As a consultant whose job description includes putting out performance fires, I get to see a lot of problematic queries that can dramatically harm overall server performance and throughput. Wondering ...

Indexes typically improve performance, however if all the columns required by a query are not on the index, some data is obtained from the underlying table via a key lookup. When a ‘large’ amount of ...

A popular performance tuning book gets updated for SQL Server 2025, how does it fare? Ian Stirk takes and in depth look and finds it pretty good. This well-liked SQL Server book examines performance ...

As today’s database administrators (DBAs) manage the complexity of modern database environments, particularly containerized systems, they must lean into smart automation to transform database ...

There are plenty of ways to get the most out of SQL Server without just upgrading to the latest version. For database admins working with older (maybe much older) SQL Server systems, here are four ...