Microsoft® SQL Server 2000(TM) Performance Tuning Technical Reference (Pro-Technical Refere) - Hardcover

Whalen, Edward; Garcia, Marcilina; DeLuca, Steve Adrien; Thompson, Dean

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0735612706 ISBN 13: 9780735612709

Publisher: Microsoft Press, 2001

Synopsis

Performance tuning a relational database can be engaging yet frustrating, and this guide gives you the practical information you need to configure and tune a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database for better, faster, more scalable solutions. The authors start with the basics and build upon them to teach the mechanics of performance tuning and how they affect the whole system. This book also shows how to optimize for the underlying operating system and hardware. It’s the only book of its kind coauthored by engineers who have worked in the SQL Server performance group.

Expert instruction helps you understand these topics:

THE BASICS:

• Architectural fundamentals that affect tuning
• I/O tuning and RAID storage considerations
• How to tune hardware, database layout, and configuration parameters
• Feature enhancements for better ease-of-use, performance, manageability, and reliability.

SERVER TUNING:

• How to use the Microsoft Windows 2000 System Monitor and the SQL Server Profiler to shorten transaction response times.

SIZING AND CAPACITY PLANNING:

• How to model software and hardware usage to predict resource consumption and conduct preconfiguration planning, and how to perform what-if scenarios about workload growth to avoid slow response times.

CONFIGURING AND TUNING:

• How to tune online transaction processing (OLTP) systems, data warehouses, and replicated systems.
• How to set up your system for high-performance backup and recovery.

TUNING SQL STATEMENTS:

• How to get optimal performance by using Query Analyzer and Profiler to tune SQL statements and stored procedures.
• How to take advantage of indexes and hints.

About this title

Review

Tuning databases can be fun if built into the predeployment time allocated to building a system. Tuning ceases to be fun when it's undertaken on a production system, overseen by an unhappy customer with crushing time constraints. Unfortunately, the latter scenario tends to be the more common. Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Performance Tuning Technical Reference provides database administrators and (to a lesser degree) developers with the information they need to extract maximum performance from Microsoft SQL Server 2000. This book favors optimization of SQL Server that can be done via the administrative interface rather than in application code.

Most of database tuning has to do with sacrificing one aspect of performance (say, disk storage capacity) for the improvement of another (like the execution speed of a particular kind of query). The authors of this book--they're a team of consultants from a Texas company that specializes in database tuning, as well as from Microsoft--take care to explain the tradeoffs involved in various tuning decisions. Choose one option, they say, and performance metric A will improve at the expense of metric B. Having explained the design considerations for various tuning strategies, they walk their readers through how to do the tuning they're talking about. Instructions aren't for the clueless, but they're fully adequate for SQL Server users who know their way around the interface generally. --David Wall

Topics covered: How to make databases served by Microsoft SQL Server 2000 run as fast and as efficiently as possible by tweaking the way it runs. Emphasis is placed on read/write operations (including SQL Server's way of interacting with RAID arrays), performance monitors, and settings for processor, disk, and RAM usage. There's also a lot of information on capacity planning and system sizing.

About the Author

Edward Whalen is an expert in database performance, administration, and backup recovery solutions.

Edition details

• Publisher: Microsoft Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0735612706
• ISBN 13: 9780735612709
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 450