IT systems today are required to deliver maximum performance with zero downtime and maximum flexibility for developers and administrators. As developers, we all know that if the performance of our applications is somehow lacking, then the cause of the slowdown must be in the database!
Major causes of performance problems inside database projects can be followed back to database design mistakes or to the limitations built into the database engine to ensure data consistency for concurrent connections, or a mixture of both of these aspects.
Microsoft SQL Server adheres to the ACID theory. A simplified explanation of the ACID theory is that it describes how changes made to a database are required to fulfil four properties: Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability:
Atomicity states that the contents of each transaction are either processed successfully and completely or fail in their entirety. "Half-transactions" are not possible.
Consistency...