database management

Microsoft SQL Server comes with a boatload of additional components. One component is the SQL Agent. The purpose of the SQL Agent is to serve as a job scheduler. Many…

At some point in your career as a data professional, you are going to fill up an entire drive with data. It is not a question of “if,” but a…

You can use the information in the SQL Server plan cache to research performance issues and investigate opportunities for performance improvement. In this three-part article series, we’ve examined several important…

The SQL Server plan cache can be a good tool to use in identifying current performance issues and in looking for new ways to improve performance.

The SQL Server plan cache stores details on statements that are executed over time. Each time a statement executes, SQL Server will look inside the plan cache first to see if a plan already exists. If a plan exists, SQL Server will use that plan instead of spending time compiling a new plan. This ensures the engine operates efficiently.

I wrote a couple of posts previously on SQL Server consolidation. The first post tried to give insight on some of the problems and associated motivating factors that most companies have…

Consider for a moment that you have a deck attached to your house. It is one story above ground level and is growing weaker with each passing year. The former…

I am seeing more than a handful of articles these days regarding SQL Server virtualization and/or consolidation. Lots of companies are coming forward to provide you tools that will take…

We have customers using database mirroring, so I wanted to take some time to write a quick post regarding database mirroring and performance monitoring. Microsoft has published an article titled…

I never cared for the phrase “wasted time” when it comes to something like performance tuning. Sure, we all feel that way, especially when we spend hours on something only…