| My last SQL Server performance book was aimed at SQL Server 6.5. When Microsoft
released SQL Server 7.0 it was almost as if it were a new product. Although it was backward
compatible in many areas with SQL Server 6.5, the architecture was very different. For
starters, the on-disk structure was completely changed. The usage of files was much improved
over SQL Server 6.5, and SQL Server 7.0 now had an 8 Kb database page size. The query
optimizer was greatly enhanced with many new query plans possible, in particular in the use
of multiple indexes and table joins. The query processor could also now execute complex
queries in parallel. As well as all these changes and many more, Windows 2000 was
beginning to slowly appear on the horizon.
For these reasons, I decided that upgrading a SQL Server 6.5 performance and tuning book to
SQL Server 7.0 was not going to be a trivial task and would be much more than an editing
exercise. I decided that my goal would be to work with SQL Server 7.0 through its lifetime in
my usual performance-tuning-consultancy capacity and not rewrite the book until I felt
confident with the way the new architecture behaved. Of course, nothing stays still for long
with software, especially Microsoft software, and so the actual book-writing goal was to write
a SQL Server 2000 version.
SQL Server 2000 has added many useful enhancements to SQL Server 7.0, but it is still the
SQL Server 7.0 architecture and, therefore, behaves pretty much in the same way. I say to my
students that if you know SQL Server 7.0, you pretty much know SQL Server 2000.
So here goes-the follow-up to the SQL Server 6.5 performance and tuning book. I hope you
like this updated SQL Server 2000 version. |
