The riders in the Tour de France are probably the most monitored athletes in the world. In preparation for the race, every ounce of food a rider consumes is specially formulated to give him maximum ...

Query tuning is key to peak performance in SQL Server databases. However, lots of developers and DBAs constantly struggle to pinpoint the root cause of performance issues and spend way too much time ...

Thomas LaRock: "Without a basic understanding of wait events and how the occur, you will waste a lot of time trying and guessing at how to improve the performance of a query." Optimizing SQL Server ...

As any database admin knows, mastering the subtler nuances of SQL can be likened to the black arts. For me, tuning the efficiency of SQL queries on large, heavily used databases is a perfect example.

OK, I’ll admit it. I’m not a DBA, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t overseen databases and their performance. I was (and probably still am) the guy who installed a Microsoft SQL database by hitting Next ...