SQL Server Performance Survival Kit for the AI Era

SQL Server performance tuning can feel overwhelming until you see it in action. This workshop makes everything simple by taking you straight into real world problems. It is fully hands on. You will tune queries, fix bottlenecks, and solve issues the same way you would in a real project.

This workshop uses zero slides and one hundred percent live demos. Everything happens inside SQL Server. You will work with slow queries, build efficient indexes, understand locking behavior, read wait stats, and handle parallelism challenges right as they appear. Every topic comes with a task you try yourself.

You will also hear a short and clear note about AI. The purpose is to teach you the skills that help you stay strong during the AI transformation. We skip anything that AI can do for you. We focus only on real, essential, human skills that make you valuable in any database team.

The workshop includes
• Four hours of fast paced demos with real scenarios
• Two hours of guided practice where you solve tasks
• Thirty minutes of AMA time for your burning questions
The full experience is lively, practical, and designed to boost your confidence.

You will work on tasks such as
• Create the right index for a slow query
• Rewrite a poorly performing query
• Investigate blocking and reduce lock waits using GenAI
• Choose indexes that avoid unnecessary locks
• Read wait stats to find the top bottleneck
• Understand simple parallelism issues and tune them

By the end, you will know how to spot slowdowns, apply tuning patterns, and use core tools such as execution plans, indexes, waits, and parallelism with confidence. You will also know which skills matter most in a world where AI is becoming normal.

Goals
• Learn SQL Server performance tuning using real hands on tasks
• Understand how indexing, query design, locking, waits, and parallelism shape performance
• Build essential tuning skills that stay valuable during the AI shift

Prerequisites
Participants should know basic SQL. No performance tuning experience is required. Basic SQL Server knowledge helps but is not necessary.

Tune slow SQL Server queries using hands on, real world scenarios Understand waits, locking, indexing, and parallelism Build core performance skills that remain valuable alongside AI