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

Analyzing traces with RML Utilities

RML Utilities is a suite of tools that can be used to analyze and replay SQL Database Engine workloads. We first introduced the RML Utilities in Chapter 6, Discovering T-SQL Anti-Patterns in Depth, in the Avoiding unnecessary overhead with stored procedures section where we used the ostress tool to simulate a multithreaded workload on the server. The input to ostress can be a single query or T-SQL script, but ostress can also take a prepared trace file (either SQL Trace or XEvents) as input. This allows you to capture a workload from a production server, and then replay that workload on a test server so that you can experiment with various settings or performance tuning options – or even test how a new version of the SQL Database Engine would perform with the same workload.

Another tool that is part of RML Utilities is ReadTrace. The ReadTrace tool is used to analyze and prepare traces for replay via ostress, but it can also be used to...