SQL Server Tips and Tricks - featuring Top SQL Server Pros

SQL Server performance is slow. Users are complaining. Your boss wants to know what's going on and what you can do to improve SQL Server performance. Where do you start? Which SQL Server query should you investigate first? What can you tune? More importantly, what can you tune without touching code?

In this on-demand session, we'll look at the entire SQL Server holistically, from the "hardware" allocated to the machine down to individual SQL Server query plans. We'll cover what tools are provided out of the box, from Performance Monitor to Query Store, that you can use to spot the bottlenecks on your system.

Then we'll talk about what you can do to improve SQL Server performance. Will throwing hardware at the problem hide it until you can put in a real fix? Or do you need to roll up your sleeves and rewrite some common, poorly performing queries? What is the tradeoff? Armed with this knowledge, not only will you be able to identify what's broken, but you'll also be able to give your organization options on how to fix it. By the end of this on-demand webcast, you’ll be able to boost SQL Server query speed and make your SQL Servers run at peak performance.

Query store – what is it and why should you care? It’s an option in SQL Server that records query plans and wait states. And the cool thing is? It gives you a deeper understanding of historical performance data. With query store, you get an answer to the question, "Is this worse now than then?" Query store also provides an easy, effective way to force a plan to be used.

In this on-demand webcast, you’ll learn about:

• Performance impact and disk usage
• The simple per database configuration
• What query store can capture and the tables used
• Forcing and unforcing a plan
• Plan regression and how you find it using the built-in reporting

Getting your database queries to perform well is critical for overall database application performance. But gathering and reading execution plans isn’t always easy when you’re new to SQL Server. Thankfully, SQL Server MVP Joseph D'Antoni has all the tips you need to know.

Watch this informative on-demand webcast and learn how to:

• Find poorly performing queries using a variety of methods
• Capture execution plans
• Read and interpret a query plan
• Analyze performance

SQL Server 2019 has introduced several new features that offer improved performance. The optimizer continues to evolve and get smarter. And there’s no one better to explain it all than SQL Server MVP Joseph D'Antoni.

In this on-demand session, Joseph will show you tricks and tips to use:

• Scalar Function Inlining
• Table Variable Optimization
• TempDB In-Memory Metadata
• Batch Mode on Rowstore
• And more

You’ll learn about the best use cases for each of these features, watch demos on how they work and learn about any limitations you may face with SQL Server 2019. 

SQL queries aren’t performing well? Already know you’ve got enough hardware to handle the load? Then you’re probably wondering what to check next. One area is the indexing on the data and how those indexes are used. Not having indexes, or having incorrect indexes, forces SQL Server to work harder to return the same data. Or maybe you have the proper indexes, but the queries themselves aren’t making effective use of them. No worries! SQL Server expert Brian Kelley has you covered with everything you need to know about SQL Server indexes.

In this session, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of the SQL Server parse process. You’ll learn how SQL Server parses a query and determines its execution plan for retrieving or updating data. We’ll also review the types of indexes and how SQL Server uses them to increase the efficiency of data access and how poorly written queries can result in not using indexes that would otherwise benefit us. Finally, we’ll talk about how to improve our indexing and queries together for increased SQL Server performance.

Ready to improve SQL Server performance? Get SQL Server performance tuning tips from Microsoft MVP Denny Cherry and Oracle ACE Director Janis Griffin!

In this on demand session, we’ll look at ways we can make queries run faster in SQL Server. We'll see when to add indexes and what types of indexes you should add. We’ll also look at the different kinds of database engines that are available in SQL Server like Row-Store, ColumnStore and In-Memory OLTP. You’ll learn when each of these engines should be used and when they shouldn't. At the end of this SQL query tuning webcast, we’ll look at how Foglight® for Databases improves SQL Server database monitoring as well as performance across all your database platforms

Performance tuning in SQL Server is not without its challenges, but understanding execution plans can help. Before it executes a query, SQL Server generates an execution plan. Some execution plans are trivial, such as returning all the rows from a single table. But when we go beyond simple cases, SQL Server generates a good enough execution plan to accomplish the work.

SQL Server will use the indexes you've created, the statistics on those indexes, as well as how you’re manipulating the data based on the query to determine that execution plan. The hardware and the amount of data determine how fast the query returns. If a query is performing poorly, there’s a lot within our control to improve performance. That’s why understanding the execution plan is so important for SQL Server query performance tuning.

In this on-demand webcast, you’ll learn how to:

• Use the tools in SQL Server to capture execution plans
• Read an execution plan and use that information to write better queries
• Understand the impact of outdated statistics, improper indexing and T-SQL anti-patterns that cause queries to run poorly
• Improve SQL Server query performance tuning

We’ll also work through remediation examples of performance killers, so you’ll gain the skills to attack poorly performing queries in your own environment. With the expert guidance in this session, you’ll master performance tuning in SQL Server.