Inside Microsoft® SQL Server(TM) 2005: Query Tuning and Optimization [Paperback]

Kalen Delaney (Author), Sunil Agarwal (Author), Craig Freedman (Author), Ron Talmage (Author), Adam Machanic (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 26, 2007

Dig into the internals of tuning and optimization features in SQL Server 2005—with insights from leading SQL Server experts. This in-depth guide delivers best practices, pragmatic advice, and code samples to help you enable efficient, effective queries—and optimize database performance.

Discover how to:

Create a baseline and monitor workload by using System Monitor and DMVs Design, manipulate, and manage traces to isolate database performance issues Audit user activity by using built-in default, black box, and Common Criteria traces Analyze query execution using scans and seeks, joins, aggregations, unions, and parallelism Generate efficient and cost-effective queries using cached plans or new plans Detect and resolve locking, blocking, and deadlocking concurrency issues Use best practices to diagnose and troubleshoot response time, throughput, and scalability issues

PLUS—Includes Transact-SQL code samples and on the Web

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Key Book Benefits:

-Provides deep background information along with best practices that help developers build and optimize more-responsive databases

-Features numerous code samples and table examples

About the Author

Kalen Delaney is a Microsoft MVP who has worked with SQL Server since 1987. She's a subject-matter expert on Microsoft's official SQL Server courses and previously wrote Inside SQL Server (Microsoft Press). She lives in the Pacific Northwest.

Ron Talmage is a mentor with SolidQ. He is a SQL Server MVP, PASS Northwest US Regional Mentor, and current Chapter Leader of the Redmond-based Pacific Northwest SQL Server Users Group. He has been involved with SQL Server since version 4.21a, and has contributed to numerous SQL Server white papers and articles. His current focus is on database administration for relational data warehouses using SQL Server.

Adam Machanic lives in Boston, is a regular usergroup speaker and has written for SQL Server magazines. He's a Microsoft MVP and Certified IT Professional and previously wrote Expert SQL Server 2005 Development (APress).

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Microsoft Press; 1 edition (September 26, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0735621969
• ISBN-13: 978-0735621961
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 1 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #885,107 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kalen Delaney has been working with SQL Server since 1987 when she joined the Sybase Corporation in Berkeley, California. Kalen has an independent international trainer and consultant since 1992. As a consultant, she has worked with both Microsoft Corporation and Sybase Corporation to develop courses and provide internal training for their technical support staff. Kalen has taught Microsoft Official Curriculum courses, as well as her own independently developed Advanced SQL Server Internals courses, to clients around the world. In addition, she has been writing regularly about SQL Server since 1995. Kalen is also a contributing editor and columnist for SQL Server Magazine and has been a SQL Server Most Valuable Professional since 1995.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 49 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Books Online gone prolix January 14, 2008

By Pushin' Fifty

Format:Paperback

I was disappointed with this book, which I bought together with SQL Tuning by Dan Tow, hoping to get well-digested expert advice. SQL Tuning was all that I hoped for, and I highly recommend it.

This book, though, has that creepy quality so common to MSFT Press books, where very knowledgeable people, usually connected with the MSFT development teams, list feature after feature in long, passive-voice descriptions, failing to discriminate for the reader and advise as to what is useful and what is not. You have the sense that they spent lots of time at trade shows touting the latest horde of "features", and little time coding under the strain of deadlines and client expectations. To them, every SQL Server nuance is always useful and wonderful and should get fair mention :(

This is a simple example, but SQL Tuning tells me that table scans are normally fine when selecting above 20% of rows, and index seeks are good for row counts under a percent, the space between depending on circumstance (which gray space the book goes on to address). This book, meanwhile, provides no real guidance, and tells me that table scans can be good, and indexes are useful too, and that SQL Server handles both nicely, and that the optimizer selects one or the other, and that it uses iterators, and that they are important, and that you can see what the optimizer has selected, and that you can change that if you want, and that you can automate the change, and that you can document the change, and here are the 4 related undocumented stored procs, and that this is new for 2005, and that there are other related matters, and that SQL Server has all this. Thanks!

