A new report from research firm GigaOm indicated that SQL Server runs faster on virtual machines on Micrososft's Azure cloud than on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) compute instances (EC2). Sponsored by ...

As Joey explains, Activity Monitor consumes a lot of resources and yields little usable data. Here are some third-party alternatives. I get to work with a lot of customers, so I get to see a lot of ...

A popular performance tuning book gets updated for SQL Server 2025, how does it fare? Ian Stirk takes and in depth look and finds it pretty good. This well-liked SQL Server book examines performance ...

As a consultant whose job description includes putting out performance fires, I get to see a lot of problematic queries that can dramatically harm overall server performance and throughput. Wondering ...

PolyBase, a data virtualization feature for SQL Server, allows users to seamlessly query data from various external sources directly using T-SQL (Transact-SQL) without the need for separate client ...

OK, I’ll admit it. I’m not a DBA, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t overseen databases and their performance. I was (and probably still am) the guy who installed a Microsoft SQL database by hitting Next ...

Maintaining high server performance and appropriate scale to keep up with growing computing demands doesn't happen automatically. Data center administrators must continuously track performance and ...