Regardless of the DBMS make or model, the transaction throughput curve of a database system is often shaped like a trapezoid. As the load level goes up initially, so does the transaction throughput. As the load level continues to go up, the transaction throughput will reach a plateau. After the load level is cranked up still further, the ...

Under the description for UPDATE in SQL Server 2000 and 2005 Books Online, you can find the following statement (thanks to SQL Server MVP Steve Kass for pointing me to this passage): The results of an UPDATE statement are undefined if the statement includes a FROM clause that is not specified in such a way that only one value is available for ...

In response to my previous blog post--Performance Impact: Setting a Database to Read Only, Shailesh Khanal mentioned that he observed significant performance degradation from READ COMMITTED SNAPSHOT OFF to ON for a read-only workload. This is counter intuitive since there is nothing in the version store if only SELECT statements are ...