Identifying the worst performing queries in a DB, with Query Store

Lightening talk for SQLBits 2026

TL; DR

How do you identify the worst performing query in your database in five minutes or less? With Query Store

Session Details

There's a problem. The database is not performing well. How do you identify the culprit? How do you identify it quickly?

The short answer is Query Store. For the slightly longer answer, come to this session and find out

3 things you'll get out of this session

Learn how to quickly identify performance problems with query store
Learn what to look for, depending on the type of problem being experienced
Watch a seasoned expert try not to mess up something they do every week

Gail Shaw's other proposed sessions for 2026

All about Indexes - Part 1 - 2026

All about Indexes - Part 2 - 2026

KQL for the SQL Professional - 2026

On Transactions and Atomic Operations - 2026

Parameter Sniffing vs Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization - 2026

Transaction Log Internals, unplugged - 2026

Gail Shaw's previous sessions

Regressions, neurons and decisions. Oh My!

Linear regression, neural networks and neural networks are three of the foundational algorithms in machine learning. In this session, we'll look at how they work and how they generate the results that they do.

All about Indexes

Indexes are essential to good database performance, but it can be hard to decide what indexes to create. In this session we'll look at the design considerations for clustered indexes and for nonclustered indexes.

All about Indexes

Indexes are essential to good database performance, but it can be hard to decide what indexes to create. In this session we'll look at guidelines for index creation

Do's and don'ts of database corruption

In this session we'll look at the things you should and shouldn't be doing now, to protect yourself and your data against the risk of corruption and thing you should and shouldn't do should the database ever become corrupt.

In this session we'll look at the common causes of bad execution plans and examine options for resolving the problem, short term and long term.