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SQL Server Optimization

The Power of Consulting

  • Projects Develop Faster
  • Spend Less Money
  • Better Security
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Get the Most Out of Your Engineering Team: Either Specialize or Outsource

Unless your company has expensive dedicated DBA specialists, your engineers spend more time on Databases than they need to. Engineers that have not spent over a decade specializing in databases could take 5 or 10 times longer to create a technically useable database with poor data quality and security. Then, whenever problems inevitably arise, they will struggle to correct them.

Your best solutions are hiring a specialized DBA or outsourcing to a consulting company.

Database-Administrator

Option 1: Hire a DBA (Database Administrator)

  • A DBA will be more integrated with your company culture.
  • If the DBA stays at the company, they will better understand your company’s systems.

For an SQL database to work successfully for you, there must be someone who understands its inner workings on hand at all times. The database administrator is the person who is responsible for making sure the databases in your organization are running smoothly. They ensure that the databases have the correct security settings, backup and recovery procedures, and other vital tasks. A good DBA can help you save money by preventing downtime, and downtime is expensive. However, it is a big commitment for a company to hire a DBA. They will need to have the budget for the DBA’s salary. If the DBA isn’t available, such as on vacation or sick leave, the company will need to rely heavily on any training materials left behind.

database consultant

Option 2: Outsource to Database Consultants

One of the best ways to improve your database performance is to outsource your database management to a third party. It’s a win-win situation because you get the expertise of a database specialist at a fraction of the cost, and you get the peace of mind that comes with knowing that your database is being managed by a highly qualified professional.

  • Flexing big: A consulting company can put 6 people on the project when doing an overhaul or major project to finish in a fraction of the time.
  • Flexing small: Between projects, a consulting company can scale back to having a few people on call to handle issues until the next major project comes along. This benefit can save you a significant amount of money.
  • The consultants will handle training and documentation for the systems internally. You won’t have to worry about having all your eggs in one basket if your DBA decides to leave.

Data Issues & Optimization

So, you have a database but no specialists. Have you had your first major data break yet?
If not, then it’s just a matter of time. Here’s a list of issues our clients have come to us after experiencing:

Millions of dollars in revenue were lost to bad data because there were no data checks built into the database. Users occasionally entered faulty, nonsensical data, and the database simply accepted it.

Due to issues with a Franchisor’s database data permissions setup, their Franchisees had been able to access the financial data of other Franchisees for an unknown amount of time.

Data visualization consultants were brought in and expected to also handle creating and maintaining a database to support their visualization platform. A year into the project, none of the visualizations were useful because it would take upwards of 5 minutes for a dashboard to load.

Electrical Panel

SQL Server Design — The “Electrical Panel” Analogy

A SQL Server database is a lot like the electrical panel in your home. With the proper “wiring,” all your lights and appliances work when needed, circuit breakers never become overloaded, and you have plenty of room on the panel to add new breakers for future electricity needs. Improperly wired, however, electrical current is unreliable, fuses blow, and adding new breakers is expensive and risky because no one can trace the wires to rooms and appliances. You may have a real fire hazard on your hands!

SQL Performance Optimization — Much More Cost-Effective Than Additional Hardware

SQL Server SHOULD NOT SLOW DOWN or BECOME UNRELIABLE as the number of users increases or as the size of the database grows.

The first instinct is to invest in additional server hardware resources like more CPUs, faster disks, and additional memory. However, investing in additional SQL hardware resources usually yields minimal performance improvement if the underlying database design and implementation issues are not addressed. In our experience, it is almost always deficient database design or implementation issues that are the primary root cause behind poor SQL Server performance, an unreliable system, or poor data integrity. These problems can cause unreasonably high costs associated with ongoing maintenance and support of the system.

Common SQL Server database design and implementation deficiencies include:

  • Poorly structured (de-normalized) Tables
  • Poorly-defined field Relationships; lack of proper Referential Integrity
  • Improper use (or absence of) Data Validation Constraints
  • Improper use (or absence of) Primary and/or Foreign Keys
  • Improper use of Join functions
  • Improper use, lack of, or over-use of Indexes
  • Poorly coded Stored Procedures, Triggers and/or Views
  • Poorly tuned / inefficient use of Queries / poorly optimized SQL
  • Inefficient and/or buggy application code


Our SQL Optimization experts have extensive experience tuning and optimizing SQL Server applications for optimal performance and reliability. They can find the SQL Server slowdowns and apply proven remedial database optimization techniques to increase SQL database performance and improve data integrity substantially.

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About PCApps

Practical Computer Applications (PCApps) focuses its consulting and engineering practice on building cost-effective, high-quality, custom database solutions that run core business operations.
Since 1992, Practical Computer Applications (PCApps) has built cost-effective, high-quality, custom databases that run core business operations for leading enterprises, from fortune 500 global corporations to privately-held start-ups.

What SQL Consulting Services Do Practical Computer Applications (PCApps) Offer? 

We provide expert SQL Server database performance optimization, tuning, and monitoring services to ensure optimal MS SQL Server performance, reliability and data integrity. Our deep knowledge of database optimization techniques will identify your SQL database’s major design or implementation deficiencies and recommend the most effective remedial engineering and optimization techniques to speed up and stabilize your MS SQL Server database.

Frequently Asked Questions

If you have a specific question about our services, check out our list of Frequently Asked Questions or call us at the number listed below!
We will be happy to help you with all of your database needs!