The Basics - Level 1 of the Stairway to Query Store

Introduction Instead of going straight into the topic of the Query Store, I would like to start this Stairway Series by mentioning a few performance tuning scenarios that are very common to production DBAs. I think most of us have been in one of these situations at some time: An application experiencing slowness after a […]

Fixing Plan Issues in the Middle of the Night

Do you hate when someone wakes you up in the middle of the night and tells you that some query is slower and you need to investigate it? With SQL Server 2017 you might easily do this, or even let SQL Server do this job for you.

Query Store and Parameterization Problems

The query store gives us a novel way of identifying those queries that are causing performance problems when they are parameterized by SQL Server for reuse. Although it is relatively simple to ensure that certain troublesome queries avoid the problem, it is laborious to identify these queries. Additionally, Query Store gives us the means to fix the problem for groups of queries by means of plan guides without changing the DDL at all. Dennes Torres explains the details

Clear the Query Store

Query Store and In-Memory OLTP

Once you have Query Store enabled on your databases, runtime statistics are generated for your queries; but what about the natively-compiled stored procedures and memory optimised tables that come with In-Memory OLTP? Do you get the full range of runtime statistics? This is an intriguing question that Enrico explores and answers.

Determining What Happens When You Force an Execution Plan via the Query Store

When you force a query plan via the Query Store, you will need to track what happens: Sometimes the request to force a plan will fail, and you will want to know when and why. There are several ways of getting feedback, ranging from the built-in reports to using extended events. Enrico explains the details.

Getting started with Query Store feature in SQL Server 2016 – Part 3

Arshad Ali demonstrates how you can analyze the data collected by Query Store either with T-SQL scripting or with the graphical user interface in SSMS.

The SQL Server 2016 Query Store: Analyzing Query Store Performance

There are some obvious advantages to having the Query Store, but what is the performance impact that it is likely to have on a busy OLTP database server? It is early days, of course and until we get more experience we have to rely on Microsoft's estimate of a performance impact of 3-5% on average. However, this will depend on a number of factors such as usage an the way it is configured. Enrico explores some of these factors in order to give a clearer picture of what you should expect.

Forcing Plans in the Query Store

The SQL Server 2016 Query Store: Built-in Reporting

One of the most important features of the SQL Server 2016's new Query Store is the reporting. With these features, it is now possible to get a wealth of information on how your query workload is performing, either aggregated for the entire query workload or for a single query. With this information, you can see the effects of 'forcing' an execution plan for specific queries and get feedback of the consequences.