Looking for reference materials about general time costs with different actions in SQL

• huston.dunlap

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  October 31, 2009 at 9:49 am

  #212743

  So far in my very brief trek into improving optimization, the folks on these boards have been very helpful in improving specific queries.

  I would like to expand my knowledge on this a lot more. I was wondering if there were any good reference materials out there that go through general performance comparisons between different kinds of actions.

  For example the efficiency of doing sums to count your items as you do an action vs inserting new numbers into a temp table, and thousands of other possibilities.

  I recognize that SQL's internal optimizer creates execution paths based on the query you write, but I was wondering if there were some general guidelines out there (beyond not using cursors of course:-))

• Paul White

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  November 2, 2009 at 2:07 am

  #1073700

  You could do a lot worse than consider Itzik Ben-Gan's latest books:

  http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft®-Server®-T-SQL-Fundamentals-PRO-Developer/dp/0735626014

  http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Microsoft%C2%AE-SQL-Server%C2%AE-2008/dp/0735626030

  The links there provide a limited preview of the content too. Highly recommended.

  Paul

  Paul White
  SQLPerformance.com
  SQLkiwi blog
  @SQL_Kiwi

• huston.dunlap

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  November 2, 2009 at 6:31 am

  #1073786

  Thanks, I've heard a few other recommendations for Itzik so I think I'll take a look.