Where Do I Want To Go Today? - Index Tuning Wizard
Taking a note from Microsoft's own page, I've decided to share some of my wishes for where I want SQL Server to go. Today.
Meaning this is what I'm looking for now, the things that I'd like to see implemented in future releases. Now I missed the Yukon preview and haven't read too terribly much on it, so I may be asking for something that's coming. If it's not under NDA, let me know.
Otherwise I hope to get some feedback about whether you'd like to see this feature or not. Or maybe you've got something I've forgotten on this feature. Either way let me know. I've got a few and I'm splitting them up to keep comments focused on this one feature. If you've got a wish, send it to me with a description. I'll credit you (if you want) and add my comments before dropping it out there in front of everyone.
Some Needed Enhancements
This is a piece of , well, let's be polite. It doesn't work.
No offense to the young lady developer I met at PASS, but this thing doesn't work well. It needs to be fixed. I like the concept and want it to work, but it doesn't. At the time I met the SQL developers, I didn't know what to fix because quite honestly I'd given up on it, but now that I've had some time to think, here are a few suggestions.
First, put a time limiter on this thing. So that it doesn't run overnight analyzing indexes. Let me say, hey run this for 20 minutes and see what you get. I know this isn't the best choice, but it's better than what we have now. Better yet, calculate the permutations that need to be checked, give me a number of checks and ALLOW ME TO PAUSE this. So it stops and starts back up where I stopped it. So I can run 200 of 30,456 today and pick up the rest tomorrow (or this weekend or when I go on vacation). Even better, make this a process or scheduled task that I can pause. Be nice if I could have this run every night from 9 to 11pm until I get a result.
And give me intermediate results. Let me know what the wizard is thinking along the way. What's been tried, what's rejected and why. Also what looks good to that point in time. Just like the decision to freeze code and ship is a balance between the best quality/lowest bugs and selling the product. Give me that opportunity with the Index Tuning Wizard. Let me know where you stand along with the information about what percentage of items have been checked.
Other items in this series:
Steve Jones
©dkRanch.net May 2003