Today’s complex applications execute hundreds of SQL procedures and maybe thousands of SQL statements during a typical workload. How do you ensure that your databases can withstand the level of activity occurring within your environment? If you are tasked with maintaining and improving database performance, you know that SQL queries and indexes can sometimes be inefficient and need to be optimized.
There are many different considerations and factors that can impact SQL code and database performance. Craig Mullins wrote a series of SQL performance posts that contain many useful tips for addressing optimization of SQL code, indexes, and tables. Many database professionals use tools to identify and resolve performance issues. Database and code optimization tools detect problems earlier, address issues faster, minimize the chance of deploying poor-performing SQL code, and ultimately deliver higher quality solutions. Performance optimization tools can also minimize IT spend on additional hardware to handle peak-load requirements by ensuring the databases are optimized to fully utilize existing IT resources.
It can be very time-consuming to tune and optimize SQL statements, but it can help you improve system performance and productivity. Additionally, load testing and profiling can help you verify that the system can handle the workload with reasonable performance. The load test measures the performance by simulating a true production environment under typical and extreme conditions, while profiling gives you more insights into real-time activity and interactions. Using profiling and load testing together can help you ensure that your databases continue performing up to par.
Download our whitepaper, Ready, Set, Load Test: Best Practices, Tools, and Tricks for Determining Database Performance under Pressure, to learn why stress and load testing are a critical part of the development life cycle and review some best practices for successful stress and load testing. This whitepaper examines how load testing can be combined with profiling to provide greater insight into application performance during code development, allowing developers and DBAs to eliminate costly SQL code errors.
IDERA DB Optimizer is a SQL profiling and tuning tool that examines SQL queries to uncover inefficiencies and offers alternatives to improve SQL performance and prevent poor-performing SQL from ever reaching the production environment. If you’re ready to get started with profiling and load testing in your environment, download a free 14-day trial of DB Optimizer.