Upcoming Learning/Demo/Events
Here’s a look at what’s coming soon from SSWUG.ORG:
SQL Server 911 vWorkshop with Chris Shaw –
Really Understand Backup, Recovery and all of your options
[Register Here]
SSWUG.ORG Virtual Conference
75 sessions, expert speakers, time is running out to register
[Register Here]
Smart Database Design Class with Paul Nielson
In-person, hands-on class about best practices, approaches and more. Seats VERY limited.
[More information here] [Register Here]
Did You Know?
When you’re building stored procedures, it can be really helpful to see what’s happening along the way during the different steps in your stored procedure. One approach to seeing what’s up is to use the PRINT command. Using PRINT, you can output the current value of variables as you test the routines. When I’m really confused about what’s up (it happens, believe me), it’s also helpful to put things like "PRINT ‘IN THE FIRST LOOP’" in the stored procedure so you know where it’s executing, then PRINT variables and their values. These show up in the Query tool in Management Studio and you can quickly see how SQL Server is running your stored procedure. It’s a great help!
Performance Management
Performance management, and specifically tuning your TSQL, is one of the most asked for topics on the site and in emails. We review a LOT of TSQL code, looking for issues and trying to provide some help in why things aren’t quite performing like people think they should. There are, of course, a bunch of things that can influence your TSQL performance.
A quick look at your joins, indexes and values you’re using to make sure they all match up will really help in many cases. You can also make sure you don’t have function calls in the WHERE clause, and of course make sure you actually have indexes on items you’re searching on. One thing we’ve had great success deploying and really upping the performance on systems with is the use of the Full-Text indexing abilities for SQL Server. This capability can great enhance your searches (it does a lot of the work for you looking for near matches and such) and at the same time can increase performance substantially over LIKE searches. More on this in an upcoming article.
One area that’s been cropping up more and more is that of index defragmentation. There are some excellent scripts out there, they go through and can help select index candidates for defragmentation or even rebuilding. It’s worth a look and you may be surprised what simple, scheduled, regular index defragmentation routine can do for your systems.
Featured White Paper(s)
Six Steps to Managing Data Quality with SQL Server Integration Services
Overcoming the challenges of data quality doesn’t have to be costly or difficult to do. Organizations can take advantage of t… (read more)