A little dated but still approach.

By : Randy Dyess
Oct 15, 2004

During a recent interview to find a new job before my contract ran out, I was asked a question that took me by surprise. The interviewer simply asked me what steps I took to decide which stored procedures needed optimizing and what steps I used to optimize those queries. What took me by surprise was not the question; it was the realization that I did not have a "formal" plan of attack to determine stored procedures that needed to be optimized or a plan to actually optimize them. After the interview, I decided to formalize the basic steps I used to find stored procedures to optimize, and the steps I took whenever I decided a query needed to be optimized. After jotting down some notes, I decided that I would turn this "plan" into an article so others would know what basic steps are needed to optimize a query.