Fritchey Grant - SQL Server 2008 Query Performance Tuning Distilled

Any source code or other supplementary material referenced by the author in this book is available to readers on GitHub via the books product page, located at www.apress.com/9781484238875 . For more detailed information, please visit www.apress.com/source-code .

Technology is changing all the time, faster and faster. New functionality is introduced in Azure SQL Database on an almost weekly schedule, and SQL Server itself has gone through two releases since the last edition of this book was published. New styles of databases are introduced all the time. With all this change, the question immediately in front of you should be, do we still need to do query tuning?

The answer is a very short and resounding, yes.

With all the functionality and capability built into SQL Server and the Azure Data Platform, not only is query tuning still an important skill, it actually becomes a way to save your organization money. Knowing how to make a query run faster so that fewer resources are needed literally becomes a way to reduce costs within a platform-as-a-service offering such as Azure SQL Database.

However, its not just about money. The code generated by object-relational mapping tools such as Entity Framework can be fantastic, until it isnt. Then, youll be working on creating custom scripts and generating data structures and indexes and all the rest of traditional query performance tuning.

While technology has certainly moved fast and far, there is still a fundamental need to get queries to run faster and do more with less overhead on your servers. Thats where this book comes into play. This is a resource that you can use to ensure that youre using all the tools in your hands to ensure that the databases you build, develop, and maintain will continue to run faster.

If you write or generate T-SQL, youre going to need to make it run faster. So, this book is for data analysts, developers, coders, database designers, database developers, and that last bastion of protection for the companys information, the database administrator. Youll all need at one point or another to understand how indexes work, where to track down performance metrics, and methods and mechanisms to ensure that your queries run as fast as they can.

The code for the book is available from Apress.com. If you have questions, want suggestions, or just need a little help, you can get in touch with me at grant@scarydba.com .

The poor editors at Apress have to put up with me and my bad scheduling, so first and foremost, thanks to Jill Balzano and Jonathan Gennick. To say I couldnt have done it without you doesnt begin to cover it. Ive said it before and Ill say it again here, publicly and forever in print, Joe Sack is my hero. Thanks for everything, Joe.