SQL Server Query Performance Tuning, 4th Edition

Queries not running fast enough? Wondering about the in-memory database features in 2014? Tired of phone calls from frustrated users? Grant Fritchey’s book SQL Server Query Performance Tuning is the answer to your SQL Server query performance problems. The book is revised to cover the very latest in performance optimization features and techniques, especially including the newly-added, in-memory database features formerly known under the code name Project Hekaton. This book provides the tools you need to approach your queries with performance in mind.

SQL Server Query Performance Tuning leads you through understanding the causes of poor performance, how to identify them, and how to fix them. You’ll learn to be proactive in establishing performance baselines using tools like Performance Monitor and Extended Events. You’ll learn to recognize bottlenecks and defuse them before the phone rings. You’ll learn some quick solutions too, but emphasis is on designing for performance and getting it right, and upon heading off trouble before it occurs. Delight your users. Silence that ringing phone. Put the principles and lessons from SQL Server Query Performance Tuning into practice today.

• Covers the in-memory features from Project Hekaton
• Helps establish performance baselines and monitor against them
• Guides in troubleshooting and eliminating of bottlenecks that frustrate users

What you’ll learn

• Establish performance baselines and monitor against them
• Recognize and eliminate bottlenecks leading to slow performance
• Deploy quick fixes when needed, following up with long term solutions
• Implement best-practices in T-SQL so as to minimize performance risk
• Design in the performance that you need through careful query and index design
• Take advantage of the very latest performance optimization features in SQL Server 2014
• Understand the new, in-memory database features formerly code-named as Project Hekaton

Who this book is for

SQL Server Query Performance Tuning is aimed at developers and database administrators having responsibility for application performance in SQL Server environments. Programmers and administrators alike will find the book a trove of good insight into bottlenecks, how to recognize them, how to eliminated them. SQL Server Query Performance Tuning provides the tools and techniques readers need to create good-performing applications that delight their users.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: SQL Query Performance Tuning
Chapter 2: Memory Performance Analysis
Chapter 3: Disk Performance Analysis
Chapter 4: CPU Performance Analysis
Chapter 5: Creating a Baseline
Chapter 6: Query Performance Metrics
Chapter 7: Analyzing Query Performance
Chapter 8: Index Architecture and Behavior
Chapter 9: Index Analysis
Chapter 10: Database Engine Tuning Advisor
Chapter 11: Key Lookups and Solutions
Chapter 12: Statistics, Data Distribution, and Cardinality
Chapter 13: Index Fragmentation
Chapter 14: Execution Plan Generation
Chapter 15: Execution Plan Cache Behavior
Chapter 16: Parameter Sniffing
Chapter 17: Query Recompilation
Chapter 18: Query Design Analysis
Chapter 19: Reduce Query Resource Use
Chapter 20: Blocking and Blocked Processes
Chapter 21: Causes and Solutions for Deadlocks
Chapter 22: Row-by-Row Processing
Chapter 23: Memory-Optimized OLTP Tables and Procedures
Chapter 24: Database Performance Testing
Chapter 25: Database Workload Optimization
Chapter 26: SQL Server Optimization Checklist