I love SQL Server execution plans. It is often easy to spot the cause of a performance problem just by looking at one. The task is considerably easier if the plan includes run-time information (a so-called ‘actual’ execution plan), but even a compiled plan can be very useful. Nevertheless, there are still times where the execution plan does not ...

Most tuning efforts for data-changing operations concentrate on the SELECT side of the query plan. Sometimes people will also look at important storage engine considerations like locking and transaction log throughput that can have dramatic effects. As a consequence, a number of common practices have emerged, such as avoiding large numbers of ...

A MERGE statement can fail, and incorrectly report a unique key violation when: The target table uses a unique filtered index; and No key column of the filtered index is updated; and A column from the filtering condition is updated; and Transient key violations are possible Example Tables Say we have ...

This is the final part in a series of posts based on the content of the Query Optimizer Deep Dive presentations I have given over the last month or so at the Auckland SQL Users’ Group and the SQL Saturday events in Wellington, New Zealand and Adelaide, Australia. Links to other parts of this series: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Beating the Optimizer ...

This is the third part in a series of posts based on the content of the Query Optimizer Deep Dive presentations I have given over the last month or so at the Auckland SQL Users’ Group and the SQL Saturday events in Wellington, New Zealand and Adelaide, Australia. Links to other parts of this series: Part 1 Part 2 Part 4 Storage of Alternative ...

This is the second part in a series of posts based on the content of the Query Optimizer Deep Dive presentations I have given over the last month or so at the Auckland SQL Users’ Group and the SQL Saturday events in Wellington, New Zealand and Adelaide, Australia. Links to other parts of this series: Part 1 Part 3 Part 4 Cost-Based Optimization ...

This is the first in a series of posts based on the content of the Query Optimizer Deep Dive presentations I have given over the last month or so at the Auckland SQL Users’ Group and the SQL Saturday events in Wellington, New Zealand and Adelaide, Australia. Links to other parts of this series: Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Introduction The motivation ...

During SQL Server 2012 RC0 setup (specifically when upgrading), you may have noticed upgrade rules regarding Lock Pages in Memory (LPIM): However, for most folks, these rules always pass, whether or not they are actually using LPIM. I wanted to run a few tests to demonstrate why this is - or at least in which situations the rule checks will ...

This post is for SQL Server developers who have experienced the special kind of frustration, which only comes from spending hours trying to convince the query optimizer to generate a parallel execution plan.  This situation often occurs when making an apparently innocuous change to the text of a moderately complex query; a change which ...

In this post, I show you how to determine exactly which statistics objects were used by the query optimizer to produce an execution plan. Trace Flags We will need three undocumented trace flags.  The first one (3604) is well-known – it redirects trace output to the client so it appears in the SSMS messages tab. The second trace flag is ...