tempDB is a good unexplored avenue here actually. MS recommmends one file per CPU for tempdb, preferably on separate I/O systems. Fragmentation could be an issue here too...

Unfortunately all of this stuff about drives and files only gets to the heart of improving overall performance. Your specific issue of having a poor query performance all of...

I advise my clients that when they create a new production database they size it to hold the estimated total data volume (including indexes) for 12-18 months of data plus...

Prior to disk defrag, you should shut down all sql server services. Just for giggles, did you size all the files initially to some appropriately large value with an...

Mark, you didn't answer my second question about whether the order of the rows matters. If I move these rows into another table for processing, can I order them...

is there an identity key on this table, or is what you show the entire table definition? also, does the initial order of the rows need to remain intact?...

A few possibilities:

1) The amount of data in the tables has grown such that different query plans become 'least costly'. This can result in DRASTICALLY different query plans and...

I would certainly try recompile first. There are probably very few situations where this won't routinely result in the optimal query. Plus having a query plan developed for...

I wasn't aware that you could "disable parameter sniffing". Do you mean use WITH RECOMPILE on the sprocs perhaps?

Also, the user stated that the exact same data...

1) You didn't explicitly mention if the SQL Server was the EXACT same version (sp and hotfixes).

2) While doing your development, you should have made your test platform as similar...

select

distinct 'CONV 1' as Conveyour,

info as Error,

(select top 1 substring(timecreated, 0, 7) from log b where a.info = b.info order by timecreated asc) as Date,

(select count(*)...

If by analyzing profiles he can identify the actual calls that are causing performance problems then the OP can (hopefully) easily grep through the source code to find where the...

Be VERY careful with where you put your "WHERE" clause components when doing JOINs. With OUTER joins you can get vastly different results depending on whether the AND is...

The most important thing about the 'old' syntax is that it will not be supported in the future per Microsoft. The *= and =* is already unsupported in SQL...

Management Studio is a GUI for connecting to database servers. There is a link to it in the Start Menu folder that was created when you installed SQL Server....