SQL Query Optimization: A Practical Guide to Query Tuning, Indexing, Execution Plans, and High-Performance Relational Databases
Leroy, Jeffries
Synopsis "SQL Query Optimization: A Practical Guide to Query Tuning, Indexing, Execution Plans, and High-Performance Relational Databases"
SQL Query Optimization: A Practical Guide to Query Tuning, Indexing, Execution Plans, and High-Performance Relational Databases Your SQL Works. So Why Is It Still Slow? Have you ever written a SQL query that returned the right result but took far too long to run? Maybe a report that once loaded in seconds now takes minutes. Perhaps you added an index expecting better performance, but nothing changed. Or you opened an execution plan and struggled to understand the scans, joins, costs, and row estimates staring back at you. SQL Query Optimization gives you a practical way to understand why queries become slow and how to fix them without guesswork. Written for developers, database administrators (DBAs), data engineers, analysts, and other SQL users, this book turns complex performance concepts into clear techniques you can apply to real databases. What You Will Learn: Inside this practical guide, you will discover how to: Find slow and expensive SQL queries and identify their real causes Read execution plans and recognize costly database operations Understand how query optimizers choose execution strategies Design effective indexes and avoid duplicate or excessive indexing Improve filtering, sorting, grouping, aggregation, and DISTINCT Optimize joins, subqueries, CTEs, and window functions Understand statistics, selectivity, and cardinality estimates Diagnose poor optimizer decisions and database bottlenecks Handle transactions, locking, blocking, deadlocks, and concurrency Improve pagination, batch operations, prepared statements, and connections Prevent N+1 queries and inefficient SQL generated by ORMs Monitor, test, and maintain SQL performance in production Learn SQL Performance Through Practical Examples This book goes beyond quick fixes and optimization myths. You will learn why an index can improve one query but hurt another workload, why a table scan is not always a problem, and why a query that performs well today may become slow as data grows. Practical examples and hands-on projects show you how to diagnose slow reporting queries, correct indexing and join problems, compare execution plans, and optimize complete database workloads. You will also find useful references for PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, and Oracle, along with an optimization checklist and solutions to common SQL performance problems. Build Skills You Can Use on Real Databases By the end of the book, you will know how to approach slow SQL systematically. Instead of randomly rewriting queries or adding indexes, you will be able to measure performance, identify unnecessary database work, make targeted improvements, and verify whether those changes actually worked. These skills can help you build faster applications, reduce database resource usage, improve reports, troubleshoot production bottlenecks, and make stronger database design decisions. Do Not Wait Until Slow SQL Becomes a Production Problem Databases grow. Traffic increases. Queries that perform well with thousands of rows can struggle when those tables contain millions. Learning how to diagnose and optimize SQL now can help you prevent slow applications, delayed reports, timeouts, and expensive performance problems later. Stop guessing why your SQL is slow. Learn how to measure it, understand it, and improve it. Get your copy of SQL Query Optimization today and start building faster queries, smarter indexes, and more efficient database applications.
