PARALLELISM is a close friend of DBA where you get to see it as a common occurence in the multi-processor server environment and during such performance issues you can also investigate whether a parallel plan is in use. For instance If a particular query is slow when it is using a parallel plan, you can try forcing a non-parallel plan by using the ...

Its a general assumption that whenever performance is degraded, the finger will be pointed to SQL Server, pretty easy eh!? If you look at any of the SQL Server related forums then 3 in 10 questions asks same question and nothing but shove blame on SQL Server. It is always better to be proactive than reactive, when it comes to identifying and ...

Until recently I have just used Dedicated Administrator Console (DAC) to connect just to test whether the connection will be successful. You may be aware that only administrator will be able to access a running instance of SQL Server Database Engine to troubleshoot problems on the server—even when the server is unresponsive to other client ...

Yet another important factors that every DBA needs to concerned about table & index fragmentation within their SQL Server environment. Refer to the a rticle about DetectTableFragmentation in both 2000 and 2005 version. Fragmentation occurs due to updates and delets on the table and the golden rule is that to have relevant indexes for better ...

This was the question asked during an interview that was attended by one of my friend, I'm not sure how he managed to answer but came to me asking how it is possible. For your information af ter you apply SQL 2000 Service Pack 4, you might observe that a SPID is blocking itself, as reported in the output of sysprocesses when you are using SP_WHO2 ...

Most of the times you have observed to identify the blocking and how to resolve them. How about you need a script to generate a blocking scenario within your queries, this is to identify the blocker script is working or not. Also will help to test whether the alerting tool is working or not. ( I have used Northwin database to stage the scenario ) ...