SQL performance tuning is about saving you a great deal of money by improving various aspects of database management. Be it changing inefficient queries or replacing unnecessarily large indexes, tuning your database can really help you regulate your expenses.
SQL tuning will not only improve MySQL database performance, but it will also help you save multiple resources, whether you operate your database servers on-premises or migrate your data over to the cloud.
Performance Tuning – More Than Just Optimization of SQL Queries
A majority of database professionals mostly focus on ensuring uptime by keeping tabs on the allocation of resources such as storage and memory. These formed a sizable portion of database management until companies started moving their databases to enormous cloud resources like AWS and Azure.
This gave importance to other aspects like performance tuning in SQL, which DBAs work on once they ensure that things are running somewhat smoothly. However, a lot of database professionals may have to tweak a SQL Server that they aren’t familiar with, and there’s not much help available for such instances.
Identifying Problem Areas During Performance Tuning
It can get intensive trying to figure out all the issues and resolving them one after another. At first, your problems may not even involve the optimization of SQL queries, and you may begin your search at the user/session-level.
What some professionals do at this point is, they listen to the users and ask questions such as –
- Are there any specific times when the application slows down, for example, when they create an extra ticket or open an active one?
- Which data takes excessive time to render?
- How long does saving a record take? (a specific answer may be preferable)
Improve MySQL Database Performance in SQL Server with These Tools
Fortunately, SQL Server has multiple features that can help you improve MySQL database performance with greater convenience. Some of them are –
Plan Guides
Plan guides enable you to adjust the way SQL Server executes a query, affecting performance. These are especially useful in case of queries written by another vendor, where some experts may not be willing to change them right away, as you can add a query hint to influence its operation.
However, plan guides may get obsolete over time because the scenario may change after a while but they cannot. To overcome this, make a note of reviewing them from time to time.
Query Store
This feature helps in the optimization of SQL queries too. It allows the user to determine which queries are taking up the most resources, and then tune them. Apparently, the Query Store feature is not enabled in some SQL databases because the user rarely needs it at first, but enabling it is easy.
Some DBAs are not aware of the Query Store, while others know of it but haven’t explored it enough, so the feature may as well be disabled. They can begin its use once they know how it works so that they can analyze various performance fluctuations caused because of modifications in the query plan.
Database Engine Tuning Advisor
This function examines workflows and suggests indexes or other strategies to improve MySQL database performance. On the other hand, don’t run this tool until your database has sufficient data stored, as the recommendations are more productive at that point.
It won’t be as useful for a newer application that has, say, only a thousand rows in its tables, than after the app has expanded a bit.