As part of its ongoing program to continuously release improvements for its SQL Server performance monitoring tool, Redgate Software announced today a new feature to ease the problems DBAs and developers face with query tuning and optimization. SQL Monitor's advanced query tuning and tracking capability will now enable DBAs and developers to identify long running and costly queries, get recommendations and guidance on how to optimize them, and track them to compare their performance over time.

The upgrade was prompted because monitoring query performance is a long-standing and complex task for DBAs and developers, and there is a lack of knowledge and, increasingly, a lack of time. Whether it's to identify why applications are running slowly, reduce the cost of cloud services which is often correlated to CPU and memory usage, or free up server resources, optimizing database queries improves the performance of databases and the applications that use them.

Query tuning itself, however, is a difficult problem because there can be many reasons for poorly performing queries, ranging from badly designed database schema to poor indexing, and from incorrectly configured servers to issues with the query text itself. As a result, many DBAs and developers don't know how to approach it, often calling on consultants to help with SQL Server performance diagnostics which, in turn, delays development work.

To overcome this SQL Monitor now enables users to find problem queries faster, view the metrics and insights they need to analyze them in an easily accessible GUI, access guidance on resolving them, and then track ongoing performance over time. It does so by measuring queries based on factors like CPU consumption, physical reads, or logical writes, and then ranking them by their overall impact on server performance. This allows DBAs to identify the queries which need most attention and dedicate their scarce resources where it matters the most.

Importantly, SQL Monitor also steps in at this point to help in the optimization of queries by providing recommendations which highlight the issue and can be further expanded to view a full description with more information and suggested fixes.

This enables developers as well as DBAs to resolve issues themselves, speeding up development and maintaining the optimal performance of applications. They can also keep a close eye on the issue because the tracking capability lets them see how a query behaves after it has been optimized. Teamwork is further encouraged with the ability to share queries so that developers and DBAs can jointly work on optimizing performance.

The team behind SQL Monitor is now looking into how query tuning can be refined to improve workflows in both development and production environments and further enhance collaboration.

To find out how Redgate SQL Monitor can help DBAs and development teams improve query tuning, organizations can download a 14-day, fully-functional free trial of the database monitoring tool or see a live demo online at www.red-gate.com/sql-monitor.

About Redgate Software

Redgate makes ingeniously simple software used by over 800,000 IT professionals around the world and is the leading Database DevOps solutions provider. Redgate's philosophy is to design highly usable, reliable tools which elegantly solve the problems developers and DBAs face every day and help teams get the most value out of any database, on a growing number of platforms, anywhere. As well as streamlining database development and preventing the database being a bottleneck, this helps organizations introduce data protection by design and by default. As a result, more than 200,000 companies use Redgate tools, including 91% of those in the Fortune 100.

Contacts

Meghana Shendrikar
Allison+Partners for Redgate Software
Redgate@allisonpr.com