Book Image

Learn T-SQL Querying - Second Edition

By : Pedro Lopes, Pam Lahoud
Book Image

Learn T-SQL Querying - Second Edition

By: Pedro Lopes, Pam Lahoud

Overview of this book

Data professionals seeking to excel in Transact-SQL (T-SQL) for Microsoft SQL Server and Azure SQL Database often lack comprehensive resources. This updated second edition of Learn T-SQL Querying focuses on indexing queries and crafting elegant T-SQL code, catering to all data professionals seeking mastery in modern SQL Server versions and Azure SQL Database. Starting with query processing fundamentals, this book lays a solid foundation for writing performant T-SQL queries. You’ll explore the mechanics of the Query Optimizer and Query Execution Plans, learning how to analyze execution plans for insights into current performance and scalability. Through dynamic management views (DMVs) and dynamic management functions (DMFs), you’ll build diagnostic queries. This book thoroughly covers indexing for T-SQL performance and provides insights into SQL Server’s built-in tools for expedited resolution of query performance and scalability issues. Further, hands-on examples will guide you through implementing features such as avoiding UDF pitfalls, understanding predicate SARGability, Query Store, and Query Tuning Assistant. By the end of this book, you‘ll have developed the ability to identify query performance bottlenecks, recognize anti-patterns, and skillfully avoid such pitfalls.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
1
Part 1: Query Processing Fundamentals
4
Part 2: Dos and Don’ts of T-SQL
9
Part 3: Assembling Our Query Troubleshooting Toolbox

Mining XML query plans

As we mentioned in the sys.dm_exec_query_plan section, query execution plans are stored as XML, and the sys.dm_exec_query_plan DMV returns them as a proper XML data type. This allows us to leverage XML Path Language (XPath) to generate queries that can search for elements and attributes within the query execution plans. Using these XPath queries, or XQueries, we can search for common query performance issues across all the query execution plans in the cache, rather than having to examine each graphical plan individually. In this section, we will cover a few common scenarios, but be sure to reference the Mining-PlanCache section of the Tiger Toolbox (https://aka.ms/tigertoolbox) for more examples.

Tip

The queries shown in this section can be used individually to search for specific issues, but running the entire BPCheck script from the Tiger Toolbox (https://aka.ms/bpcheck) will gather all this information and more in a single resultset.

Plans with missing...