Parameter sniffing is an aspect of SQL Server that is typically viewed as a bad thing. The simple fact is that SQL Server uses parameter sniffing all the time, that’s how SQL Server works. It is only those times when parameter sniffing results in performance issues that people (naturally) complain. It’s a lot like lawyers. It only … Read more
This past November the Transaction Processing Performance Council (the TPC) released a new benchmark, the TPC-VMS. If you are interested in the details you can download the PDF by clicking here. The TPC benchmarks have been the industry standard when it comes to benchmarking database performance. As more companies move towards virtualization solutions the standard TPC … Read more
Last week a question came up regarding the ability for a SQL Server 32-bit instance to address more than 4Gb of RAM when running on top of a 64-bit operating system (O/S). My friend Argenis Fernandez (blog | @DBArgenis) has already blogged the answer to this question so I won’t bother repeating those details here. However, … Read more
We all know that statistics get updated when you rebuild your indexes, right? OK, for those of you that are not aware of such things here is a blog post from Benjamin Nevarez (blog | @BenjaminNevarez) on the topic. He does a great job of explaining the subtle differences involved with various index and statistics … Read more
Empty space. That’s what you have inside your database, I’m certain of it. I am also certain that you can take steps to avoid having large amounts of empty space inside of your database. The first step, as always, is admitting you have a problem. In this case that means you need to know how … Read more
If your house were on fire who would you call? Would you call the architect first? Or would you call the fire department? Of course you would. Yet when your application performance is so poor as to be unusable, who do you call first? The architect? No! You call the database administrator. We’re the ones to … Read more
