This guide provides an overview of the ghost cleanup process, which is a background process that deletes records off of pages that have been marked for deletion.

This guide contains information on index architecture, and best practices to help you design effective indexes to meet the needs of your application.

This guide explains how SQL Server manages memory, as well as memory utilization while reading and writing pages.

This guide describes the data structures that are used to manage pages and extents in all versions of SQL Server. Understanding the architecture of pages and extents is important for designing and developing databases that perform efficiently.

An overview of some common performance scenarios encountered after migrating to SQL Server and how to resolve them.

The SQL Server Database Engine processes queries on various data storage architectures such as local tables, partitioned tables, and tables distributed across multiple servers. This guide covers how SQL Server processes queries and optimizes query reuse through execution plan caching.

This guide provides information about the physical and logical architecture of the transaction log. Understanding the architecture can improve your effectiveness in managing transaction logs.

Threads are an operating system feature that lets application logic be separated into several concurrent execution paths. This guide explains how SQL manipulates threads and tasks.

This guide describes the locking and row versioning mechanisms the SQL Server Database Engine uses to ensure the physical integrity of each transaction and provides information on how applications can control transactions efficiently.

This tutorial teaches how to connect to an instance of the Database Engine.

This tutorial introduces you to the integrated environment for managing your SQL Server infrastructure. SQL Server Management Studio presents a graphical interface for configuring, monitoring, and administering instances of SQL Server.

This tutorial introduces you to using the advisor to examine how queries are processed, and then review recommendations for improving query performance.

This tutorial teaches how to convert a table to a hierarchical structure, and then manage the data in the table.

This tutorial teaches the fundamental skills of writing the Transact-SQL statements for creating and managing objects in a SQL Server database.

This tutorial illustrates signing stored procedures using a certificate generated by SQL Server.

This tutorial uses a scenario to illustrate SQL Server security concepts involving ownership chains and user context switching.

This tutorial teaches how to create policies that enforce site administration standards.

This tutorial illustrates how to do a SQL Server backup and restore to the Windows Azure Blob Storage Service.

This tutorial helps you understand how to store SQL Server data files in the Windows Azure Blob storage service directly.