Erik Darling
I will make your SQL Server faster in exchange for money.
New York City, New York, United States
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Erik Darling started using SQL Server after a dispute with Excel over a vlookup.
He enjoys public arguments with the optimizer, and wine photography.
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For a Few Rows More: Mastering Row Goals in SQL Server
In this performance tuning deep dive, Erik Darling exposes the strange and often overlooked impact of row goals on SQL Server execution plans.
Through practical demonstrations, you'll see how these optimizer shortcuts, designed to retrieve just enough rows to satisfy a query, can silently steer execution plans in ways that drastically affect performance —sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.
You'll walk away with immediately applicable techniques for recognizing, troubleshooting, and strategically implementing row goals in your environment. Learn how to finesse these mechanisms to your advantage, using them deliberately to push SQL Server toward faster, more efficient plans.
If you want to understand why SQL Server sometimes makes bewildering decisions, and how to take back control of your queries, saddle up — it's time to go looking for a few rows more. These essential techniques are vital for anyone serious about advanced SQL Server performance optimization.
For a Few Rows More: Mastering Row Goals in SQL Server
In this performance tuning deep dive, Erik Darling exposes the strange and often overlooked impact of row goals on SQL Server execution plans.
Through practical demonstrations, you'll see how these optimizer shortcuts, designed to retrieve just enough rows to satisfy a query, can silently steer execution plans in ways that drastically affect performance —sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.
You'll walk away with immediately applicable techniques for recognizing, troubleshooting, and strategically implementing row goals in your environment. Learn how to finesse these mechanisms to your advantage, using them deliberately to push SQL Server toward faster, more efficient plans.
If you want to understand why SQL Server sometimes makes bewildering decisions, and how to take back control of your queries, saddle up — it's time to go looking for a few rows more. These essential techniques are vital for anyone serious about advanced SQL Server performance optimization.
Everything You Know About Isolation Levels Is Wrong
You’ve been told that NOLOCK hints are bad, so you look at all the queries your developers write and hang your head in shame. A NOLOCK hint here, a NOLOCK there, a NOLOCK hint seemingly everywhere. Like termites, eating at the foundation of your well-being.
But in the real world, how are you supposed to remove those all those yucky hints without blocking and deadlocking causing huge problems?
I'm Erik Darling, and I'm a world class NOLOCK hint removal expert, and in this demo-heavy session, I'll change your mind about every isolation level.
You're going to learn why:
* Read Committed is nearly as weak as Read Uncommitted
* Optimistic isolation levels aren't incorrect-result factories
* Repeatable Read isn't what it sounds like
* Serializable isn't the enemy of concurrency
* You don't need to worry about tempdb's version store
* No isolation level is perfect for every workload
At the end, you’ll have the confidence and knowledge to start turning on optimistic isolation levels and stop hanging NOLOCK hints all over your queries like Christmas tree ornaments.
A Fistful of Parameters: Take Care and Control of Unstable Plans
n this high-octane session, Erik Darling tackles the notorious parameter sniffing problems that plague SQL Server performance. You'll learn to identify when the optimizer's plan caching decisions turn lightning-fast queries into server-crushing disasters due to shifting parameter values.
Through real execution plans, you'll see how SQL Server makes critical optimization choices based on first-seen parameter values, often creating performance catastrophes for subsequent executions. Erik demonstrates practical techniques to identify skewed distribution statistics and reveals battle-tested methods to take care and control of your execution plans.
Whether dealing with simple procedures that run fast for most users but tank for others, or complex multi-parameter queries where optimal plans vary wildly, you'll leave armed with concrete strategies to maintain stable performance regardless of parameter values.
Essential knowledge for any SQL professional tired of watching carefully tuned queries fall apart when parameters change.
Advanced T-SQL Triage: The Art of Fixing Terrible Code
You’ve seen it before: the procedure that looks like it was generated by an AI trained on Stack Overflow and despair. It’s got MERGE. It’s got RIGHT JOINs. It’s got logic so tangled you’d need a flowchart, a flashlight, and a therapist to debug it. And now… it’s your problem.
In this full-day festival of query-fixing, Erik Darling leads you through the real world mysteries of advanced T-SQL: the strange, the slow, and the occasionally cursed. You’ll tackle tangled paging logic, rescue window functions and indexed views from spools and spills, and finally learn when to keep a CTE and when to yeet it. We’ll refactor data modifications that block like linebackers, decode procedural patterns, and write dynamic SQL that’s powerful and polite.
You’ll learn when to CROSS APPLY, dig into views vs. inline TVFs, and discover why RIGHT JOIN is not simply LEFT JOIN’s syntactic twin. We’ll uncover when user-defined functions wreck your query execution plans—and how to rewrite them with flair. If you’ve ever been curious about why that query sometimes takes SO long and how to best rewrite it without just guessing, this is your playground.
Expect fast demos, big laughs, and a glorious cheat sheet to take home. Because refactoring SQL isn’t just necessary—it’s super fun when you're in the right party.
