What have guillotines and satellite navigation got to do with querying SQL Server? Well, in this session you’re going to find out! We’ll be looking into query performance and that means reading query plans, but in order to do that we also need some background knowledge of how the query optimiser works. With that in mind we’ll be jumping right into optimisation phases, stages and transformation rules. We'll also take a look at influencing the optimiser with hints, and if it is a good idea or not!