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Performance Top Tips (RSS)

Wednesday, August 31, 2005 10:34 AM

SQL 2005 - UPSERT: In nature but not by name; but at last!

SQL Server has long been criticised for not having an UPSERT command, well now in SQL 2005 we have some good news, we have two new TSQL set operators that give us the complex insert/update logic that constitute an UPSERT.  These are INTERSECT and
posted by Mat_Stephen | 1 Comments
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Thursday, February 10, 2005 11:51 PM

SQL Server Performance Top Tip: SQL Server User Mode Scheduler (UMS) – understanding it can explain some odd performance

When performing batch jobs where you wish to run processes in parallel it is important to understand how the scheduler works.   You can get a description of what the scheduler does by looking under the title ‘SQL Server Task Scheduling’ in Books
posted by Mat_Stephen | 4 Comments
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Tuesday, February 08, 2005 3:50 PM

Microsoft SQL Server Performance Top Tip: Degrees of Parallelism and a Degree of Uncertainty

Max degree of parallelism is an advanced configuration option in SQL Server about which many question have been asked and much written.  In this blog entry I hope to offer some insight and certainty as to what this option does and how it should be
posted by Mat_Stephen | 2 Comments
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Wednesday, February 02, 2005 1:26 PM

Microsoft SQL Server Performance Top Tip: Multi Processor (SMP) sudden death syndrome.

You’ve been really proud of your nice new multi processor box, its got eight processors and some serious grunt.  Everyone has been really pleased with the system’s lightening responsiveness and the big boss thinks you’re a super computer guru – looks
posted by Mat_Stephen | 5 Comments
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Wednesday, February 02, 2005 11:42 AM

Microsoft SQL Server Performance Top Tip: Multi Processor (SMP) Box Doesn’t Use All It’s Processors

Seen this?  You’ve got a nice new sparkling multi processor box, packed with ‘go-faster’ chips but the performance isn’t much better than your old one or two processor box.  You take a look at the processor usage, either through task manager
posted by Mat_Stephen | 8 Comments
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Wednesday, January 26, 2005 9:31 PM

SP I promised during TechNet Gig on SQL Performance which will identify blocking spid at top of blocking chain : sp_blocker_pss80

Please follow the link below to the MS KB article containing the above SP. Note the 'fast' parameter to improve performance by reducing the amount of extra diagnostic info returned. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;271509 Hope
posted by Mat_Stephen | (Comments Off)
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Tuesday, January 25, 2005 12:01 AM

CREATE proc track_waitstats & CREATE proc get_waitstats - useful code for diagnosing SQL 2000 performance

For those attending my TechNet SQL 2000 performance tuning session at TVP Reading on Tuesday 25th Jan, here is the code for the track_waitstats and get_waitstats stored procedures I refer to during the presentation.   CREATE proc track_waitstats
posted by Mat_Stephen | 3 Comments
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