Why you’re Tuning Queries Wrong: Lost In Costs
It's not your fault: it's easy to get lost in costs and other estimates. Join Erik Darling to learn all about the secrets of why Query Bucks are better than Bitcoin, and what you need to know to use them without getting into trouble. Erik will share anti-patterns, common goofs, and extra creepy edge cases that will catch up with you eventually. You'll leave this session with a grab bag of techniques that will up your database query tuning game.
The SQL Server Performance Tasting Menu
You're a DBA or Developer, and you've been using SQL Server for a few years.
You know there are different ways to make queries faster, but you're not sure when to use them.
I'm Erik Darling, and I'll be your sommelier for the evening.
Over several courses of delicious demos, I'll show you the types of performance problems different tuning techniques pair well with, and which ones to avoid.
When we're done, you'll understand exactly what patterns to look for when you're troubleshooting slow queries, and how to approach them.
You'll have the secret recipe for gourmet queries.
The Foundations Of SQL Server Performance Tuning
Whether you want to be the next great query tuning wizard, or you just need to learn how to start solving tough business problems at work, you need a solid understanding of not only what makes things fast, but also what makes them slow.
I work with consulting clients worldwide fixing complex SQL Server performance problems. I want to teach you how to do the same thing using the same troubleshooting tools and techniques I do.
I'm going to crack open my bag of tricks and show you exactly how I find which queries to tune, indexes to add, and changes to make. In this day long session, you're going to learn about hardware, query rewrites that work, effective index design patterns, and more.
Before you get to the cutting edge, you need to have a good foundation. I'm going to teach you how to find and fix performance problems with confidence.
Defeating Parameter Sniffing With Dynamic SQL
Parameter sniffing can be a huge performance problem, and fixing it can feel like an exercise in futility.
If you're ready to go beyond recompiles and unknowns and solve problems for real, come to this session.
I'll teach you techniques to fix parameter sniffing problems for good.
Blueprint Performance Tuning
I don't want to train you, I want to teach you how to think about SQL Server performance.
You've already searched the internet high and low to figure out why your queries are slow, and you've read the same advice over and over again.
That's just not cutting it anymore, and you're ready for the next level. This is the class you need to get there.
You'll learn new and different approaches to common performance problems, how to figure out what's going on in your query plans, and how indexes really work.
This is cutting edge stuff you can't find in normal training. If you're anything like I was, you've had it with stumbling through your work week, unsure if you're focusing on the right things. You'll walk out of the class knowing how to find and fix your worst performing queries.
Anyone can have a plan, it takes a pro to have a blueprint.
The Many Levels Of Database Concurrency
Tuning queries is great, but you can only fix one at a time. Designing systems for high-concurrency workloads takes a lot more care and planning from the get-go, and you need additional knowledge to be successful.
I'm Erik Darling, and I've worked with hundreds of clients in a variety of industries, from banking to gambling to e-commerce, whose needs all came down to one very simple thing: everything has to work fast all the time, or else.
In this session, I’ll explain why all your choices matter when fast, high-concurrency workloads are the requirement: hardware, settings, isolation levels, normalization, indexing, querying, and identifying what really doesn't belong in the database.
You’ll gain understanding of the key factors to curating and managing a transactional workload, and ready to increase the concurrency of your database applications.
Everything You Know About Isolation Levels Is Wrong
You’ve been told that NOLOCK hints are bad, so you look at all the queries your developers write and hang your head in shame. A NOLOCK hint here, a NOLOCK there, a NOLOCK hint seemingly everywhere. Like termites, eating at the foundation of your well-being.
But in the real world, how are you supposed to remove those all those yucky hints without blocking and deadlocking causing huge problems?
I'm Erik Darling, and I'm a world class NOLOCK hint removal expert, and in this demo-heavy session, I'll change your mind about every isolation level.
You're going to learn why:
* Read Committed is nearly as weak as Read Uncommitted
* Optimistic isolation levels aren't incorrect-result factories
* Repeatable Read isn't what it sounds like
* Serializable isn't the enemy of concurrency
* You don't need to worry about tempdb's version store
* No isolation level is perfect for every workload
At the end, you’ll have the confidence and knowledge to start turning on optimistic isolation levels and stop hanging NOLOCK hints all over your queries like Christmas tree ornaments.
The Biggest Mistakes SQL Server Developers Make
SQL Server has one simple rule: Anything you do that makes your job easier makes SQL Server’s job harder.
I’m Erik Darling, and I’ve learned that lesson the hard way through many years of SQL Server performance tuning, where seemingly convenient choices can have disastrous consequences.
In this demo-only session, I’ll walk you through the most common mistakes I have to clean up when working with clients who made the grievous mistake of embracing convenience, thinking that SQL Server is their friend.
We’ll go over data type choices, code abstractions, query patterns, and some of the very inconvenient truths about SQL Server performance. You’ll learn how to spot problems in queries and query plans, and how to fix them before they cause the next outage.
DataTune 2024 Sessionize Event
Erik Darling
I will make your SQL Server faster in exchange for money.
New York City, New York, United States
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