I started the series here: http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/kimberly/post/Spring-cleaning-your-indexes-Part-I.aspx and I want to continue with Part II today by clarifying some great questions/comments that have come up on the series. In Part III, I'll give you a few more ways to get rid of (or consolidate) indexes. And, I think there's still a bit more that Paul and I [...]
Kimberly L. Tripp
Improving my SQL skills through your questions!
Spring cleaning your indexes – Part II
Posted on: March 27, 2009 9:33 am
Good strategies – excellent improvements… thanks Jim!
Posted on: March 27, 2009 8:47 am
This morning, I woke to a wonderful email and I thought I would share it: Good morning Kimberly, I just wanted to send you an email to let you know how awesome you are! I have applied some of your indexing strategies to our website’s homegrown CMS and we are experiencing a significant performance increase. WOW….amazing tips [...]
Spring cleaning your indexes – Part I
Posted on: March 23, 2009 2:14 pm
First and foremost, happy spring! I truly hope we're on the path to summer (although who would know it here – we're in Florida for SQL Connections and the weather is a bit chilly and it's been raining off/on today – I hope this is short term (no, I don't want to look at the [...]
Don’t worry – it’s not facebook…
Posted on: March 20, 2009 8:08 pm
OK, I've been pretty quiet this week… I had high hopes that I'd blog at least once or twice this week but the week turned out to be crazy busy as I presented T-W-Th at the SQL MCM (Microsoft Certified Masters) and then Fr at the Sharepoint MCM. The groups were really fun and wanted to [...]
Things I know now…
Posted on: March 15, 2009 8:17 pm
OK, I was tagged by Ward Pond here. Ward was tagged by Jimmy May here. Jimmy was tagged by Kevin Kline here. Kevin was tagged by Chris Shaw here. Chris was tagged by Michelle Uford here. And, Michelle was tagged by Mike Walsh here. Ah… at least I know who to blame. Ah, thanks Mike! [...]
Database Maintenance Best Practices Part III – Transaction Log Maintenance
Posted on: March 14, 2009 2:23 pm
This is a tough topic. It's a big topic and more than any other – I think there are a lot of misunderstandings about what the log is for, why it's so critical and ESPECIALLY when/why it gets extrememly large. Simply put, it gets large when it's not managed correctly. OK, there are times when [...]
Database Maintenance Best Practices Part II – Setting FILLFACTOR
Posted on: March 13, 2009 9:45 am
When you decide to rebuild or reorganzie an index, you have an option to set something called FILLFACTOR. This is probably the MOST IMPORTANT thing to understand about index maintenance and reducing fragmentation (especially in databases that are prone to it). Unfortunately, we need to dive into some internals to really understand why this is [...]
Database Maintenance Best Practices Part I – clarifying ambiguous recommendations for Sharepoint
Posted on: March 12, 2009 4:01 pm
OK, it seems as though there's A LOT of confusion about what steps are required for proper database maintenance. And, it seems as though some recommendations are being given as "quick fixes" without any real recommendation for root cause analysis. I'm not saying that the generalizations are horribly wrong but in many cases they're just [...]
Tipping Point Queries – More Questions To Really Test You!
Posted on: March 9, 2009 8:28 am
OK, so this is interesting. I've got a few answers to my last survey (Tipping Point Query #1) and well, there's a good mix of answers (and, yes, some are correct! ;)). Be sure to go back and review that last post so that you can evaluate it and these two tipping point questions completely. [...]
Why aren’t those nonclustered indexes being used?
Posted on: March 8, 2009 5:29 pm
Along the same lines of improving database design and getting better performance on SQL Server (which [IMO] DOES take an experienced SQL Server database developer – but, we'll talk more about "whose job this really is" in many more posts and probably even a RunAs – which Richard and I just setup to record on [...]
GUIDs as PRIMARY KEYs and/or the clustering key
Posted on: March 5, 2009 1:06 pm
(Be sure to join our community to get our monthly newsletter with exclusive content, advance notice of classes with discount codes, and other SQL Server goodies!) Expanding on the topic of "are you kidding me"… one of the MOST PREVALENT problems I see today is the dreaded "GUIDs as PKs" problem. However, just to be [...]
Whose job is it anyway?
Posted on: March 5, 2009 1:30 am
Well, today has definitely been enlightening. I've been around and around with a few folks (mostly Tim Huckaby and Richard Campbell – who are BOTH great friends and people whose opinions I greatly respect!!!) and I've come a conclusion… Paul started down this line of commentary here: http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/PAUL/post/Mandatory-SQL-breathalyzer-test.aspx and this was in reference to something I [...]
Seriously, are you kidding me?
Posted on: March 4, 2009 3:03 pm
**** UPDATE March 17, 2009 **** Be sure to read the comments. This doesn't appear to be as bad as it seemed…still glad I did the rant though; I learned more about what it's actually doing! :) And, it's still good to have good database design – NO MATTER WHAT! **** OK… today's been a bit of a weird [...]
Server consolidation and Green IT Computing
Posted on: March 2, 2009 4:55 pm
Just published! A colleague/friend of ours – Mark Pohto – has been working on server consolidation issues and the environmental costs of IT (it's an eye opening article!!!). And, the article "Green IT in Practice: SQL Server Consolidation in Microsoft IT" came out recently: Here's the link to the The Architecture Journal you can see [...]
Connections is 3 weeks away and counting!
Posted on: March 1, 2009 2:17 pm
It's an exciting year for us for DevConnections! SQL Server 2008 has now been out for a few months and an SP is coming up soon. This is the sign that some customers wait for to migrate over to the new release feeling that an SP indicates a higher level of stability. But, this is [...]
