SQL Query Performance Tuning

Abstract

Query performance tuning remains an important part of today’s database applications. Yes, hardware performance is constantly improving. Upgrades to SQL Server-especially to the optimizer, which helps determine how a query is executed, and the query engine, which executes the query-lead to better performance all on their own. Many systems are moving into the cloud where certain aspects of the systems are managed for you. Despite all this, query performance tuning remains a vital mechanism for improving the performance of your database management systems. The beauty of query performance tuning is that, in many cases, a small change to an index or a SQL query can result in a far more efficient application at a very low cost. In those cases, the increase in performance can be orders of magnitude better than that offered by an incrementally faster CPU or a slightly better optimizer.