Topic:

Most of us dream of the perfectly tuned SQL Server.

Unfortunately, vendor agreements, legacy systems, and the iron-fists of ill-informed data owners often prevent us from reaching this idealistic scenario by prohibiting the addition of indexes or changes to server settings. In those instances where you can’t make any permanent changes to objects in the database, how do you improve query performance?

In this session, the perennially frustrated Bert Wagner (“What do you mean I can’t add an index?!”) will show you how to identify query patterns that are suitable for rewriting in order to improve query performance. We will look at how changing ORs to UNION ALLs, subqueries to derived tables, and many more refactoring patterns can help you achieve faster query executions without modifying existing database objects.

After this session you may still long to add that perfect index, but you will walk away having learned to achieve better performance through query rewrites alone.

Speaker:

Bert Wagner, Principal Business Intelligence Developer Progressive Insurance

Bert Wagner teaches data-focused developers how to use SQL Server efficiently every week on his YouTube channel “SQL with Bert.” When not filming episodes, he gains inspiration for his content through his work as a Principal Business Intelligence Developer for Progressive Insurance in Cleveland, OH.

Starting his career as an SSIS and SSRS developer, Bert fell in love with SQL Server query writing and performance tuning. Nowadays, he focuses on full stack web development and uses his database tuning skills to ensure that his applications run at peak performance.