Microsoft SQL Server

Preface. Intended audience. Benefits of using the book. How to use this book. How to use the examples. Acknowledgments. 1. Setting Up an Optimization TestEnvironment. Steps to follow before testing. Hardware considerations. Software considerations. Data considerations. Setting up a test plan. Operational considerations. Steps to follow during testing. Discipline vs. creativity. Steps to follow after testing. Formal assessment. Determining the next step. I. CREATING A WELL-DESIGNED DATABASE. Relational Database Design Concepts. 2. Normalization. First normal form. Second normal form. Third normal form. When not to normalize. Calculated values. Historical information. Partitioning. Special data types. Variable-length characters. Variable-length binary. Text and image. Constraints. Primary key constraint. Foreign key constraint. Unique constraint. Check constraint. User-defined data types. ANSI specification behavior and SQL Server. Disabling constraints. Using views. Viewing dependencies. 3. Indexing Strategies. Index structure. Clustered indexes. Non-clustered indexes. Leaf vs. non-leaf pages. Primary keys. Filter columns. Join columns. Wide vs. narrow index keys. Unique vs. non-unique. Character vs. numeric. Composite index issues. Avoiding highly duplicate indexes. Clustered indexes and presorted data. Clustered indexes and data reorganization. Sort columns. Indexing and special data types. Indexing and work tables. Excess indexing. Index fill factor. PAD_INDEX option. Index location. 4. Understanding the Microsoft. SQL Server Optimizer. What is an optimizer? Optimizer features and algorithms. Optimizer diagnostics. Using SHOWPLAN. SHOWPLAN topics. Programming considerations. Giving hints to the optimizer. The UPDATE STATISTICS command. BCC SHOW_STATISTICS. II. IMPROVING DATABASE ACCESS. 5. SQL Tips. Types of joins. Standard join. Cross join. Inner join. Left outer join. Right outer join. Full outer join. Numeric vs. non-numeric joins and searches. SQL batches. CASE expression. COALESCE function. NULLIF function. Substring searches. Temporary and work tables. Local temporary tables. Global temporary tables. Implicit work tables. Explicit temporary tables. Improving temporary table performance. Subqueries. Costs of views. Using math inside SQL. Unions. Sorting. ROLLUP. CUBE. INSERT from stored procedures. INSERT and default values. Update extension. Large delete operations. 6. Stored Procedures and Triggers. Stored Procedures. Creating and maintaining stored procedures. Why use stored procedures? Frequently used routines. Auto startup stored procedures. Extended stored procedures. Client/Server. Security. Improving stored procedure performance. Recompiling stored procedures. Triggers. Audit trails. Data replication. Cascading deletes. 7. General Tips. Transactions. Transactions and DDL. Nested transactions. Savepoints. Preventing long transactions. When not to use transactions. Location of BEGIN TRANSACTION and COMMIT TRANSACTION. Adding transactions to existing applications. Transaction logging and text/image. Implicit transactions. Transaction abort control. Distributed transactions. Error checking. Cursors. Server cursors. INSENSITIVE cursor option. Scrollable cursors. Read-only cursors. Detecting data changes with cursors. FOR UPDATE. Cursor deallocation. Concurrency. Locking issues. Transaction isolation levels. Miscellaneous tips. Bulk data loading. Object transfer and script generation. 8. Client/Server Considerations. Assessing your network's capabilities. Minimizing network traffic. Improve distributed queries. Take advantage of replication. Retrieve only necessary columns. Use joins instead of sequential SELECTS. Take advantage of stored procedures. Select only necessary rows. Update only columns that have changed. Tuning your network. Duration of client/server connection. III. OPTIMIZING THE SQL SERVER ENGINE. 