HOW TO: Connect To A Windows Azure VM Using SQL Server Management Studio

In 2013, right before I was helping to deliver a precon seminar at TechEd on Windows Azure SQL Database, Microsoft made available the ability for customers to use virtual machines running in Windows Azure. This allowed for users to run on-premises version of SQL Server but have the instance hosted in the cloud. The natural … Read more

March Madness – SQL Azure – Summary Review

Today is the final day for my SQL Azure blog series. These past few weeks I have been able to spend a lot of time with SQL Azure. The platform has come a long way in the two years time since I first started using it and doing presentations. I am very impressed with many … Read more

March Madness – SQL Azure – Wait Events

Yesterday we discussed one way to improve query performance in SQL Azure by making sure your statistics are kept up to date. In today’s penultimate post we look at another way to get information about your queries in SQL Azure: wait events. One of the first things I noticed that was missing from SQL Azure … Read more

March Madness – SQL Azure – UPDATE STATISTICS

Yesterday we looked at a handful of queries that you can use with the sys.dm_exec_query_stats system view to return information about the activity on your instance of SQL Azure. Today we will talk about one way you can help yourself to improve performance for your SQL Azure instance: updating statistics. If you check the list … Read more

March Madness – SQL Azure – sys.dm_exec_query_stats

Yesterday we saw how to view the query plan for the statements hitting your SQL Azure instance. Looking at the statement and the plan itself is good, but it does not give you a complete picture for performance tuning. For that you will need some historical context. One way to get such context is to … Read more