Understanding modern software applications isn’t just a question of what; it’s also a question of why. Why do we choose to use a particular technology? How does that technology serve the overall business needs? And when you have a problem, how do you figure out what’s wrong? If you’re in the position of trying to understand a modern software application for the first time, these questions can seem unanswerable.

The old saying goes like this: “If you don’t measure it, you can’t fix or improve it.” This reflects the obvious notion you can’t measure what you don’t monitor. But this isn’t where the story ends—it’s vitally important to choose, carefully and deliberately, what one measures and monitors. It’s also important to understand metrics in the overall context of an organization’s environment and goals.

Although writing better queries and building the right indexes are important parts of improving database performance, building clear database documentation can also contribute to this goal by helping you understand your database architecture. Painting a clear picture of the structure of your database gives you insight into your data flows and helps you identify redundant data and clarify business processes.

There are plenty of ways to gain insights on website availability and performance, from setting up complex monitoring agents to browsing through real-time logs. Few services are as straightforward and robust as SolarWinds® Pingdom®. Pingdom lets you set up checks for your website including uptime, page speed, and user interactions. It then collates the results in a dashboard for you to visualize.

Given the overwhelming importance of data to organizations, anything they can do to speed up troubleshooting problems in the databases they use is of great value. If a company can speed up or avoid troubleshooting, it frees up time they can invest in doing and building more with their data. Careful attention to database query construction and execution also pays similar dividends, as improved database performance helps organizations get more done faster.

In this enterprise cost containment series, we’ve tackled a range of topics from cloud to professional services and more. Now, I want to dive into the topic you may have expected us to cover from the start: monitoring. After all, at SolarWinds, we create monitoring software. The goal of this post is not to present or sell software, though. It’s our intention to help you have conversations with management and stakeholders—no matter the monitoring you use.

Welcome back to our five-part series in which we discuss a top habit for DBAs to increase business functionality. In part one of this series, we discussed the importance of a capability maturity model (CMM) and more specifically Level 1 of the information management maturity model (IMMM) and how the framework can provide a step-by-step process for DBAs to follow while also allowing businesses to gain skills along the way.

Data provides an essential basis for reports and analytics, with the databases storing the data now driving and informing most custom and line-of-business applications. Thus, anything organizations can do to speed up troubleshooting for database problems is pure gold. In fact, time saved on troubleshooting turns into time organizations can invest in being more productive and profitable.

Indexes play a critical role in SQL Server query performance. SQL Sentry Fragmentation Manager helps you make intelligent decisions about index management based on the table and index information collected. In this blog post, I’m going to discuss index fragmentation, several ways you can identify it, and why a more granular approach to index maintenance can save time and allow you to focus on other tasks during maintenance windows.