Microsoft recently gave us a more lightweight way to trace data related to execution plan performance. As of SQL Server 2014 SP2, you can trace the query_thread_profile Extended Event.
When I was recently working on the course, “Should Developers Manage Index Maintenance?” I explained that in my experience, statistics maintenance can make more of a difference to performance than index maintenance can.
They say, “never read the comments” on the internet, but I’m lucky to get lots of interesting points and questions in my comments.
SQL Server has more than one way to pull pages in from disk for your queries. SQL Server can do a physical read of an 8KB page, or an extent of 8 of those 8KB pages.
Perfmon counters are an excellent tool for monitoring and sometimes troubleshooting Microsoft SQL Server. But some counters can get you into trouble, because they don’t mean what many people think. Learn what to look out for in the world of widely-used perfmon counters.
I’ve got a whole bunch of free, live webcasts scheduled on SQL Server training! I’d love for you to join me for these sessions.
Collecting perfmon counters from SQL Server databases where you are using database mirroring is a little tricky
The counters won’t behave “normally” until after you set up mirroring for a database.
For a while now, I’ve been indulging in what feels like a huge guilty pleasure: an almost meeting-free existence. I’ve been living life scheduled on my own terms. I commit to appointments for workouts, volunteering, haircuts, and medical appointments, but not much else. I’ve been publishing pre-recorded videos and online courses which I can make whenever it feels right.
You’ve got some troubling wait stats in SQL Server. How can you tell which queries are causing those waits?
Learn the pros and cons of different techniques to track down the cause of both common and tricky waits in SQL Server, including CXPACKET, PAGEIOLATCH, LCK, RESOURCE_SEMAPHORE, and THREADPOOL waits.
Nonclustered indexes are awesome in SQL Server: they can get you huge performance gains.
But we can’t always create the perfect index for every query. And sometimes when SQL Server finds an index that isn’t quite perfect and decides to use it, it might make your query slower instead of faster.
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