SQL Server Articles

In a two-cluster node Active / Active setup, if any one of the nodes fail, then the another active node will take over the active resources of the failed instance. It is always preferred while creating two-node cluster using Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Microsoft Clustering Service, that each node be connected to a shared [...]

Preparing Cluster Resource Groups As a first step, the DBA should list all server-based applications and services that will run within the cluster environment, regardless of whether they will need high availability. Applications and services that need to be highly available should be placed into resource groups. Other applications should be tracked, and their interactions [...]

Pre-Installation Spot Verification Review the Windows Event Log, it should not have any errors before you begin the SQL Server clustering installation. Ping from one node to another to verify a good connection and a latency of less than 500ms. In regard to the services listed under Pre-Install Preparation Checklist above, make sure all of [...]

SQL cursors have been a curse to database programming for many years because of their poor performance. On the other hand, they are extremely useful because of their flexibility in allowing very detailed data manipulations at the row level. Using cursors against SQL Server tables can often be avoided by employing other methods, such as using [...]

Many of us are already familiar with connection pooling and understand to some degree its importance in web and SQL Server programming. We’ve all heard the adage that “connections are expensive” and “pooling is good”. This article will examine the topic in more detail, bringing to light some of the finer points of connection pooling. [...]

The hardware configuration that SQL Server runs on top of can make or break you. How do you know how much hardware is really needed by your applications? How do you know if your applications have grown to the point where they are now overloading your system?  In this article I will give you the [...]

While there is no doubt of the benefits of adding indexes to your tables, and for the most part you have to do little work to keep the indexes maintained, some maintenance is required as indexes can become fragmented during data modifications. This fragmentation can become a source of performance issues with your queries. So [...]

When you follow online communities dedicated to SQL Server with open eyes, you certainly notice a whole lot of questions are closely related to the DATETIME datatype in one way or the other. Obviously, working with DATETIME not as easy as it may seem. To me this seems kind of strange. My believe is that [...]

During a recent interview to find a new job before my contract ran out, I was asked a question that took me by surprise. The interviewer simply asked me what steps I took to decide which stored procedures needed optimizing and what steps I used to optimize those queries. What took me by surprise was [...]

Return to Previous Article in the Series Performance Audit Checklist Transact-SQL Checklist Your Response Does the Transact-SQL code return more data than needed? Are cursors being used when they don’t need to be? Are UNION and UNION SELECT properly used? Is SELECT DISTINCT being used properly? Is the WHERE clause sargable? Are temp tables being [...]