B

Baseline

A set of metrics gathered during a performance analysis process that forms the basis of a performance tuning methodology.

BCP

Bulk Copy Program. A command utility that can be used to import and export data from a view or table. Use BCP -? at the command prompt to get a list of support switches.

Benchmark

A standard test or set of metrics gathered through a performance analysis process used to compare the performance of similar systems.

BIDS

An acronym for BI Design Studio, which is really the Visual Studio 2005 IDE with support for building SSIS packages.

Bottleneck

A particular subsystem that is slowing down the potential throughput of the entire system.

Breakpoint

Provides a way to stop package or code execution at a certain point. Used for debugging to stop execution close to the point where a problem is occurring.

B-tree

Balanced tree. An abstract data type used to store indexes in SQL Server.

Bulk-logged recovery model

Minimally logs most bulk operations, such as index creation and bulk loads, while fully logging other transactions.