05Mar 2018 by Grant Fritchey 11 Comments

Every Single Execution Plan is an Estimated Plan

SQL Server, SQL Server 2016, SQL Server 2017
All the execution plans are estimated plans. All of them. There fundamentally isn't any such thing as an "Actual" plan. Where Do You Get Execution Plans? There are a lot of sources for execution plans. You can capture them using extended events (or, if you must, trace). You can capture them through the Management Studio gui. You can also capture them from the SQL Operations Studio gui. You can query the cache through the DMVs and pull them in that way. You can look at plans in query store. All these resources, yet, for any given query, all the plans will be identical (assuming no recompile at work). Why? Because they're all the same plan. Each and every one of them is an estimated plan. Only an estimated plan. This…
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27Feb 2018 by Grant Fritchey 6 Comments

Adaptive Joins

T-SQL
I was surprised to find out that a lot people hadn't heard about the new join type, Adaptive join. So, I figured I could do a quick overview. Adaptive Join Behavior Currently the adaptive join only works with columnstore indexes, but according to Microsoft, at some point, they will also work with rowstore. The concept is simple. For larger data sets, frequently (but not always, let's not try to cover every possible caveat, it depends, right), a hash join is much faster than a loops join. For smaller data sets, frequently, a loops join is faster. Wouldn't it be nice if we could change the join type, on the fly, so that the most effective join was used depending on the data in the query. Ta-da, enter the adaptive join.…
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05Feb 2018 by Grant Fritchey 3 Comments

Wait Statistics on a Query

SQL Server, SQL Server 2016, SQL Server 2017
Wait statistics are a vital part of understanding what is causing your system to run slowly. Capturing them can be done through a variety of mechanisms from sys.dm_os_wait_stats (use this query for that) to sys.dm_db_wait_stats in Azure SQL Database. Those cover the system and the database, however, what about capturing query wait statistics on a specific query? Query Wait Statistics There was a time when this was actually kind of difficult. However, now we have a lot of different tools to capture query wait statistics. First up, and really, one of the best and easiest ways to deal with this, is to use the wait statistics captured by the Query Store. The only drawback to this method is that it is an aggregation of query wait statistics for the given…
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22Jan 2018 by Grant Fritchey 4 Comments

Database Fundamentals #16: Removing Data With T-SQL

Database Fundamentals
Deleting data from a table using T-SQL works quite a lot like the UPDATE statement. How it Works In the same way you supply the statement, DELETE, and then the table name. You’re not going to specify columns in any way because deleting data is all about removing a row. If you just wanted to remove the values in a column, you would use the UPDATE statement. Because of this, the only other thing you need for a DELETE statement is the WHERE clause. Just like with the UPDATE statement, if you don’t supply a WHERE clause, then the DELETE statement will remove all data in the table. Be very careful about using this statement. Make sure you’ve always got a WHERE clause. This example would delete all the rows…
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15Jan 2018 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

Getting Started in a SQL Server 2017 VM in Azure

SQL Server 2017
You say you're ready to dip your toes in the Azure ocean? Come on in, the water's fine! Oh, you want to really dip your toes. You're starting with Virtual Machines? OK. I guess. It's not where the real excitement is. You should be checking out Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Data Warehouse and CosmosDb and... VMs. OK. Let's get you started. Set up Azure First Microsoft maintains seriously good documentation on how to work with Azure. I'm honestly blown away by how much information there is and how well written it is. In fact, everything I'm about to tell you is documented better, here. However, I'm going to give you the TLDR version. First, you have to have an Azure account. If you have an MSDN license, that…
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08Jan 2018 by Grant Fritchey 3 Comments

Statistics Use, Extended Events and Execution Plans

SQL Server 2017
Query tuning ain't easy. Figuring out which index is getting used is one step, and generally simple, look at the execution plan to see which index is in use and whether it's being used in a SEEK or a SCAN. Done. However, when your index isn't being used, how do you tell how or why something else is being done? Well, that's largely down to row counts which brings us to statistics. Which Statistics are Used Years ago I was of the opinion that it wasn't really possible to see the statistics used in the generation of a query plan. If you read the comments here, I was corrected of that notion. However, I've never been a fan of using undocumented trace flags. Yeah, super heroes like Fabiano Amorim and…
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26Dec 2017 by Grant Fritchey 8 Comments

SQL Server Automatic Tuning and sys.dm_db_tuning_recommendations

Azure, SQL Server 2017
In Azure SQL Database for quite some time and now available in SQL Server 2017, Microsoft has put a lot of the knowledge they've gleaned from running more databases that any of the rest of us ever will to work with Automatic Tuning. Automatic Tuning The core of automatic tuning at this point in time (because I'm sure it's going to evolve) is the ability of the query engine to spot when a query has generated a new plan and that new plan is causing performance to degrade. This is known as a regression in the plan. It comes from bad parameter sniffing, changes in statistics, cumulative updates, or the big notorious one, the cardinality estimator introduced in SQL Server 2014 (it's been almost four years, I'm not calling it…
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18Dec 2017 by Grant Fritchey 8 Comments

Query Store Wait Statistics with sys.query_store_wait_stats

Azure, SQL Server 2017
The second best thing to questions that people ask is when I sit down to write a book. It's so easy to miss things in the day-to-day grind of doing work. Then, late at night, you're working on a chapter, so you read up on the documentation to ensure that you're not missing anything. Of course, then you find, yes, you are missing something. In my case, sys.query_store_wait_stats. sys.query_store_wait_stats. If you follow the link above, it'll give you what you need to know, but, I figured I'd provide a little more clarity because I think there are some pitfalls in using this data. I love Query Store (do a search to see all the exploration I've done with it). One of my favorite things is the time intervals. It breaks…
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11Dec 2017 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

Execution Plan Metrics and Units of Measure

SQL Server, SQL Server 2016, SQL Server 2017
Have you ever looked at the properties inside an execution plan and wondered what the units of measure were? I know I have. I also get the question pretty frequently about all sorts of properties. What does EstimatedAvailableMemoryGrant display it's units in anyway? For that matter, what the heck is an EstimatedAvailableMemoryGrant? Showplan Schema and Units of Measure The answer to those questions and a whole lot more is pretty easy to find. You just have to look to the ShowPlan Schema. Microsoft has all the schema's published, going back to 2005. The next time you're faced with a question such as, what are the units of measure of the MemoryGrantInfo: Or, what the heck is SerialDesiredMemory and why is it exactly matching RequestedMemory, you just have to go and…
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27Nov 2017 by Grant Fritchey 6 Comments

Database Fundamentals #15: Modifying Data With T-SQL

Database Fundamentals, SQL Server, SQL Server 2016, SQL Server 2017
The preferred method for modifying your data within a database is T-SQL. While the last Fundamentals post showed how to use the GUI to get that done, it's not a very efficient mechanism. T-SQL is efficient. UPDATE The command for updating information in your tables is UPDATE. This command doesn’t work the same way as the INSERT statement. Instead of listing all the columns that are required, meaning columns that don’t allow for NULL values, you can pick and choose the individual columns that you want to update. The operation over-writes the information that was stored in the column with new information. In addition to defining the table and columns you want to update, you have to tell SQL Server which rows you’re interested in updating. This introduces the WHERE…
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