Improving SQL Server Queries by Reading and Understanding Execution Plans

Quest sponsored on-demand webinar

Webcast Abstract

Before SQL Server executes a query, it generates an execution plan. Some plans are trivial, such as returning all the rows from a single table. However, when we go beyond the simplest of cases, SQL Server generates a "good enough" execution plan to accomplish the work. It'll use the indexes we've created, the statistics on those indexes, as well as how we’re manipulating the data based on the query to determine that execution plan. The hardware and the amount of data determine how fast the query returns.

If a query is performing poorly, there’s a lot within our control to improve performance. The key to doing so is understanding the execution plan.

In this webinar we'll cover how to use the tools SQL Server provides us to capture execution plans. We'll then walk through how to read an execution plan and how to use that information to write better queries. We'll discuss the impact of outdated statistics, improper indexing, and look at examples of T-SQL anti-patterns which cause our queries to run poorly. Finally, we’ll work through some remediation examples of those performance killers so you’ll have some tools with which to attack poorly performing queries in your own environment.

Speaker - K. Brian Kelley

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