When it comes to troubleshooting in relational databases, there's no better place to start than wait statistics.  In a nutshell, a wait statistic is an internal counter that tells you how long the database spent waiting for a particular resource, activity, or process.  Since wait statistics are categorized by type, one look will quickly tell the variety of problem that needs your attention, assuming you know meaning for Microsoft's lingo for each wait type. (As an aside, wait stats were implemented in the earliest days of relational database computing because the early RDBMSes ran on … [Read more...]