We’ve recently looked at how caching can improve performance and I wanted to show how we can eek even more performance out of caches by using a custom approach I’ll term Selective Caching. I’ll note here that there’s a potential gotcha with this approach which we’ll get to before the end of the post! Scenario Let’s say […]
Last week we looked at using a cache to improve lookup performance. We saw how a cache improves performance by being able to reuse reference data repeatedly. That used a regular cache but it’s not the only option available to us. In this post we’re going to look at the File Cache option which can achieve […]
Lookup transformations provide us a way to access related values from another source, such as retrieving surrogate keys in data warehousing. When we need multiple lookups to the same reference data we can improve performance through the use of a Cache. If we consider data warehousing, a prime example of this would be an order […]
When running queries, reviewing execution plans, or diving into Query Store it’s not uncommon to see missing index recommendations, particularly for more complex queries. But are they any good? There are many factors when considering an index. However if you’re a situation where these missing index recommendations are enticing, I wanted to cover 3 key areas you […]
When using data flows in SSIS packages we want the flow to be fast and fluid. Improving performance of the flows will vary in different packages, but one element can consistently help – tuning memory utilisation. In this post we’ll look at tuning the memory utilisation by altering the number of rows passing through the flow concurrently. […]
When looking to increase performance for a database it can be the smaller and faster queries which can be improved easier and more effectively than their slower counterparts. We can be drawn to tuning long running and complex queries, but these can be a challenge due to their size and complexity. Sometimes though we can reclaim just […]
Last time out we discussed blocking transformations, what they are, the impact of them, and touched on how to deal with them. In this post we’re going a step further to tackle one of them head on. Here we’ll demonstrate the impact of blocking caused by the Sort transformation, and look at two options for solving […]
Rounding out T-SQL Tuesday for 2024, Kevin’s invitation brings it together with the Festive Tech Calendar (more on that at the end), and asks us to write about a Microsoft Data Platform announcement that could be considered a gift. For context, this post is targeted at developers or engineers who don’t have the time to dig into SQL Server […]
Last week I shared a script to identify foreign keys which weren’t indexed. What we didn’t discuss in detail was why it can be important to index these columns. Here we’ll demonstrate the two areas we can see great benefits by introducing the indexes. Query optimisation We’ll start with the typical benefit of indexing – query optimisation. The index […]
Foreign keys provide us with confidence in the integrity of the code we develop. In this post we identify indexing opportunities around foreign keys to increase performance of their usage. Creating an index on a foreign key column (or columns) can provide additional performance in two key situations: That’s all well and good if we’re […]
Andy Brownsword 