As the volume of data under management seems to be increasing even faster than the speed of processors, the time-honored way of solving programming deficiencies by throwing more hardware to applications is reaching its limits.

This two-day seminar is an in-depth analysis by a veteran SQL practitioner of the best ways to code SQL accesses to the database, with a constant emphasis on performance. The first day is devoted to coding SQL as it should be; the second day explores how we can sometimes spectacularly improve the performance of old applications.

A various number of techniques are investigated on the basis of real-life examples, ranging from “quick-wins”, to more in-depth changes such as moving a part of the application logic from the client side to the server side or reconsidering the physical structure of the database, through the rewriting of statements that are too complex for the optimizer. This dense seminar primarily targets developers, project managers, architects, and database administrators who work with development teams.

Objectives:

• Make attendees think differently about SQL
• Provide an understanding of what is critical to application performance
• Provide a comprehensive array of “SQL best practices”
• Provide solid foundations to the efficient refactoring of SQL applications

Day 1:

• Designing databases for performance
• The proper way to access data
• Indexing tactics
• SQL, the relational theory and the optimizer
• Physical implementation
• Classic SQL patterns
• Trees
• Dynamically built queries
• Dealing with concurrency
• Massive volumes
• Controlling performance

Day 2 :

• Assessing what can be gained by refactoring existing applications
• Sanity checks: indexing and statistics
• Refactoring functions and views
• Testing changes
• Rewriting SQL statements
• Reviewing database accesses
• Reviewing flows and structures