Preface

Experienced and novice users have always faced choices and trade-offs to achieve the very best performance when writing T-SQL code for their applications. This book is for all data professionals who want to master the art of writing efficient T-SQL code in modern SQL Server versions, as well as Azure SQL Database.

This book will start with query processing fundamentals to help you write solid, performant T-SQL queries. You will be introduced to query execution plans and how to leverage them for query troubleshooting. Later, you will learn how to identify various T-SQL patterns and anti-patterns. This will help you analyze execution plans to gain insights into current performance, as well as determine whether a query is scalable. You will learn how to build diagnostic queries using dynamic management views (DMVs) and dynamic management functions (DMFs) to unlock the secrets of T-SQL execution. Furthermore, you will learn how to leverage SQL Server’s built-in tools to shorten the time to address query performance and scalability issues. You will learn how to implement various features such as Extended Events, Query Store, Query Tuning Assistant, and more, using hands-on examples.

By the end of the book, you will be able to determine where query performance bottlenecks are and understand what anti-patterns may be in use and what you need to do to avoid such pitfalls going forward. It’s essentially all you need to know to squeeze every last bit of performance out of your T-SQL queries.