Seems they are always plugging the product and never can admit to having suffered with its complexity. The recommendations, if you get them, are always muted by a kool-aid soaked affinity for SQL Server, which does all things well and will never fail to offer just the feature you need to succeed.

The book runs very long and strikes me as a big core dump on 3,000 topics, none of which seem prioritized or emphasized in distinct categories. Sure, the book has distinct chapters into which related material is dumped, but this fails to serve as **guidance**, which is what you are buying the book for. Not written by people in the trenches. Not recommended unless you want to buy some additional MSFT documentation.

26 of 32 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Kalen's Magnum opus October 12, 2007

By Paul Nielsen

Format:Paperback

At first glance, Inside SQL Server Query Tuning and Optimization, appears to be a multiple-author ensemble book with only 1½ chapters written by Kalen, which might be disappointing. However, the reality is that this database dream team is hand-picked by Kalen, and following Kalen's plan the book meets the high standards Kalen is known for. The flow of the information is the right way to understand and then solve query performance issues.

Chapter 1 - A Performance Troubleshooting Methodology by Sunil Agarwal (Program Manager in the SQL Server Storage Engine Group at Microsoft.) The opening chapter introduces the many factors that influence query performance. Although it fails to connect every dot, the chapter is a comprehensive overview of SQL Server performance and a sound intro for readers without a solid background in SQL Server.

Chapter 2 - Tracing and Profiling by Adam Machanic (SQL Server MVP. Leader of the New England SQL Server User Group in Boston, and all around smart guy.) Even if you use Profiler daily, you'll pick up some useful info in this thorough converge of SQL Server Engine Trace and the Profiler UI.

Chapter 3 - Query Execution by Craig Freedman (Microsoft SQL Server Query Execution Team.) This chapter has more beef than a 16 oz filet in Kansas City. Wow. If you enjoy reading Query execution plans, then you'll read this chapter 3 or 4 times. There's deep knowledge in here you won't find anywhere else. I've lost sleep wondering about some of the questions answered by this chapter, and I've lost more sleep reading it.

Chapter 4 - Troubleshooting Query Performance by Kalen Delaney and Craig Freedman. This is the practical part two of Craig's amazing chapter 3. Here Kalen and Craig show exactly how to diagnose and solve difficult query performance issues.

Chapter 5 - Plan Caching and Recompilation by Kalen Delaney. This is the topic Kalen presented at the 2007 PASS Summit pre-con and her depth shows in this chapter. Since query plan caching is so important to executing queries, this chapter makes perfect sense in this book.

Chapter 6 - Concurrency Problems by Ron Talmage (SQL Server MVP, and true gentleman. Ron leads the Pacific Northwest SQL Server Users Group which meets in Building 35, the SQL Server team building on the MIcrosoft Redmond campus.) In any high transaction production system, diagnosing and tuning locking and blocking is the difference between "it runs on my notebook" and "it runs with thousands of users." Ron goes beyond the basic explanation of locks and isolation levels to explain how to resolve specific conncurency issues.

Book prerequisite: at least 2-3 years of writing SQL Server queries and a decent understanding of SQL Server.

Like Kalen's other books, Inside SQL Server Query Tuning and Optimization, is readable, authoritative, and a requirement on every serious database developer's desk. Buy this book! and read it at least twice.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Very good book December 7, 2007

By Learns Divine

Format:Paperback

To be a good DBA you need to understand at least a little bit about database internals. Kalen's (ok, so it is co-authored) book gets you up to speed quickly and gives the level of detail needed to improve your skill set as a DBA. I haven't completed reading this book yet but have read the 2000 version. A lot of similar material, but more detail this time hence the need to break up the content into more than 1 book. I personally find her writing style easy to read.