Episode 141
| July 04, 2018
| 41 minutes
Wait, Wait, What?
In this episode, we chat with David Maxwell about wait stats, what they are and why we should care about them. There are so many different directions we can go and if you have a specific use case you’d like us to consider, let us know and we can include it in a future episode.
Episode Quotes
“Context matters. A particular wait type might be a problem in one context, but it might not necessarily be a problem in another context.”
“Whatever monitoring tool you choose, monitor your server over the period of time where you’re seeing that slowness and see which are the wait stats that are being accumulated so that you can better target things.”
“Waits don’t occur in isolation, so you really can’t troubleshoot them in isolation.”
Listen to Learn
00:40 Intro
01:35 Compañero Shout-Outs
02:03 SQL Trail Event announcements
03:34 World Cup Woes
03:57 Intro to the guest and topic
05:07 Why do we care about wait stats?
06:28 All blockers are not equal – Context matters
08:19 Waits you should concentrate on
11:59 How to reduce these waits to make your system faster
14:38 Wait stats are a universal troubleshooting tool
16:49 Tying waits to queries
19:07 Use sp_whoisactive by Adam Machanic and compare those snapshots to the broader view
23:08 CXPACKET and new to SQL Server CXCONSUMER
25:28 Confusing or misleading wait stats
29:07 What does a healthy set of wait stats look like?
31:57 SQL Family Questions
39:52 Closing Thoughts
Our Guest
David Maxwell
David has been working with SQL Server since the year 2000 and SQL 7.0. He’s been in many different environments from healthcare to manufacturing to finance and education. He loves internals, performance tuning, troubleshooting and really good coffee. David also helps in running the SQL Saturday in Columbus OH with the local PASS user group there. In his spare time he can be found playing video games live on twitch.tv.
David’s SQL Blog: dmmaxwell.wordpress.com
Games on Twitch: twitch.tv/dmmaxwell
Meet the Hosts
Carlos Chacon
With more than 10 years of working with SQL Server, Carlos helps businesses ensure their SQL Server environments meet their users’ expectations. He can provide insights on performance, migrations, and disaster recovery. He is also active in the SQL Server community and regularly speaks at user group meetings and conferences. He helps support the free database monitoring tool found at databasehealth.com and provides training through SQL Trail events.
Eugene Meidinger
Eugene works as an independent BI consultant and Pluralsight author, specializing in Power BI and the Azure Data Platform. He has been working with data for over 8 years and speaks regularly at user groups and conferences. He also helps run the GroupBy online conference.
Kevin Feasel
Kevin is a Microsoft Data Platform MVP and proprietor of Catallaxy Services, LLC, where he specializes in T-SQL development, machine learning, and pulling rabbits out of hats on demand. He is the lead contributor to Curated SQL, president of the Triangle Area SQL Server Users Group, and author of the books PolyBase Revealed (Apress, 2020) and Finding Ghosts in Your Data: Anomaly Detection Techniques with Examples in Python (Apress, 2022). A resident of Durham, North Carolina, he can be found cycling the trails along the triangle whenever the weather's nice enough.
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