Professional SQL Server 2005 Performance Tuning (Programmer to Programmer) [Paperback]

Steven Wort (Author), Christian Bolton (Author), Justin Langford (Author), Michael Cape (Author), Joshua J. Jin (Author), Douglas Hinson (Author), Haidong Ji (Author), Paul A. Mestemaker (Author), Arindam Sen (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0470176393 | ISBN-13: 978-0470176399 | Publication Date: January 29, 2008 | Edition: 1

Written by a team of expert SQL users, this comprehensive resource approaches performance tuning from a new perspective by showing you a methodical scientific approach to diagnose performance problems. The book first walks you through how to discover bottlenecks when something is wrong and you’ll then learn how to identify and remove the problems that are causing poor performance. You’ll discover preventive measures you can take to try to avoid a performance problem entirely and you’ll learn how to achieve better performance.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Professional SQL Server 2005 Performance Tuning

Written by a team of expert SQL users, this comprehensive resource approaches performance tuning from a new perspective by showing you a methodical scientific approach to diagnose performance problems. In addition, the authors demonstrate how to make use of the key tools for SQL Server Performance tuning.

Broken into four parts, the book first walks you through how to discover bottlenecks when something is wrong and how to monitor SQL Server to see whether there is a resource bottleneck. You'll then learn how to identify and remove the problems that are causing poor performance. The next section explains the preventive measures you can take to try to avoid a performance problem entirely. Finally, you'll learn how to achieve better performance and you'll take a look at some of the challenges involving performance tuning at the later stages of a product's life.

What you will learn from this book

• How to use the SQL Server wait types to find resource bottlenecks and the queries that are creating them

• Ways to tune and configure the schema so you can remove bottlenecks

• Techniques for creating standard workloads for use in performance testing

• Benefits of storage subsystem performance and robustness

• How to use SQLIO and SQLIOSim to their full potential

• Best practices for a successful deployment

Who this book is for
This book is for consultants, developers, DBAs, architects, or anyone with an interest in SQL performance. A working knowledge of T-SQL and knowledge of how to perform basic SQL Server and OS administrative tasks is necessary.

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

About the Author

Steven Wort has been working with SQL Server for the past 14 years. He is currently a developer in the Windows group at Microsoft where he works on performance and scalability issues on a large database system. Steven has been at Microsoft for nearly 7 years, working in the Windows group for the past 2 years. Prior to this, Steven spent 2 years in the SQL Server group working on performance and scalability. His first job at Microsoft was 3 years spent working in what is now CSS as an escalation engineer on the SIE team. During this time Steven was able to travel the world working with some of Microsoft’s customers on their performance and scalability problems. Before coming to Microsoft, Steven spent 20 years working in the United Kingdom as a freelance consultant specializing in database application development. When Steven isn’t busy working, he can be found spending time with his family and enjoying many fitness activities in the great outdoors of the Pacific Northwest.

Christian Bolton has been working with SQL Server since 1999 and in 2007 became a director and database architect for Coeo Ltd, a Microsoft Certified Partner focused on large-scale and complex SQL Server projects in the United Kingdom. Prior to this, Christian worked for 5 years as a senior premier field engineer for Microsoft UK, working with some of Microsoft’s biggest customers across EMEA. His specialist areas are high availability, scalability, and performance tuning. Christian works out of London and lives in the south of England with his wife and daughter. He can be contacted at http://coeo.com or through his blog at http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/christian.

Justin Langford has worked as a premier field engineer for Microsoft specializing in SQL Server for the past 3 years.Much of this time has been focused on sharing best practices for operations and optimization with some of the United Kingdom’s largest financial and government organizations. Justin previously worked as a consultant foraMicrosoft Partner focusing on upgrade, migration, and software deployment projects for enterprise customers. Outside of work, Justin enjoys yacht racing, snowboarding, and has a keen interest in classic British sports cars.

Michael Cape is a database developer with experience in a variety of industries. Those industries are mortgage banking, pension administration, advertising, logistics, insurance, and labor management. Michael holds a BSCS degree and got his start with database development with SQLBase from Gupta. Michael also has 5 years experience with DB2, and has been working with SQL Server, starting with version 7, for the last 7 years. Outside work, Michael spends time with his wife and two children. He also enjoys golf, bicycling, fishing, and kite flying.

Joshua Jin works for the Intel Corporation. He is a certified SQL Server MCITP database administrator, MCITP database developer, and MCITP business intelligence developer. He specializes in the performance tuning of large-scale and high-volume SQL databases. Prior to working at Intel, he worked on the largest Internet banking implementation in the United States, using SQL server as its database engine. He can be reached at joshua_jin?@yahoo.com.

Douglas Hinson is an independent software and database consultant in the logistics and financial industries, with an extensive SQL Server background. He has co-authored several Wrox books, including Professional SQL Server 2005 Integration Services.

