SQL Server 2008: The Need for Speed! by Joe Homnick, MCITP: DBA and BI Developer
September 11 GCUG in Boca Raton

SQL Server 2008 is FAST! This session looks at how the increase in performance in this latest release is reason enough for an upgrade. On the database engine front there are features such as resource governors, filtered indexes, read ahead scan caching, improved parallelism, native data compression support, sparse column support and non-relational data types. Pulling it all together is the new Performance Studio, which is an integrated framework that you can use to collect, analyze, troubleshoot, and store SQL Server diagnostics information. Developer enhancements also contribute to this SQL 2008 need for speed. Throughput is enhanced with new capabilities including Merge statements, Grouping Sets, Row Constructors and Table Value Parameters which decrease scans and round trips. Predicate filtering and bitmap iterators increase query performance. There are also TSQL enhancements that leverage the new non-relational data types. The Business Intelligence (BI) products of Reporting Services (SSRS), Integration Services (SSIS) and Analysis Services (SSAS) all have performance optimizations. The design environment in Visual Studio 2008 has been performance optimization, so those old long waits for projects to load and build have been minimized. SSRS now runs without the need for IIS with more memory optimizations including throttling settings and a new rendering engine speeding throughput. SSIS has new lookup caching options and buffer allocation optimizations. SSAS has query performance gains with optimization features like block computations. Scale out capability has been greatly increased with shared OLAP databases.