similarly, the Query Store provides insight to similar information.

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Bojan Petrovic

Optimizing SQL Server index strategies

July 2, 2019 by

Index strategies overview

This article is about techniques for optimizing the SQL Server indexes strategy. It is an appendix of the SQL index overview and strategy article in which I covered different areas like what indexes actually do, how to create them, and I briefly mentioned some index design guidelines. Furthermore, I also presented an example of how to design them by tuning and optimizing queries, so I’ve really tried to cover all but there is always more when it comes to SQL Server indexes.

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