We all worry about the performance of our servers.  It is what separates the DBA's from the pretenders.  You just never know just what setting will be the one that makes the big difference.  The worst part is, the setting that works today may hinder or not even matter tomorrow or even on another identically configured system.  This is clearly the most frustrating part of...
Read More About The Great Performance Chase with Informix »

There are many tools for monitoring applications. One that we may want to use is JAMon , the Java Application Monitor; it can be really useful for discovering what the hell is going on in our application. We are going to view a quick introduce in it. But first, a little words about JAMon . I think that's not the JAMon I'm talking about... ...
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  When we focus on IO performance for SQL Server it is vitally important to understand the architecture of the disk subsystem.  Typically, a DBA will focus on Disk Queue Length as the primary measure of IO performance; however, in a Storage Area Network (SAN) environment the Disk Queue Length metric may not provide reliable results.  In a SAN environment a...
Read More About IO, IO it's off to work we go. »

  The truth of this Yiddish proverb has been repeatedly reveled to me in both my personal and professional lives.  Professionally, I cannot begin to count the number of client’s with whom I have worked who have tried to solve a SQL Server performance issue with more hardware – the brawn.  In my experience most performance issues will not be resolved with more memory,...
Read More About When brains are needed, brawn won't help. »