(For the hardware setup I’m using, see this post. For the baseline performance measurements for this benchmark, see this post.) In my previous post in the
(For the hardware setup I’m using, see this post.) As part of my new benchmarking series I first wanted to play around with different configurations of
I'm running some performance tests on the hardware we have (more details on the first of these tomorrow) and I was surprised to see some
I've blogged about ghost records and the ghost cleanup task a couple of time before (the only place it is really explained AFAIK), but one
This is an interesting performance bug concerning a broken query optimizer rule in 2008. Thanks to Dan Shargel (Twitter) for sending me info on this
It's been a few weeks since my last posts but I've got a bunch in the pipeline coming up. Firstly, I've got it together to
As part of the 2008 DBA class we’re teaching down here in Melbourne, I did a demo of using predicates and file targets with extended
This is a question that came up yesterday on Twitter: will SQL Server always do a table scan to find the result of SELECT COUNT
This survey is based on a suggestion from Jonathan Kehayias (blog/Twitter). In this survey I'm asking two questions: When you're designing/implementing a database, do you
In last week's survey I asked what you think is the most important thing when it comes to performance tuning, if you *had* to choose
This week's survey is going to provide some fun debating topics. I'd like to know what the number 1 thing is that YOU go after
I’ve just read a very good, very deep, and very interesting blog post by James Rowland-Jones. In the post, James investigates some locking issues using
I'm teaching a class this week on database maintenance, for DBAs inside Microsoft. One of the things we're discussing today is index fragmentation and how
Quickie this morning to start the day off. I saw a question on a forum: if I *have* to use a GUID and *must* have
I've just been setting up some of our new hardware, and wanted to do some background reading to ensure I use the correct disk partition
Page splits are always thought of as expensive, but just how bad are they? In this post I want to create an example to show
Another quickie today. If you're using Activity Monitor in SQL Server 2008, or Performance Data Collection with the Server Activity system data collection set, then you may
This is a quick follow-on from my Misconceptions around null bitmap size post. The null bitmap is *always* present in a data record (i.e. records in
5/11/09: Little bit of a rewrite today as it seems some people are taking what I'm saying the wrong way. Over on Ed Bott's blog,
Here's an interesting bug that was just recently fixed, and someone actually hit it today, so it's time to blog it. Bottom line is that
A couple of weeks ago I kicked off the latest survey, on what the physical layout of your databases are and why you have them
Finally! All those customers out there who are frustrated by not being able to turn on the 'lock pages in memory' option to protect the
[Edit 2016: This trace flag is required in all version of SQL Server up to and including SQL Server 2014. Every instance of SQL Server
A short post to start the day (in India) and then at lunchtime I'll do how it works: FILESTREAM garbage collection. This is a question
Microsoft's popular performance troubleshooting whitepaper has been updated for SQL Server 2008. You can download Troubleshooting Performance Problems in SQL Server 2008 at http://download.microsoft.com/download/D/B/D/DBDE7972-1EB9-470A-BA18-58849DB3EB3B/TShootPerfProbs2008.docx. I've
At the last few conferences I've presented at, there have been questions about using SSDs (Solid-State Drives) for enterprise storage and whether that will change
This week's survey is a little more complicated. I'm interested in the physical layout of your databases. I've got four surveys, for a variety of database
Last week’s survey was on how you should store large-value character data in SQL 2005+ (see here for the survey). Here are the result as
(Continuing my habit of blogging while Kimberly’s presenting – at least I’m not on stage this time…) In early versions of SQL Server, it was
The April edition of TechNet Magazine is available on the web now and has the latest installment of my regular SQL Q&A column. This month's
Microsoft’s Steffen Krause has written an excellent whitepaper on Tuning the Performance of Change Data Capture in SQL Server 2008, that I technically reviewed, and
One of the things I mentioned in my recent TechNet Magazine article on Understanding Logging and Recovery was the need to manage the transaction log
Over the last few weeks Sunil Agarwal (from the SQL Storage Engine team) has posted a great series of blog articles about tempdb and the version
It's really scary how quickly time flies – seems like it was just last week when I last blogged about TechNet Magazine (actually it was
During early SQL Server 2008 development, the Storage Engine team introduced additional minimally-logged functionality. And then it was removed again for RTM. Now it seems
Over the last few weeks I’ve had lots of questions about FILESTREAM performance and how to coax NTFS into scaling nicely. I just finished writing
At the user group meeting on Monday I spent some time explaining how GUIDs can cause fragmentation in clustered indexes AND in non-clustered indexes, even
Fresh off a week of teaching classes on the Microsoft campus, we’ve finalized some user group dates. Here’s what we have coming up: Monday August
Kimberly and I were presenting at our local (Redmond) .Net Developers Association on Monday and the following question came up while Kimberly was talking about
During the various courses I've been teaching, people are interested in how FILESTREAM performance compares with storing BLOBs in the database itself. I have some
Almost a year ago to the day I asked a question on my old blog – how long does *your* CHECKDB take to run? Well,
A bit more traffic on the thread (see previous post here) prompted me to give my thoughts on the many sweeping generalizations that plague the
There’s been a very interesting discussion going on over at SQLServerCentral.com about whether to create multiple files for a user database because the server has multiple
There’s a new whitepaper on TechNet that I’ve just come across (even though it was published 6 months ago!) called Predeployment I/O Best Practices. It’s
Quickie today as I’m preparing to speak at the Pacific Northwest SQL Server User Group meeting tonight on the MS Campus here in Redmond (my
Back in September last year I blogged about the native Backup Compression that is in SQL Server 2008 (see here) and promised to blog more
While we were in Barcelona we sat down with Richard Campbell and Greg Hughes from RunAs Radio to record a 1/2 hour interview on SQL
This is a subject I posted about last year on my old blog but it came up at SQL Connections last week several times so
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