A Complete Introduction to SQL Server Transactions

One of the most fundamental concepts in any relational database management system (RDBMS), such as SQL Server, is the transaction. During my consulting career, I’ve seen many performance problems caused by developers not understanding how transactions work in SQL Server. In this tutorial, I’ll explain what transactions are, why they’re necessary, and how they work … Read more A Complete Introduction to SQL Server Transactions

How Data Types and Query Tuning Can Improve Application Performance

One of the easier ways to improve the performance of your SQL Server and Azure SQL database queries is to ensure you choose the right data types for your data, and the data types in your application’s code match the ones in your stored procedures and queries. Choosing the right data type conserves space, because … Read more How Data Types and Query Tuning Can Improve Application Performance

How to Make SQL Server Faster on Azure VMs

Many organizations have migrated their environments from on-premises to the cloud, and one of the clouds of choice is Microsoft Azure. For SQL Server workloads, organizations can use platform as a service solutions with features like Azure SQL Database and Managed Instance or infrastructure as a service solutions with Azure SQL virtual machines. Azure SQL virtual … Read more How to Make SQL Server Faster on Azure VMs

SQL Server Storage Best Practices: Choosing Storage Options

Storage is one of the most critical components for any relational database management system, and getting the right storage configuration affects reliability, availability, and performance. When it comes to SQL Server storage best practices, choosing between storage hardware options has changed significantly over the last decade, but that doesn’t necessarily make choosing the correct storage … Read more SQL Server Storage Best Practices: Choosing Storage Options

Basic SQL Server Query Tuning Secrets Every SQL Admin Should Know

The performance of your applications is a complex, multi-layered puzzle. Performance can be negatively impacted at the application layer or even by remote calls to networked services. However, the most common bottleneck for applications is the data storage layer. The most common data storage tier for applications is a relational database, whose performance can vary … Read more Basic SQL Server Query Tuning Secrets Every SQL Admin Should Know