Blog Archives
Pre-Con: Performance Tuning Training in Spartanburg, SC for #SQLSat431
On Friday, September 25th, 2015, Mike Lawell (b|t) and I will be giving our “Getting the New DBA Up to Speed with Performance Tuning” pre-con training for the inaugural SQL Saturday Spartanburg. We are extremely excited to be presenting this training again this year after the tremendous feedback we received earlier in Nashville. We have a passion for the SQL community and helping DBAs and developers to do their job better. We want to help you too! If you’ve never taken a pre-con before a SQL Saturday, it is a great way to get some high quality training at a low price and in your local area. Register here today!
In this session, we will take an in-depth look at performance tuning for the beginning DBA as well as the “Accidental DBA” in order to help prepare you for beginning to intermediate skills in tuning your real world queries. We will show you how to get started when you get the production support call stating that the database is slow. We will cover the basics of reading query execution plans as well as using dynamic management views in order to diagnose poor performance. We will also cover performance analysis tools and performance troubleshooting as well as some great demos to get you up and running tuning queries.
Prerequisites: Basic understanding of T-SQL and the SQL Server relational engine
Sections:
- An overview of server configuration best practices will be discussed along with key tools that can be used to identify performance problems.
- Several DMVs will be covered that can be used for performance data collection and diagnosis of performance issues. Third party free tools that use these DMVs will be demonstrated for the data collection.
- Common performance issues will be discussed along with the methods that can be used to identify the issues and resolve.
- The final section will look at the graphical Execution Plan basics and how to identify potential performance issues.
We are planning on a day filled with fun and adventure! Let us help you become a better DBA! Not a DBA? No problem! This is also an excellent training for developers who are writing queries in T-SQL!
Register here!
If you cannot make it to the pre-con, then make sure you check out our regular sessions on Saturday. Register here! Enjoy!
SQL Nexus, Getting Started
Yesterday, we started a journey of knowledge refresh with the SQL Nexus tool available from CodePlex. Before we begin, it should be noted that this tool has not yet been updated to include SQL 2012, sorry, but it does cover databases from 2000 through 2008 R2. For clarification purposes, it does require at least the SQL Server 2005 database engine but will analyze SQL Server 2000 databases (at least it says that it does, but I do not have any to run it against so I cannot comment on the validity).
You will also need a few other items such as the Microsoft Report Viewer, (2008 or 2010 versions will work), you will need to update the Report Viewer (2008 or 2010 versions), install the Relay Markup Language Utilities (RML Utiltities), and then you will be able to install SQL Nexus. That almost felt like a Linux distribution with all of the required pieces.
The RML Utilities are pretty neat as they can help simulate application testing by replaying a production user load in a testing environment. This can be helpful in testing an upgrade to SQL Server or in applying patches and service packs. Tomorrow we will continue this journey. Enjoy!
SQL Nexus, an Introduction
Have you tried SQL Nexus yet? SQL Nexus allows you to import data from SQLDiag/PSSDiag, PerfMon, and PerfStats into a special database where you can then generate reports detailing performance issues based upon the imported data. Over the next couple of days, I will blog about using this tool as well as the SQLDiag/PSSDiag Manager tool. I have used these tools only a couple of times and need to refresh my knowledge, so feel free to come along for the journey. Enjoy!
SQL Swampland 