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

Exploring Query Execution Plans

In the previous chapters, we learned how to construct a Transact-SQL (T-SQL) query, how the SQL Database Engine processes a query, and how the query is optimized, which results in an execution plan that can be cached and reused by subsequent query executions. Now that we understand the steps the SQL Database Engine follows to produce a plan and execute a query, we can investigate an execution plan to examine the results of this process and begin analyzing how we can improve the performance of our queries.

In this chapter, we’re going to cover the following main topics:

  • What is a query plan?
  • Accessing a query plan
  • Navigating a query plan
  • Query plan operators of interest
  • Query plan properties of interest