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2008SQLServerInternals

Simply put, a Microsoft SQL Server database is a collection of objects that hold and
manipulate data. A typical SQL Server instance has only a handful of databases, but it’s not
unusual for a single instance to contain several dozen databases. 

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2008R2Internals

SQL Server 2008 R2, like its predecessors, is more than a database engine. It is a
collection of components that you can implement either separately or as a group
to form a scalable data platform. In broad terms, this data platform consists of
two types of components—those that help you manage data....

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Azure SQL Server

Azure SQL for beginners is a series to help bring SQL Server professionals to Azure SQL (Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance, and SQL Server in Azure VM). In this video, you'll get an overview of how (and why) the series is structured. For the full Azure SQL Fundamentals learning path on Microsoft Learn

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White Paper Gallery for SQL Server

Download white papers for SQL Server in DOC, PDF, and other formats. All the content is free. This page aggregates Microsoft content from multiple sources – feel free to fill in the gaps and add links to other content...

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Deeper insights across data with SQL Server 2016

The growing volume, velocity, diversity, and locations of enterprise data make it increasingly challenging to discover, connect to, move, transform, integrate, and analyze it all. In fact, with the compound annual growth rate of data from 2013 to 2020 estimated at 41 percent1, this can be termed a data explosion. This is the result of more and more devices combined with a new hunger from businesses for more data to better understand and predict customer needs to make smarter decisions with data.

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SQL Server In-Memory OLTP Internals for SQL Server 2016

In-memory OLTP, frequently referred to by its codename “Hekaton”, was introduced in SQL Server 2014. This powerful technology allows you to take advantage of large amounts of memory and many dozens of cores to increase performance for OLTP operations by up to 30 to 40 times! SQL Server 2016 is continuing the investment in In-memory OLTP by removing many of the limitations found in SQL Server 2014, and enhancing internal processing algorithms so that In-memory OLTP can provide even greater improvements.

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Achieving mission-critical application performance with SQL Server

The volume and complexity of data is increasing everywhere, and the ability to use it is becoming more important for organizations across industries. Digital transactions and experiences are expected to be available across geographies and time zones. Today the data generated by those millions of interactions touches every device, application and process.

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SQL Server 2016 and Windows Server 2016: Better Together

Windows Server and Microsoft SQL Server teams are collaborating closely to ensure that the combination of these
products is greater than the sum of their parts. IT decision makers can take advantage of a better enterprise data
platform enabled by several key Windows Server 2016 features working in concert with SQL Server 2016 features.
Both products offer best-in-class performance, scalability, availability, and security. With Windows Server and SQL
Server, Microsoft is pushing the limits of hardware capabilities and bringing the latest enterprise technologies to
market.

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Microsoft SQL Server 2019

Microsoft SQL Server 2019 powers your organization by providing a data hub that you can use to access structured and unstructured data sources from across your entire data estate through a consistent interface. The relational database engine scales to petabytes of data, and enhancements to PolyBase allow you to process diverse big data and relational data sources using Transact-SQL from SQL Server.

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Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2019

From its humble beginnings in OS/2 with version 1.1, SQL Server has proved over and over that it is a database that data professionals love to use. The engine is reliable, and the T-SQL dialect has everything the developer needs to quickly write resilient, highperforming applications.

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Diagnose and resolve latch contention on SQL Server

As the number of CPU cores on servers continues to increase, the associated increase in concurrency can introduce contention points on data structures that must be accessed in a serial fashion within the database engine. This is especially true for high throughput/high concurrency transaction processing (OLTP) workloads. There are a number of tools, techniques, and ways to approach these challenges as well as practices that can be followed in designing applications which may help to avoid them altogether. This article will discuss a particular type of contention on data structures that use spinlocks to serialize access to these data structures...

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Memory Management Architecture Guide

Starting with SQL Server 2012 (11.x), Single-Page allocations, Multi-Page allocations and CLR allocations are all consolidated into a "Any size" Page Allocator, and it's included in memory limits that are controlled by max server memory (MB) and min server memory (MB) configuration options. This change provided a more accurate sizing ability for all memory requirements that go through the SQL Server memory manager.

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Post-migration Validation and Optimization Guide

Post-migration Validation and Optimization Guide

  • 01/09/2019
  • 6 minutes to read

Applies to: SQL Server (all supported versions)

SQL Server post migration step is very crucial for reconciling any data accuracy and completeness, as well as uncover performance issues with the workload.

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Query Processing Architecture Guide

Query Processing Architecture Guide

  • 02/21/2020
  • 89 minutes to read

 

Applies to: SQL Server (all supported versions) Azure SQL Database

The SQL Server Database Engine processes queries on various data storage architectures such as local tables, partitioned tables, and tables distributed across multiple servers. The following topics cover how SQL Server processes queries and optimizes query reuse through execution plan caching.

