Track Query Tuning Progress and History in Plan Explorer
As you tweak and test queries, it’s awfully useful to see how the performance has changed.
Setting up Free Blocking Alerts and Deadlock Monitoring (Dear SQL DBA Episode 17)
What tools in SQL Server will notify you about blocking and help track the queries behind your toughest blocking and deadlocking problems?
Measuring Query Duration: SSMS vs SQL Sentry Plan Explorer
Every query tuner wants to explain exactly how much faster we made a query.
But sometimes SQL Server Management Studio adds noticeable overhead to the query duration. For relatively fast queries that return more than a few rows, just the overhead of displaying the results can skew your duration metric.
Which is Worse: an Unused Index, or an Un-Indexed Foreign Key? (Dear SQL DBA Episode 16)
Should you always index your foreign keys? What if you index them, and then the index never gets used?
Index Tuning Decision Tree for SQL Server
I recently mapped out my thought process for how I approach a new instance of SQL Server when it comes to index tuning.
Deadlock Code for the WideWorldImporters Sample Database
If you haven’t checked out Microsoft’s new WideWorldImporters sample database for 2016, it’s a pretty cool new little database. The database makes it easy to play around with new 2016 features, and it even ships with some cool little executables to run inserts in the “workload-drivers” folder.
Unique Constraints vs Unique Indexes
Unique constraints and unique nonclustered indexes have a lot in common: unique constraints are implemented with a unique index behind the scenes.
While unique nonclustered indexes have a couple of additional features, I can still think of a scenario where it might be best to use unique constraints.
Estimated vs. Actual Number of Rows in Nested Loop Operators
This is one of those little details that confused me a ton when I was first working with execution plans.
One problem with learning to work with plans is that there’s just SO MUCH to look at. And it’s a bit spread out. So, even when looking at a single tooltip, things can be confusing.
Let’s talk about the nested loop operator, who can be particularly weird to understand.
Finding Your Voice as a Speaker (Dear SQL DBA Episode 15)
Learn what it’s like to find and develop your voice as a technical speaker in this week’s episode of Dear SQL DBA.
Do Clustered Index Columns Count Against Max Nonclustered Key Size?
SQL Server 2016 and Azure SQL Database have a lot of little perks. One little thing that changed is that the maximum key size allowed for nonclustered indexes was raised from 900 bytes to 1700 bytes.