Customer Reviews

SQL Server 2008 Query Performance Tuning Distilled (Expert's Voice in SQL Server)

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
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My gauge of an amazing book is simple: if I've got a question, and I reach for the book BEFORE I search the web, then it's an amazing book.

Several times in the last two weeks, I reached for this book first.

Query performance tuning is the art of reading a query's execution plan, figuring out why it's not fast, and then determining the most cost-effective way to make it faster. Anybody can throw more indexes in and just hope it speeds up, but as the book illustrates, sometimes that can hurt more than help.

To do a good job, the tuner needs to know about indexing, statistics, execution plans, compilations, blocking, deadlocks, and query design issues that can force a query to perform poorly. Some of this stuff is covered in abstract terms in college classes, but for the most part, all of us - developers, DBAs, sysadmins - are pretty much unprepared to guess what's going on inside the SQL Server engine.

When you first design and deploy an application, that's a great thing: you don't need to know what's going on inside the black box. SQL Server handles a lot of load with the default settings, with pretty much any application design, before things start to creak and groan. I've seen people build amazingly big SQL Server applications without any knowledge of how indexes or execution plans work. When you start to run into performance problems, you need expert help fast - and that's what this book provides.

Regardless of your seniority level, you're going to find this book's price an extremely worthwhile investment. The book's authors, Grant Fritchey and Sajal Dam, strike a great balance between bringing you up to speed versus diving into advanced concepts. Chapter 4 on Index Analysis is a great example. It spends the first few pages bringing the beginners up to speed on what an index is and how B-trees work. Then it gradually layers on an explanation of how you would approach index design and why the width of your index matters. The explanation includes queries that prove the concepts, with screenshots of results where appropriate. The discussion ramps up to more advanced topics like covering indexes, filtered indexes, and compression.

I really like the organization of this book because it progresses in the same way that I'd recommend training for a performance tuner. If you need to make an application run faster, read the book in order. Don't be tempted to jump to, say, execution plan analysis - you'll make poor decisions without understanding the concepts discussed earlier.

I've been performance tuning applications for years, trying to wring every last dollar's worth out of my hardware to make our applications run faster, and I keep learning things as I go through this book. Normally, I try to read the entire book cover to cover before posting a review, but in this case, it's going to be quite a while before I finish the book. I just keep reading a chapter, catching enough things I didn't know before, and then stopping to apply that knowledge and test it out in my lab. I highly recommend it.

Great book. I've been waiting for the re-write to Sajal Dam's book on SQL Server 2000 performance tuning for a very long time. The only problem with it is that that too many example scripts do not match the code in the book. [case in point: On pg. 289 it references a script called stats_changes.sql. The code in the download is nothing like the code on pg. 290. Ditto for pg. 177 and several others.] This leaves the reader to figure it out for themself. The book includes an email address for the author that rejects all attempts to send him email and I see no updates to the download since it was first published. If these oversites are corrected, this would be a great learning resource for the SQL Server professional charged with performance tuning responsibilities.

One of the finest book on SQL Server Perf Tuning. To be honest I used to have the SQL Server performance tuning book by Ken England on SQL 2000 and looking for it's sequel on 2005. I went to the book store and ordered the book but it was disappointing. Then this book was given to me by one of my friends. A great reference book as I was expecting. Lot of theories and matching examples make this book stand out from the rest. SQL Server is just not SQL Tuning. It includes Database System tuning. This book has given a dedicated chapter in making you understand the same. It gives you a perspective on how to approach to a performance tuning from identification of the performance bottleneck to troubleshooting the problem. I enjoyed reading chapters on indexing and Index, Statistics and Execution Cache Analysis. However, I wanted to see more detail on tuning XML and Service Broker.

I will suggest this book for other DBAs and SQL Programmers who want to know the theories behind Index and Statistics, BLocking and Deadlocking, Fragmentation.

A very good reference book on SQL server performance tuning on diverse directions.

On the initial chapters, you can find a good introduction on Performance tuning, Performance analysis and on the Database Engine Tuning Advisor. There are various analysis and optimization techniques explained in later chapters. There is comprehensive information about most common performance issues that occurs due to Query designs and deadlocks.

We can find more information on tuning indexes like when and where to apply what type of index. Later, the workload optimization techniques explains ways to identify and research expensive queries and jobs and "What not" to do to avoid performance issues. This book helps not only to write individual queries without any performance flaws, it also helps to find where the flaws are in existing queries. I would like to mention that there are good of examples of queries (which everyone look for) which make the reader to understand where performance issues or bottlenecks occur and what to do with it.

One good sense I had when I started reading the book is it isn't that hard to read through the book even you are new to performance tuning in SQL server. I would strongly recommend this book for all database performance professionals (Even the beginners in Performance Tuning).

From a Simple-Talk article to eBook on Query Plans help create a great book from Grant Fritchey. I met Grant at SQL PASS in 2008 and then at SQLSaturday in New York, where he demonstrated addictive enthusiasm about SQL Server. I bought this book as soon as it went on sell. This was a missing piece of information for the SQL Server community until Grant and Sajal brought this book to the market. Please buy and read this book if you are a DBA or developer that has to tune queries in your job.

Thanks,
Thomas LeBlanc, MCDBA & MCITP

Ok, first of all the book is short, concise and very easy to read. This should be a must read for every single developer that get's involved in SQL Server 2008. It's quite complete despite it's short length (600 pages - remember this includes table of contents and all that).

So perhaps the most interesting thing in the book regarding the topics covered is that includes all the aspects to take into account when writing queries like the tools to verify execution plans, analysis of cursors, deadlocks and all the wonderful stuff we run into when dealing with queries.

However, nothing is perfect. One of the problems I found when reading it is that it doesn't cover subjects like T-SQL Refactoring or techniques to handle integration with other systems like Oracle. But don't get me wrong, this are rare environments and only happen with big companies with lots of systems. Anyway maybe for a future edition. The other thing is that is not the definitely guide to tuning queries, although is very close.

One of the best things for me about this book was that I was able to read most of it while riding the bus to work. Grant did such a good job of explaining the results of each step, I was able to understand each point without trying it out for myself on a computer. I think I am pretty good with T-SQL and query tuning, but, by reading this book, I now have a methodical way to address performance problems.

I have been using SQL Server starting with 2000 till 2008 R2. My problem is always regarding monitoring the system without the price of those expensive monitoring tool. If you are on a budget, and if you need to start to monitor your, SQL Server, without the price of those expensive monitoring tool, then this is the book for you. This book will teach you the ABC of how and why you are having problems with the system. After that it will show you options on how to resolve your issue with the system. It does not only focus on SQL Server itself but it focus on the whole server. I will be using this book until the next version. For this book to be a success, you need to spend the time to really follow the examples in the book. This way you will have a solid foundation on how the whole system relies on each component of the server. Thank you Grant Fritchey and Sajal Dam for the book.

I love this book. I have been a SQL Server DBA for 5 years, but I have been learning so much through reading this book. It is well written and easy to understand. It goes into "why" indexes work the way they do, so that a DBA can use that knowledge to make good decisions. It also covers tools that DBAs should know such as Profiler and Performance Monitor.

Excellent material, a thorough analysis on MS SQL performance optimization. Book chapters are well structured with lots of examples. It covers indexing, query performance, statistics, deadlocks, blocking and possible HW bottlenecks. There aren't many books out there covering MS SQL performance exclusively. A "must have" for every experienced DBA. I enjoyed reading it a couple of times!