9. Monitoring Tools. Using the performance monitor. Objects. Setting alerts. Logging. Reports. sp_monitor. The DBCC utility. Trace flags. Using trace flags. sp_configure. The SQL Trace utility. Global variables. @@CONNECTIONS. @@CPU_BUSY. @@CURSOR_ROWS. @@DATEFIRST. @@DBTS. @@ERROR. @@FETCH_STATUS. @@IDENTITY. @@IDLE. @@IO_BUSY. @@LANGID. @@LANGUAGE. @@MAX_CONNECTIONS. @@MAX_PRECISION. @@MICROSOFTVERSION. @@NESTLEVEL. @@OPTIONS. @@PACK_RECEIVED. @@PACK_SENT. @@PACKET_ERRORS. @@PROCID. @@REMSERVER. @@ROWCOUNT. @@SERVERNAME. @@SERVICENAME. @@SPID. @@TEXTSIZE. @@TIMETICKS. @@TOTAL_ERRORS. @@TOTAL_READ. @@TOTAL_WRITE. @@TRANCOUNT. @@VERSION. 10. Windows NT Operating System. Integration. Machine issues. CPU. Memory. Disk drive. Dedicated server vs. non-dedicated server. Performance monitor. Configuration options. Swap file. Priority boost. Server tasking. 11. Disk Management. Disk storage concepts. Page. Extent. Allocation unit. Device. Database. Physical name. Logical name. Disk storage options. RAID. Operating system disk striping. Mirroring. Segments. File system types. The DBCC utility and disk information. CHECKALLOC. CHECKCATALOG. CHECKTABLE. CHECKDB. CHECKIDENT. DBREINDEX. DBREPAIR. NEWALLOC. SHOW_STATISTICS. SHOWCONTIG. SHRINKDB. TEXTALLOC. TEXTALL. UPDATEUSAGE. Fragmentation. Disk fragmentation. Database fragmentation. "sp_spaceused" stored procedure. Index fill factor. I/O topics. Asynchronous I/O. Lazywriter. Read-ahead. Statistics. Examples. Configuration parameters. Storing tempdb in RAM. 12. Engine Parameters. Memory. Installation memory parameters. Data caching. Stored procedure caching. Locking. Lock concepts. SQL Server-Locks object. Configuration parameters. Threading. Windows NT threads object. Multiple processor considerations. Logging. Describing the transaction log. Sizing the transaction log. Placing the transaction log. Monitoring log usage. Dumping the transaction log. Truncating the transaction log. Using checkpoints. Managing log usage. Transaction logs and mirroring. SQL Server A A Log object. The DBCC utility and engine information. MEMUSAGE. OPENTRAN. PERFMON. PINTABLE. UNPINTABLE. PROCCACHE. ROWLOCK. SQLPERF. USEROPTIONS. 13. Database Parameters and User Configuration. sp_helpdb. Single large database vs. multiple small databases. Direct system table updates. Number of open databases. Number of open objects. Stored procedure cache. Create for load. Database read-ahead cache. Database size. Recovery interval. Controlling user connections. SELECT INTO/bulk copy. DBO use only. No checkpoint on recovery. Read-only. Single user. Columns null by default. Truncate log on checkpoint. User configuration and administration. SQL Server Users object. Statistics. Examples. 14. Network Parameters. Statistics. NET-command queue length. NET-network reads per second. NET-network writes per second. Configuration.Packet size tuning. Remote access. Remote login timeout. Remote query timeout. SQL Server user-defined counters object. Chapter 15 SQL Enterprise Manager. Detail activity. Examples. 16. Efficient Replication. What is replication? Why replicate? Reporting. Distributed information. Read-only data. Replication terms. Tight consistency. Loose consistency. Data Publication. Article. Publication. Subscriber. Distribution database. Log reader process. Synchronization process. Distribution process. SQL Server Replication-Published DB object. Statistics. SQL Server Replication-Subscriber object. Statistics. Replication stored procedures. Efficient replication. Replication topology planning. Transaction log. Memory. Control amount of published data. Primary keys. Foreign keys. Control number of publications. Appendix A. Case Studies. Case study 1. Case study 2. Case study 3. Case study 4. Case study 5. Appendix B SQL ReplayVersion 1.10. Contents: Product Description. System Requirements. Installation. Scheduling Monitoring Process. Software License Agreement. Support. Database Objects. SQL Replay Reports. Registration. Index