Customer Reviews

Professional SQL Server 2005 Performance Tuning (Programmer to Programmer)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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

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.

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!!)

This book presents the reader with a good overview of features, including their trade-offs. It's a good read if you're looking for practical advice on how to implement/configure vs. what's possible to implement/configure. Additionally, it doesn't simply present separate topics in isolation, but connects them so that the reader has a clear understanding regarding how different features and implementation choices interact.

I have been trying to read something that could give me a kick start in performance monitoring and tuning. And, I must say this book has been a great help. I have read many other books but but this book has been - by far- much easier to comprehend and implement. Hats-off to all writters and editors.

Although this book appears to be specific to SQL Server 2005, it's not. The techniques and tools are still extremely relevant to current and future versions of SQL Server. Whether you are a database administrator who handles performance issues on a daily basis or a developer building a database application, this book should be on your desk. The authors have a deep understanding of how to make your database server an efficient, stable system. Their ability to explain complex issues and provide relevant solutions makes this a must-have book.

I was impressed with the contents of this book. For people who wants to know about the performance issues then this book covers it all. The chapters on locking and troubleshooting resembles daily work related issues and scenarios.

If i were to recommend anything to this will be some performance scripts that can be run together to collect and analyze stats on a regular basis.

Nevertheless the best and only book available for performance tuning in SQL server

Anup

I came looking for this book to provide background information for the MCTS exam on SQL Server maintainence and also how to write faster T-SQL queries. I was not disapointed.

I am only about half way thru, but many of the topics covered appear on the exam, and go into sufficient depth and detail that I was at least enlightened and felt I learned something pratical. Performance monitoring, analyzing deadlocks and indexes, best practices, hardware configuration and how to write good queries are all covered.

The book amounts to a collection of white paper type articles by each of the authors. Each chapter stood by itself on the topic it covered, and would refer the reader to the apporprate pages when more information would be needed. While not bad in and of itself, the format was inconsistant between chapters, so it fell a little short as a tutorial.

Granted, how you find the is book may depend on your own experience level. For me it was neither boring or confusing. I found it enlighting.