April 2014 - Posts

• Top Clause and Other Factors in Problematic Execution Plans

  Three years ago, I conducted an extensive investigation on a SQL Server system running kCura's Relativity document e-discovery application. It was fascinating to see the broad range of problematic queries all from one application. This provided good material Read More... Posted Wednesday, April 23, 2014 5:51 PM by jchang | 2 Comments

• Bushy Joins

  A great session by Adam Machanic at SQL Saturday Boston the previous weekend on methods to influence the query optimizer while still letting it do its task. The gist of this is that while SQL Server has what are called Query Hints, there are adverse consequences. Read More... Posted Wednesday, April 2, 2014 3:09 PM by jchang | 6 Comments

• Build your own server with Supermicro motherboards

  I used to build white box servers because there were usually enough spare parts left over from upgrade projects. (management did not see the need for non-production systems, so I arranged for there to be spare parts). But since 2002 or so, I have been Read More... Posted Wednesday, April 2, 2014 2:47 PM by jchang | 3 Comments