Query-Performance

Category: query-performance

How to Cause a Simple Spill to tempdb

How to Cause a Simple Spill to tempdb

Sometimes it’s useful to know how to cause a problem.

Maybe you’ve never encountered the problem, and want to get hands-on experience. Maybe you’re testing a monitoring tool, and want to see if a condition flags an alert. Maybe you’re testing out a new client tool, and want to see how it displays it.

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Take the SQLChallenge: Tuning a Stored Procedure

Take the SQLChallenge: Tuning a Stored Procedure

I’ve just published a new SQLChallenge course, and I think it’s one of the best ones yet.

Your mission is to:

  1. Identify which statement is slowing down our stored procedure the most
  2. Tune the code to speed it up. You can change the query that is slow as well as anything else in the procedure that will help you make that statement faster.

In the solution videos, I’ll step through multiple strategies to figure out which statement in the procedure is slowing it down the most – because in real life, you need to have a whole bag of tricks in different situations. 

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Find the Scalar Function Call: What It Means When It Hides in Probe Residual

Find the Scalar Function Call: What It Means When It Hides in Probe Residual

User defined functions are fairly simple to create in SQL Server, but figuring out exactly how they are being used can take a little time - even in a simple execution plan. This is because the functions can be tucked away into lots of different operators in the plan, even join operators.

The good news: once you learn what to look for, it’s not terribly complicated. There are some fancy terms involved, but the definitions are pretty simple.

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Fake News about Auto Parameterization/Simple Parameterization

Fake News about Auto Parameterization/Simple Parameterization

I saw a question on Twitter today that took me down a little rabbit hole. And when I go down rabbit holes, I like to blog about it! There’s a TLDR at the bottom of this post if you’re short on time.

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Sys.dm_db_tuning_recommendations Makes Suggestions if Automatic Tuning is Not Enabled

Sys.dm_db_tuning_recommendations Makes Suggestions if Automatic Tuning is Not Enabled

I naturally think about the new sys.dm_db_tuning_recommendations DMV when I’m working with the new Automatic Tuning feature in SQL Server 2017.

But I came across a post by Grant Fritchey recently, in which he remarked in the conclusion…

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