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SQL Server Index Architecture and Design Guide

SQL Server Index Architecture and Design Guide

  • 01/19/2019
  • 64 minutes to read

Applies to: 

SQL Server (all supported versions) 

Azure SQL Database 

Azure SQL Managed Instance 

Azure Synapse Analytics 

Parallel Data Warehouse

Poorly designed indexes and a lack of indexes are primary sources of database application bottlenecks. Designing efficient indexes is paramount to achieving good database and application performance. This SQL Server index design guide contains information on index architecture, and best practices to help you design effective indexes to meet the needs of your application.

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Thread and Task Architecture Guide

Operating system task scheduling

Threads are the smallest units of processing that can be executed by an operating system, and allow the application logic to be separated into several concurrent execution paths. Threads are useful when complex applications have many tasks that can be performed at the same time.

 

 

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Transaction Locking and Row Versioning Guide

Transaction Locking and Row Versioning Guide

  • 03/10/2020
  • 138 minutes to read

Applies to: SQL Server (all supported versions)

 Azure SQL Database 

Azure SQL Managed Instance 

Azure Synapse Analytics 

Parallel Data Warehouse

In any database, mismanagement of transactions often leads to contention and performance problems in systems that have many users. As the number of users that access the data increases, it becomes important to have applications that use transactions efficiently. This guide describes the locking and row versioning mechanisms the SQL Server Database Engine uses to ensure the physical integrity of each transaction and provides information on how applications can control transactions efficiently.

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Diagnose and resolve latch contention on SQL Server

Diagnose and resolve latch contention on SQL Server

  • 09/30/2020
  • 47 minutes to read

This guide describes how to identify and resolve latch contention issues observed when running SQL Server applications on high concurrency systems with certain workloads.

As the number of CPU cores on servers continues to increase, the associated increase in concurrency can introduce contention points on data structures that must be accessed in a serial fashion within the database engine. This is especially true for high throughput/high concurrency transaction processing (OLTP) workloads. There are a number of tools, techniques, and ways to approach these challenges as well as practices that can be followed in designing applications which may help to avoid them altogether. This article will discuss a particular type of contention on data structures that use spinlocks to serialize access to these data structures.

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Add an Azure SQL Database to an autofailover group

Add an Azure SQL Database to an autofailover group

  • 06/19/2019
  • 21 minutes to read

APPLIES TO:  Azure SQL Database

A failover group  is a declarative abstraction layer that allows you to group multiple geo-replicated databases. Learn to configure a failover group for an Azure SQL Database and test failover using either the Azure portal, PowerShell, or the Azure CLI. In this tutorial, you'll learn...

 

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Tutorial: Configure replication between a server and mobile clients (merge)

Tutorial: Configure replication between a server and mobile clients (merge)

  • 04/03/2018
  • 9 minutes to read

Applies to: SQL Server (all supported versions)

Merge replication is a good solution to the problem of moving data between a central server and mobile clients that are only occasionally connected. By using the replication wizards, you can easily configure and administer a merge replication topology.

This tutorial shows you how to configure a replication topology for mobile clients. For more information about merge replication, see the overview of merge replication...

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Tutorial: Configure replication between two fully connected servers (transactional)

Applies to: SQL Server (all supported versions)

Transactional replication is a good solution to the problem of moving data between continuously connected servers. By using the Replication Wizard, you can easily configure and administer a replication topology.

This tutorial shows you how to configure a transactional replication topology for continuously connected servers. For more information about how transactional replication works, see the  overview of transactional replication.

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Creating a Memory-Optimized Table and a Natively Compiled Stored Procedure

Creating a Memory-Optimized Table and a Natively Compiled Stored Procedure

  • 03/16/2017
  • 5 minutes to read

Applies to: SQL Server (all supported versions)

This topic contains a sample that introduces you to the syntax for In-Memory OLTP.

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Database Engine Tuning Advisor

Database Engine Tuning Advisor

  • 03/01/2017
  • 2 minutes to read

Applies to: SQL Server (all supported versions)

Welcome to the Database Engine Tuning Advisor tutorial. Database Engine Tuning Advisor examines how queries are processed in the databases you specify, and then recommends how you can improve query processing performance by modifying database structures such as indexes, indexed views, and partitioning.....

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Tutorial: Signing Stored Procedures with a Certificate

  • 08/23/2018
  • 6 minutes to read

Applies to: SQL Server (all supported versions) Azure SQL Database Azure SQL Managed Instance

This tutorial illustrates signing stored procedures using a certificate generated by SQL Server....

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Use Azure Blob storage service with SQL Server 2016

  • 07/22/2020
  • 20 minutes to read

 

Applies to: SQL Server (all supported versions)

Welcome to the Working with SQL Server 2016 in Microsoft Azure Blob Storage service tutorial. This tutorial helps you understand how to use the Microsoft Azure Blob storage service for SQL Server data files and SQL Server backups...

 

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Use the Availability Group Wizard (SQL Server Management Studio)

Use the Availability Group Wizard (SQL Server Management Studio)

  • 05/17/2016
  • 10 minutes to read

Applies to: SQL Server (all supported versions)

This topic describes how to use the New Availability Group Wizard in SQL Server Management Studio to create and configure an Always On availability group in SQL Server 2019 (15.x). An availability group defines a set of user databases that will fail over as a single unit and a set of failover partners, known as availability replicas, that support failover.