Database Performance and Optimization: Understanding Indexes, Query Execution, Resource Usage, Monitoring, and Performance Tuning
Haagenrud, Thom
Synopsis "Database Performance and Optimization: Understanding Indexes, Query Execution, Resource Usage, Monitoring, and Performance Tuning"
Why is your database slow—and how do you fix it? Slow applications, timeouts, excessive CPU usage, memory pressure, and unpredictable response times often trace back to one underlying problem: inefficient data access. Database Performance and Optimization provides a practical guide to understanding what happens when a database processes a request—and how to identify and resolve the bottlenecks that stand between your applications and reliable, responsive data access. Rather than treating performance as a collection of isolated tricks, this book develops a systematic approach to diagnosing and improving database workloads. Inside, you'll explore: • How indexes affect data access and why the wrong indexing strategy can make workloads slower • How databases process statements and how to interpret execution behavior • How to identify CPU, memory, storage, and I/O pressure • How to recognize common causes of slow workloads and inefficient data access • How to use monitoring and performance metrics to locate bottlenecks • How to analyze execution plans and investigate inefficient operations • How to approach performance tuning methodically instead of relying on guesswork • How to evaluate performance changes and avoid optimizations that simply move the bottleneck elsewhere Whether you're a database administrator, software developer, data engineer, systems engineer, or technology professional who works with production data, this book gives you a framework for thinking about database performance from diagnosis through optimization. The goal isn't simply to make one statement run faster. It's to help you understand why a workload behaves the way it does, determine where the real constraint lies, and make informed changes that produce measurable results. If you want to move beyond trial-and-error troubleshooting and develop a disciplined approach to database performance engineering, this book gives you the concepts and practical framework to do it.