SQL Server 2012 Query Performance Tuning

Queries not running fast enough? Tired of the phone calls from frustrated users? Grant Fritchey’s book SQL Server 2012 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. It is current with SQL Server 2012. It provides the tools you need to approach your queries with performance in mind.

SQL Server 2012 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 2012 Query Performance Tuning into practice today.

• Establish performance baselines and monitor against them
• Troubleshoot and eliminate bottlenecks that frustrate users
• Plan ahead to achieve the right level of performance

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 2012

SQL Server 2012 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 2012 Query Performance Tuning provides the tools and techniques readers need to create good-performing applications that delight their users.

Table of Contents

1. SQL Query Performance Tuning
2. System Performance Analysis
3. SQL Query Performance Analysis
4. Index Analysis
5. Database Engine Tuning Advisor
6. Lookup Analysis
7. Statistics Analysis
8. Fragmentation Analysis
9. Execution Plan Analysis
10. Query Recompilation Analysis
11. Query Design Analysis
12. Blocking Analysis
13. Deadlock Analysis
14. Cursor Cost Analysis
15. Testing Query Performance
16. Database Workload Optimization
17. SQL Server Optimization Checklist

Grant Fritchey works as a development database administrator for FM Global, an industry-leading engineering and insurance company. In his previous time as adatabase administratorand developer, he has worked at three failed dot-coms, a major consulting company, and a global bank. He has developed large-scale applications in languages such as VB, C#, and Java and has lived with SQL Server from the hoary days of 6.0, right through to 2008. His nickname at work is "The Scary DBA." He even has an official name plate, and he displays it proudly.

Grant volunteers for the Professional Association of SQL Server Users (PASS) and has written and published articles on various topics relating to SQL Server at Simple-Talk, SQL Server Central, SQL Server Performance, the PASS web site, SQL Standard, and the SQL Server Worldwide Users Group. He is the author of the book Dissecting SQL Server Execution Plans. He is one of the founding officers of the Southern New England SQL Server Users Group (SNESSUG).

Outside work, Grant kayaks, learns and teaches self-defense, brews his own beer, chops wood to heat his house, raises his kids, and helps lead a pack of Cub Scouts.