Inside Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005: Query Tuning and Optimization

Factors That Impact Performance

Most users perceive the performance of their SQL Server based on the responsiveness of their application. While SQL Server itself does play a part in application responsiveness, before we can isolate SQL Server as the source of a performance issue, we first need to understand the factors that impact the performance of your application. We will look into these factors for completeness before we switch our focus to troubleshooting performance problems in SQL Server.

At a high level, many factors can impact the performance and scalability that can be achieved in your application. We will be looking at the following:

• Application Architecture

• Application Design

• Transactions and Isolation Levels

• Transact-SQL Code

• Hardware ...