As you will see in this chapter, companies use SQL Server for many types of applications and on most tiers now. Gone are the days when you would second guess yourself choosing to use SQL Server over a ...

Automatically identifying queries that are now running more slowly (i.e. regressed), and changing these to use a previously faster query plan, could prove to be a very useful feature. The chapter ...

Microsoft has just added support for query hints to Azure SQL Database, giving database administrators a powerful tool to manage the performance of ISV application code. Here's how it works. Database ...

As I discussed in an earlier column, SQL Server keeps a plan cached for each query it sees (assuming the query requires planning in the first place, of course). That's great for speeding up processing ...

Often, designing databases and speeding up SQL Server queries are treated as a kind of abstract problem: A just "Find this problem, apply this solution" approach to problem solving. In practice, ...

One of the most common problems when running SQL Servers is slow queries. The help desk or database team usually hears that described as the application is slow or ...