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• Automating dm_exec_query_stats and dm_db_index_usage_stats analysis

  Everyone should know by now how really useful the DMVs dm_exec_query_stats, and dm_db_index_usage_stats and the associated DMFs for obtaining the SQL and XML plan: dm_exec_sql_text, dm_exec_query_plan, and dm_exec_text_query_plan. Of course it has been Read More... Posted Monday, June 22, 2009 1:25 AM by jchang | 1 Comments Filed under: DMV, indexes, Performance, Query Tuning

• HP Oracle 10X Extreme Performance Data Warehouse with Exadata Storage Server

  For several months, we have seen ads for the joint HP/Oracle RAC and Exadata storage combination talking about extreme performance (10X faster) for large data warehouses. One thing I like about Oracle is that they have courage to pursue technology with Read More... Posted Tuesday, June 09, 2009 8:26 PM by jchang | 2 Comments Filed under: Exadata, Oracle RAC, Performance, Scaling, Storage

• First Nehalem TPC-H

  Earlier I talked about the first TPC-C and TPC-E results for 2-way Nehalem, ie, the Intel Xeon 5500 series. The results were spectacular relative to the previous generation Xeon 5400 series, (2.5X gain on the Intel slide deck for database OLTP) and were Read More... Posted Wednesday, June 03, 2009 4:55 PM by jchang | 2 Comments Filed under: Hardware, Performance, Scalability

• Big Iron Revival, Intel Nehalem EX and AMD Magny-Cours

  Yesterday Intel held a product announcement press event for the upcoming Nehalem EX, which will succeed the current Xeon 7400 series based on the Core 2 micro-architecture for "expandable system", i.e., 4-way and higher, in late 2009 or early 2010. The Read More... Posted Wednesday, May 27, 2009 5:37 PM by jchang | 5 Comments Filed under: Hardware, Performance, Scalability, Sizing

• Early Intel Nehalem Xeon 5500 performance results

  SAP numbers were available a few months ago, and now, TPC-C and TPC-E results are available for 2-socket Intel Xeon 5570 systems with the Nehalem quad-core processor. The TPC-C result is on Oracle/Linux, no SQL Server on Windows yet. The TPC-E results Read More... Posted Wednesday, April 01, 2009 1:02 AM by jchang | 5 Comments Filed under: Hardware, Performance

• Table Scan - Aggregate Cost Structure

  In the previous post, I mention that in an earlier post on IO cost structure, that the cost of a table scan was approximately 1 CPU-micro sec per page, plus approximately 0.05 us per row for just a SELECT COUNT(*) This was calibrated on a 2-way Xeon 5430 Read More... Posted Friday, February 27, 2009 4:46 PM by jchang | 1 Comments Filed under: cost based optimizer, Hardware, Performance

• SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse

  This came out on the Microsoft website. I have not had time to look over the hardware configuration carefully. Of course the recommended storage is a SAN, vendors love to sell very high margin products when there are perfectly good merely high margin Read More... Posted Tuesday, February 24, 2009 4:46 PM by jchang | 31 Comments Filed under: Data Warehouse, Performance, Storage

• Nehalem, Shanghai, and Dunnington performance notes

  Back in March 2008, I discussed the SAP SD 2 Tier results for some AMD Opteron and Intel Xeon systems. Here are some more recent results. All Opteron and Xeon processors below are on the 45nm process except for the Opteron 8360, which is a 65nm product. Read More... Posted Monday, February 23, 2009 2:46 PM by jchang | 9 Comments Filed under: Hardware, Performance

• Run-time Execution Plan Options

  What are the top core SQL Server engine performance issues today, after all the improvements that have gone into 2005 and 2008? (I am excluding matters beyond the power of Microsoft, like eliminating bad developers.) SQL Server already has statement level Read More... Posted Saturday, February 21, 2009 2:11 PM by jchang | 3 Comments Filed under: Optimizer, Performance, Query Hints

• Early TPC-C and H reports for Shanghai relative to Barcelona and Dunnington

  Below are the first performance numbers for the new AMD 45nm Opteron (Shanghai) relative to other recent AMD and Intel Xeon results. 4-way TPC-C Opteron 8360 Quad-core 2.5GHz (Barcelona) 2M L3, 471,883 (DL585G2) Opteron 8384 Quad-core 2.7GHz (Shanghai) Read More... Posted Wednesday, November 19, 2008 2:58 PM by jchang | 3 Comments Filed under: Hardware, Performance

• Dell PERC6 RAID Controller Performance

  Last month, Scott pointed out the really bad performance characteristics of the Dell PERC6 in RAID0 sequential write, particularly compared with RAID-5. Granted, this is not necessarily a red flag because few people use RAID 0 in production. Still, if Read More... Posted Wednesday, October 01, 2008 9:36 AM by jchang | 2 Comments Filed under: Hardware, Performance, Storage

• Why Logical IO is a poor performance metric

  Many years ago, I attended a conference where a very highly respected Oracle performance expert advocated the use of logical IO count as a performance metric. The argument was that a logical IO is a fairly substantial operation relative to others. I suppose Read More... Posted Wednesday, September 10, 2008 1:08 PM by jchang | 35 Comments Filed under: DMV, Performance, Query Tuning

• Brains still matter - silly SSD notions

  Everytime a good product comes out, people seem to contrive bad ideas for what can be replaced, usually brains, or people with brains, or that people lacking brains can accomplish something on their own. Let me put it simply. Suppose one had a query that Read More... Posted Monday, September 08, 2008 4:32 PM by jchang | 8 Comments Filed under: internals, Performance, Storage

• IO Cost Structure – Anticipating SSD arrays

  An observant person has probably noticed that SQL queries requiring disk reads not only have longer duration but also higher CPU times. It is not hard then to deduce that disk access (for both HDD and SSD), which involves the OS performing an IO call, Read More... Posted Thursday, September 04, 2008 2:23 PM by jchang | 16 Comments Filed under: cost based optimizer, internals, Performance, Storage

• Large Query Performance from SQL Server 2000 to 2008, 32 & 64-bit

  I had been meaning to do a somewhat comprehensive review of SQL Server performance from versions 2000 to 2008 for both 32 and 64-bit on Data Warehouse type queries, with in depth examination of scaling in parallel execution plans. For now, I can provide Read More... Posted Sunday, August 24, 2008 2:25 PM by jchang | 24 Comments Filed under: Performance, Scalability