SQL Server Performance Forum – Threads Archive
tech journalist seeking performance tuning comment
hello,my apologies if this is intruding. i write the best practices column for software test and performance magazine http://stpmag.com). i’m casting about for folks to interview for my upcoming column, which touches on post-deployment tuning. i’m a journalist, not a coder, and so have just a handful of high-level questions. would it be appropriate to post those questions here? i did see the tuning groups/topics a bit further down but my questions are so general i thought i’d start here. thanks in advance for letting me a know if a bit of dialogue would be okay. my deadline is saturday.
sincerely, Geoff Koch
freelance tech journalist
I don’t see any problem but don’t what others think about it… You can post the questions, if moderators and/or owners don’t like it, your thread will be locked otherwise you may get answers…
MohammedU.
Moderator
SQL-Server-Performance.com All postings are provided “AS IS†with no warranties for accuracy.
Geoff Welcome to the forum, appreciate your concern and the column paper you are writing.
I would like to participate and send me the details you need by clicking emailing poster on this thread. Mohammed
I hope we are not that cruel by locking a thread if the post is really explaining the need. I will move the thread to relevant forum section.
Satya SKJ
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
Writer, Contributing Editor & Moderator
http://www.SQL-Server-Performance.Com
This posting is provided AS IS with no rights for the sake of knowledge sharing. The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind.
well, i guess to start with a simple question: what are a few examples of particular application stacks or usage scenarios in which issues with a database can cause huge performance bottlenecks? (and alternatively, what the stacks and scenarios in which you’ll almost never be constrained by sql database performance?) thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts. Geoff Koch
freelance tech journalist
IT is an open question, there will be many reasons for having a performance issues on the databases:
– bad code
– no database optimization tasks scheduled
– transaction log not handled for proper truncation
– TEMPDB not sized as per the requirement
– Poor maintenance of Service packs on SQL & Windows operating system
– Not a better hardware (under privileged memory & disks for a database that is hammered with many reads and writes)
… the list goes on SQL Server alone or databsae alone may not be the main concern for performance loss, you have to or atlest consider the network & application layer where the data is queried accordingly. Without having proper or sensible approach of designing the database with a route of optimization it will be easy to fine tune at the later stage. Always test, test and test in the prior stages for any sort of implementation. Satya SKJ
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
Writer, Contributing Editor & Moderator
http://www.SQL-Server-Performance.Com
This posting is provided AS IS with no rights for the sake of knowledge sharing. The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind.
Agree with Satya, specially in the 1rs two items. Luis Martin
Moderator
SQL-Server-Performance.com All in Love is Fair
Stevie Wonder
All postings are provided “AS IS†with no warranties for accuracy.
satya and luis, thanks! let’s assume that #1 and #2 matter most. my article deals with post-deployment tuning. #1, bad code, is something that happens upstream. after deployment, you’re sort of stuck, right? at least until the next release. i suppose if it’s open source and you write the new code yourself, you might be able to address the issue. as for scheduled optimization tasks, i don’t know much about these. can you give me an example that illustrates why they are important? thanks again! Geoff Koch
freelance tech journalist
I deal with 3rd party software. That mean: one for all Companies. (No code modification is allowed).
Production, Invoices, Stock, etc., but what the developer does not know is: haw every Company will use this software.
So, just an example, one company use to invoice on line and other use to invoice at the end of the day. I can’t touch any single line of code, so I have to work with indexes to get more performance and maintenance plans. That’s why 1 and 2 are most important, of course in my business. Luis Martin
Moderator
SQL-Server-Performance.com All in Love is Fair
Stevie Wonder
All postings are provided “AS IS†with no warranties for accuracy.
If the code is written and deployed by internal team for inhouse applications it can be modified immediately based on company policies. In US some compmanies have to follow the SOX rules to resolve these type of issues. If it is very critical issue you have to fix before doing anything… kind of emergency, if it is simple it has to go through all SOX process before fixing it. Scheduled optimization include
– removing table/index fragmentation which causes due to data insert/update/delete operations.
– Running database backup and verifying them.
– Updating the statistics on tables/indexes to maintain up to date histograms… MohammedU.
Moderator
SQL-Server-Performance.com All postings are provided “AS IS†with no warranties for accuracy.
http://expertanswercenter.techtarget.com/eac/blog/0,295203,sid63_tax301110,00.html Satya SKJ
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
Writer, Contributing Editor & Moderator
http://www.SQL-Server-Performance.Com
This posting is provided AS IS with no rights for the sake of knowledge sharing. The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind.
thanks to all three of you! for the column, i always like to relay at least a few anecdotes or short stories about folks working on these issues in the trenches. luis, can you tell me about a specific time when you worked with index to improve performance? mohammed, is there a time you ran into a SOX issue when you were dealing with a performance issue? also, could you both give some identifying info: first and last name, title (i can just use your title and not your name if you prefer anonymity), number of years working in the tech industry, names of the company you work for (or just the industry you’re in if you prefer for anonymity reasons), geographic location (city, country). of course, my editor likes me to be as specific as possible in the column. satya, if you’d like to way in with an anecdote or two, that would be great, too! oh, and one last question: i know there are many, many things that can cause post-deployment performance issues. does anyone want to offer a rough guess as to how important database functionality is to good performance? or is the answer just: "it depends"? Geoff Koch
freelance tech journalist
Can you please post your article link to us once it is done.. MohammedU.
Moderator
SQL-Server-Performance.com All postings are provided “AS IS†with no warranties for accuracy.
Geoff, 3 cases: 1) Company have a backup (since is a close software, we don’t call Test Server) server. I use to work about 4 hours a week in each client, so if in that time I find some slow query running in production server, I begin to work with backup server to improve performance. Usually I fix the problem in 4 hours. 2) Company does not have backup server. In this case I use to backup the database in my laptop with 3rd party software (to compress), restore in my office, find and fix the problem, back to Company and apply. Said 8 hours. 3) 1 or 2, I can’t find the solution on line. So, I did the same in 2) but the time is impossible to predict. Luis Martin
DBA. Formally I have University degree in Computers with Mathematical orientation.
Since 1974.
I’m free lance since 2000 and with SQL Server since 1997.
Buenos Aires, Argentina. BTW: Feel free to modify my bad English.
Luis Martin
Moderator
SQL-Server-Performance.com All in Love is Fair
Stevie Wonder
All postings are provided “AS IS†with no warranties for accuracy.
Any news Geoff? Luis Martin
Moderator
SQL-Server-Performance.com All in Love is Fair
Stevie Wonder
All postings are provided “AS IS†with no warranties for accuracy.
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