SQL Sentry's Aaron Bertrand (@AaronBertrand) digs into the left anti semi join, comparing NOT IN, NOT EXISTS, OUTER APPLY, EXCEPT, and OUTER JOIN methods.
Continue Reading »Dec 272012
Dec 172012
In many SQL Server workloads, especially OLTP, the database’s transaction log can be a bottleneck that adds to the time it takes a transaction to complete. Most people assume that the I/O subsystem is the real bottleneck, with it not being able to keep up with the amount of transaction log being generated by the workload.
Continue Reading »Dec 122012
Recently, Microsoft pushed out Service Pack 1 for SQL Server 2012, and they quickly followed up with Cumulative Update 1 for Service Pack 1. The reason for this is that the service pack – due to longer development and regression testing cycles – did not contain any of the fixes from RTM Cumulative Updates 3 & 4. Since many people have waited – based on mostly speculative bias at this point – to even start testing SQL Server 2012 until Service Pack 1 was released, I thought it might be useful to cover a couple of the scenarios you might come across.
Continue Reading »Dec 102012
I recently encountered high TRANSACTION_MUTEX accumulated wait time on a client system. I couldn’t recall a case where I saw this wait type as near the top of the “high waits” list and I was curious about what factors could push this type of overall wait time.
The Books Online definition of TRANSACTION_MUTEX is that it "occurs during synchronization of access to a transaction by multiple batches." Not many areas within the SQL Server engine expose this type of functionality, so my investigation was narrowed down to the following technologies: