Chapter 8. Troubleshooting and Optimizing SQL Server

Terms you'll need to understand:

Statistics

Execution plan

Query Optimizer

Database Engine Tuning Advisor (DTA)

Lock

Block

Deadlock

Fill factor

Clustered and nonclustered indexes

Covering indexes

Database console command (DBCC)

Alerts

Techniques you'll need to master:

Creating, updating, and maintaining statistics

Using the DTA

Finding and resolving locking issues

Creating and configuring indexing for performance

Using partitioning to improve performance

Utilizing DBCC to troubleshoot and repair databases

The topics of troubleshooting and optimization are closely related. Often, the problem you have to troubleshoot is directly associated with performance and resource utilization. Your ability to adjust the configuration to achieve the optimal environment depends on the quality of information the changes are based on. For that reason, both troubleshooting and optimization rely heavily on server monitoring, which is covered in Chapter 7, "Monitoring SQL Server Performance." This chapter attempts to take information gathered, troubleshoot bottlenecks and other problems, and make recommendations that will help improve the performance and stability of the system.