Tutorial: Diagnosing slow statements

Use the lessons in this tutorial to learn how to use the Database Tracing Wizard to view execution times for statements, and how to identify statements that appear to execute slowly (for example, long-running queries).

A slow statement occurs when the database server takes a long time to process the statement. Long processing times can be the result of several issues, such as an improperly designed database, poor use of indexes, index and table fragmentation, or a small cache size. A statement may also execute slowly because it is not well formed, or does not use more efficient shortcuts to achieve results.

This tutorial does not show you how to rewrite slow statements since each statement can have special requirements. However, the tutorial does show you where to look for execution times, and how to compare execution times when rewriting queries using alternate syntax.

 See also

Lesson 1: Creating a diagnostic tracing session
Lesson 2: Reviewing statements processed by the database server