I’ve written about a few ‘worst practices’ over the years to call attention to some things that are bad (or just annoy me), but for the most part they aren’t things that really cause me a lot of pain. So, thinking ahead to April 1st, it has me wondering – how would you really drive your DBA mad for a day?
Here’s my suggestion; you know that users hate uneven performance, when it’s fast at 9 am and really slow at 10 am. One way to fix that is to just force it to always run slow, capture the execution time and if less than 10 seconds or whatever, just do a WAITFOR DELAY to make up the difference.
Got your attention?
I’m thinking of things that go beyond well meaning developers/users who don’t get the quirks of SQL Server, the ones that invent brand new wheels to replace the ones that already work. Technical solutions that seem really cool, until you realize just what they’ve done.
Post your examples!
SQLAndy 
“just force it to always run slow” …good suggestion lol
Well, let me tell you what was my suggestion some years ago … and it’s not a joke, I really said…
Scenario:
A customer called me to troubleshoot performance issues. When I came to the customer place, I asked her to explain me the situation and she said:
“Well, last month I could start this process, went to the bathroom, and when I came back the process had been finished.
Today, when I came back from the bathroom the process is still running.”
Immediately I said:
“I have the solution”
She said:
“Wow, so fast, great…what is it?”
Finally I said:
“We need to move the bathroom to be far far from here. So, when you come back, the process had been finished.”
Well, we laughing for some minutes and I only did this because I have a great relationship with that customer and the most important:
“The performance issue was solved.”
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