Parallel execution, part 2

Continuing on last week’s post on parallelism, here’s part two, where we take a closer look at when parallel plans are considered and what you can do to either force or prevent a query from running parallel as well as things you want to avoid if you’re trying to achieve a parallel query plan.

Parallel execution, part 1

The subject of parallel execution of SQL Server queries is at times somewhat shrouded in mystery and uncertainty. Since the concept of parallel execution is such a significant (and indispensable tool) for performance tuning, it’s good to have a fair idea of how it works. In this first post in a series on parallelization, I’m going to try to sort out the apples from the pears, or the serial from the parallel if you will.