Adding Filtered Indexes, Wait Statistics, Comparing Windows Azure Performance

Some of my favorite articles originally appearing at SQLPerformance.com.

Dirty Secrets of the CASE Expression
Aaron Bertrand ( b | t ) of SQL Sentry takes a look at some unexpected behavior with the CASE expression and some of its derivatives. Did you know that Aaron is both an uber-genius and a curling fanatic? Improbable, I know.

An Unexpected Side-Effect of Adding a Filtered Index
Paul White’s ( b | t ) deep dive post explains some of the limitations in the special use and usefully special kind of index, the filtered index. When applied in the appropriate scenarios, filtered indexes can greatly improve query performance. But there are some dangers of performance degradation and risk of deadlocks when used improperly.

Knee-Jerk Wait Statistics : PAGEIOLATCH_SH
Paul Randal ( b | t ) of SQLskills adds another chapter in his continuing series on knee-jerk reactions to wait statistics, this time focusing on PAGEIOLATCH_SH. If you don’t know much about wait statistics, be sure to read Paul’s blog post series at SQLskills, starting with Wait statistics, or please tell me where it hurts.

Comparing Windows Azure Virtual Machine Performance
Thinking about the cloud? Glenn Berry ( b | t ) of SQLskills gets into the nitty-gritty details of cost and performance on the various options in Microsoft Azure virtual machines.