Haidong "Alex" Ji is a professional trainer and consultant specializing in SQL Server administration, performance tuning, high availability, and many other facets of SQL Server. In addition, he also excels at database interoperability issues, having worked extensively with Oracle and MySQL on Unix and Linux. Haidong enjoys learning and sharing his expertise through technical writing, speaking, consulting, training, and mentoring. He co-authored Professional SQL Server 2005 Integration Services (Wrox Press) and Professional SQL Server 2005 Administration (Wrox Press). Haidong maintains a blog at www.haidongji.com/category/technology/.He can be contacted at [e-mail].

Paul Mestemaker is a program manager at Microsoft on the SQL Server product team. During the SQL Server 2005 product cycle, he worked closely with the new dynamic management views on the SQL Server Engine team. Following the launch, Paul moved to the SQL Server Manageability team to create tools on top of the new SQL platform technologies. He was influential in the release of SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer, Performance Dashboard Reports, and SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2. He is now a member of the SQLCAT Best Practices team, where he works with subject matter experts across Microsoft and in the community to develop new rules for SQL BPA. Paul has been a speaker at TechEd, PASS, Connections, and other Microsoft conferences. He blogs occasionally; you can check it out here: http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlrem/.

Arindam Sen has worked with SQL Server for the past 8 years and has significant experience with Siebel deployments using SQL Server databases. His interests lie in the area of high availability and performance tuning. He is an MCSE, MCSA, MCAD, and MCDBA. He won the SQL Server innovator award (SQL Server Magazine) in 2003 and 2004. He holds an engineering degree in electronics and an MBA from Duke University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 551 pages
• Publisher: Wrox; 1 edition (January 29, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470176393
• ISBN-13: 978-0470176399
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #490,656 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Professional SQL Server 2005 Performance Tuning from Wrox ROCKS!, July 12, 2008

By 

Jimmy May "@aspiringgeek" (Redmond, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Professional SQL Server 2005 Performance Tuning (Programmer to Programmer) (Paperback)

I have long been impressed with Steven Wort as a result of his work at Microsoft & his promiscuous, insightful posts on various SQL Server sites. When I learned he was the lead author of "Professional SQL Server 2005 Performance Tuning" I could scarcely wait for its publication.

Now that it's been out for a bit I'm shocked to see only two reviews here on Amazon. This book is a worthy read & well worth a five-star rating.

I am extremely impressed at the utility of this book. Information related to SQL Server performance is fairly ubiquitous, yet this work is unique in its approach. I know of no other reference ever written for SQL Server which amalgamates such great information integrated from the perspective of hardware, fundamental schema design, & tools.

For example, Steven introduces a tool which cleverly leverages the SQLIO.exe tool as well as explains how to use it. I've never seen anything quite like it. It's so useful I use it at almost all of my customer sites.

In fact, I recommend this book to all my customers & colleagues.

If the book has a deficit, it's a mixed one. Though it cites the importance of disk partition alignment, an arcane yet critical component of disk configuration, the text unfortunately fails to provide the information required to implement it.

No book can be a one-stop reference for a concept as broad as SQL Server performance, yet Professional SQL Server 2005 Performance Tuning comes as close as any I've seen.

--Jimmy May, Aspiring Geek

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Practical tuning secrets revealed, April 11, 2008

By 

James A. Russell (Orem, UT USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Professional SQL Server 2005 Performance Tuning (Programmer to Programmer) (Paperback)

I was inheriting a poorly performing 240 Gigabyte database. With just a few chapters, I had the server performing well within the client's specs. The coverage of the features of 2005 are excellent and helps anyone who wants to show that 2005 is competitive with any other enterprise database system.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive, Practical and Informative!!!!, June 8, 2009

By 

Sudheer K. Maharana - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Professional SQL Server 2005 Performance Tuning (Programmer to Programmer) (Paperback)

From my experience with SQL Server and Oracle for the last 15 years of my IT experience, Database Performance tuning is more of an art and science (even though the book says it is more of a science). As SQL Server transformed into different versions, the information to gather performance related data matrix improved. Hence, the quest for ways to get information on how to troubleshoot performance problems in SQL Server grew.

I have referred many books on SQL Server Performance Tuning, but most of the books I have referred provided generic information and go on describing mundane performance tuning methods such as SQL Profiler, Execution Plan and Performance Logs without any examples to refer or try with. I did not find many books that deal with performance tuning concepts from ground up. This book defines the performance tuning concepts from ground up and also describes the "how and what" data point to gather, measure and analyze to troubleshoot the performance problems.

Book starts with good introduction to the basic concepts of Performance Tuning in a methodical approach. It defines how to understand a problem statement, how to go about solving those problems and how to prevent it from occurring. The book goes about all facets of performance tuning such as Server and database tuning, SQL tuning, creating a workload for creating a performance benchmark, system tuning for memory, processor and storage.

I liked the chapters dealing with SQL Server Wait types, Tuning Indexes, Tuning Schema and Capturing, Measuring and Replying workloads.
Like any other book, it has some shortcomings too. For instance there are some typos and which can easily be caught if you understand the subject in the chapter.

So I will suggest if you are an experience DBA or a DBA who wants to get into Performance Tuning (a good line to be in!!), please add this book to your cart!!!!(no.. I was not paid to write this!!)