SQL Server Performance

Today at the launch of SQL Server 2008, you may have seen the references to world-record performance doing a load of data using SSIS. Microsoft and Unisys announced a record for loading data into a relational database using an Extract, Transform and Load...

Since late last year, Microsoft has made the Attunity connectors to Oracle databases available to Enterprise Edition customers. We all recognized right away that these connectors were faster than the pre-existing options from either Microsoft or Oracle...

Introduction Most users see good performance from SSIS packages using out-of-the-box configurations and with little tuning. Sometimes, though, it is necessary to do tuning to get optimal performance. One of the most commonly used transformations is the...

SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) allows parallel execution in two different ways. These are controlled by two properties as outlined below. The first one is MaxConcurrentExecutables, a property of the package. It defines how many tasks (executables...

SQL Server Integration Services provide a set of performance counters. Among them the following few are helpful when you tune or debug your package: Buffers in use Flat buffers in use Private buffers in use Buffers spooled Rows read...

The data flow task in SSIS (SQL Server Integration Services) sends data in series of buffers. How much data does one buffer hold? This is bounded by DefaultBufferMaxRows and DefaultBufferMaxSize, two Data Flow properties. They have default values of 10...

SQL Server does a great job of optimizing processing across a wide range of runtime scenarios, while also providing a flexible configuration and execution environment. One of the tradeoffs associated with this level of flexibility is that different configurations...

When doing a performance investigation a useful thing to do is look at what data is present in the buffer pool. This can be used to analyze impact of running a query on the state of data pages in buffer pool. By collecting the pre and post picture of...

Introduction OLE DB source adapter is one of the most commonly used components in SSIS data flow task. In this article, we will discuss a very important performance observation about this adapter. Use “SQL Command” to pull data from a view OLE...

BLOBTempStoragePath and BufferTempStoragePath are two properties on Data Flow Task. They define where on the hard disk(s) to page buffer data to. BLOBs (text, next, image) are written to BLOBTempStoragePath. All other buffer data will be swapped to BufferTempStoragePath...

Today, as the old saying goes, is a red-letter day, with the launch of Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and SQL Server 2008. Our team has been heads down, working to ensure SQL Server 2008 is delivered to you with great performance and scalability...

The “Balanced Data Distributor” for SSIS Len Wyatt, SQL Server Performance Team There is a new transform component available for SQL Server Integration Services. It’s called the Balanced Data Distributor (BDD) and the download is...

We suppose a more appropriate title would have been: Better Late Than Never. David should begin by apologizing. Last month was the first anniversary of the ETL world record we set last year with SSIS, loading 1 TB of data in under 30 minutes. While...

On November 2, 2009, Unisys published two new TPC results (TPC-E and TPC-H) using the newly announced SQL Server 2008 R2* and Windows Server 2008 R2**.  These results were published on the 96-core Unisys ES7000 system.  These are the first SQL...

After running an experiment, using datacenters on each coast of the U.S., our friends in MSCOM ops verified that the combination of Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 are great for enabling database geo-replication, thanks to a 100X gain in performance...

I came across a question in the relationalserver.performance newsgroup where a customer was wondering about the spools seen in a recursive query execution plan. The query is shown below: USE Northwind; Go WITH EmpChart AS ( SELECT EmployeeId, ReportsTo...

Glenn Paulley, Director of Engineering at Sybase iAnywhere, posted a commentary titled “ The State of TPC-E ” on his blog three weeks ago (10/3/08). A better title would have been “All TPC-E Results Are On Microsoft SQL Server. Why?” Mr. Paulley takes...

Just left the final shiproom meeting for SQL Server 2008, and am happy to say every team has signed off, so the product is now in the hands of manufacturing, and in process toward web and media availability for you. We've shipped! MSDN and TechNet subscriber...

Yesterday, Intel launched its new Xeon 5500 series processors, code named Nehalem-EP. This is essentially the first server-class version of what Intel launched on the desktop as Core i7 last fall. With no frontside bus, and an embedded, multi-channel...

Do you want to know how to get the best performance out of Analysis Services? Whether you have an immediate performance issue or just want to know more about what’s going on in there, this guide will be a valuable resource. Many people used the...

SQL Server 2008 R2 launches today! While the name “R2” sounds like an incremental update to SS2008 (or half of a Star Wars droid), in fact Kilimanjaro (the internal code name) is packed with big features. We’ve also got a lot to show for our work on performance...

  Our partners at Dell and HP have published 2 new TPC-H results with SQL Server 2008 using Fusion-io’s ioDrive solid-state technology.  These are the first TPC results using solid-state technology and they illustrate the high performance along...

Why did we only use the MOLAP storage mode in Project REAL? There is also ROLAP and HOLAP storage, but they weren’t used at all. Also, why doesn’t Project REAL illustrate pro-active caching? The Analysis Services 2005 Performance Guide contains...

Other than #temptables, @localvariables and many other objects being stored in tempdb what’s so temporary about it? TempDB is always present on each SQL Server instance and can be a determining factor of your overall performance. In many ways tempdb could...

At last week's WinHEC in Los Angeles, SQL GM Quentin Clark joined Windows Server VP Bill Laing on stage, to announce our upcoming support for more than 64 logical processors, the current limit in Windows and SQL Server. This expanded scale-up capability...