Best Practices for Relational Database Optimization using Microsoft SQL

Abstract

The main problem when querying a database is the response time. The research was of an applied type, using two databases: control and experimental. Three computers have been used to execute ten queries to the two databases, running 4 consecutive times and obtaining an average. The results found were that, of the ten consultations carried out, seven consultations obtained better results in the experimental DB and three in the control DB. It is concluded that the best practices to optimize a database are: to create clustered indexes on columns frequently used in searches or to perform sorts, create non-clustered indexes on primary or foreign keys that do not have clustered indexes, use calculated columns, operators, and listing of proper columns in queries, however, the use of indexes should be restricted because they affect insert, update, and delete operations.
 Keywords: relational database, database optimization, SQL, indexing.