Posts

Posted by Ami Levin on Tuesday, 10 April 2012

SQL Server 2012 brings with it so many new features and enhancements that it is futile to try and sum it up. Many articles and blog posts have been and will be written on the shiny new HA/DR, T-SQL, Columnstore and batch processing and numerous others. In this short post, I want to draw your attention to some less ‘shiny’ work that will affect your first interaction with SQL Server 2012 – the installation process.

Posted by Inbal on Tuesday, 03 April 2012

We would like to thank everyone who participated in the Qure Analyzer New iPad raffle. We have received a lot of great entries, but unfortunately there can only be two winners.

And the winners are:

Posted by Ami Levin on Wednesday, 07 March 2012

The long expected announcement has finally come...

Partners and customers can already download the evaluation version, GA to begin ~ April 1st.

Posted by Inbal on Thursday, 01 March 2012

A big thank-you to the thousands of SQL Server professionals that have downloaded Qure Analyzer, our free tool for analyzing and comparing trace files. Every day we hear of really cool Qure Analyzer success stories. But we’d love to hear more – and we’re giving away a brand new iPad3 (yes, THREE) in the process!

Posted by Ami Levin on Sunday, 26 February 2012

This week, Microsoft is hosting the annual MVP Summit in Redmond - http://www.2012mvpsummit.com/. It's an amazing event where MVPs from all over the world and from all award categories join Microsoft staff for in-depth product and technology sessions, meet the program managers and do a lot of networking and even more so FUN!

Posted by Ami Levin on Thursday, 26 January 2012

Are you experiencing performance bottlenecks? Is this query taking forever to complete? Most DBAs would start their resolution attempts with one of SQL Server’s most powerful features – Indexes. Indexes are such an effective mean that a small change could mean a world of a difference in performance. Most DBAs are also aware that adding indexes will cause some degradation of data modification operations as more indexes need to be updated to reflect the changes. However, few are aware that sometimes adding indexes can be a double-edged sword, with far reaching implications on performance, and not always for the best… 

Posted by Ami Levin on Thursday, 12 January 2012

The SQL Server query optimizer is considered magical by many, even the top professionals. It is an extremely complicated piece of software whose intricate paths and logic are hard to perceive. In this article, the first in a series, We will try to tackle some of the query optimizer’s finer tricks to remove the magical aura and reveal the science underneath.

Posted by Ami Levin on Wednesday, 21 December 2011

Writing a query that joins several tables is easy, right? There are just a few major join types and their syntax is pretty straightforward and clear. So how come such a simple join be the source of so many headaches? Why does one query with a simple JOIN take forever and another, similar one a fraction of a second? If you’ve ever wondered what goes on under the covers and how SQL Server implements your joins, this article will help you get started.

Posted by Ami Levin on Monday, 05 December 2011

If you’ve ever used SQL Trace, STATISTICS IO or any other SQL Server monitoring, you should know what logical reads mean. Or do you? Logical reads server as one of the primary counters for evaluating a Query’s performance. The rule of thumb says “The lower the number of reads, the better the query performs”. I’m sure you’ve heard it before. But… did you notice that in some cases the exact opposite is true? Did you ever see a query improve dramatically in terms of duration and CPU but have it’s logical reads sky-rocket? If you want to understand the TRUE essence of logical reads and be able to tell when it is really a good indicator of performance, I highly recommend you to read this article.

Posted by Ami Levin on Friday, 18 November 2011

RC stands for Release Candidate, it’s a much more stable and ‘close to final’ version than the previous CTP versions.

Go get your copy from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=28145