The Agenda

When faced with performance issues there are many lines of attack.  Tuning the engine itself can get you so far, however for maximum effect you need to understand how the engine translates SQL statements into performable actions.  This is not a simple task, it is a massive task to deal with a multi-table join and the number of permutations can be immense.

In this precon, we will be looking at the processes involved of taking a simple statement and forming a workable well performing execution plan.

Firstly, we will be looking at Execution plans and picking them apart to describe the actions that are executed by the engine to perform the actions required by the query.  This will be followed by statistics, estimation and caching and the role that they play in forming and costing execution plans.

After lunch,  we will see how SQL Server 2014 has new functionality within it and the problems that they are designed to resolve.  Finally, they day will finish with query optimizer internals, picking apart its various internal steps and forensically examining its operations.