Mining Statistics for Data Insights

Deborah Melkin

Statistics are typically thought about in terms of how the query optimizer will use them to create an execution plan. But, what if statistics could give us greater insights about our data and its usage? Let’s find out together if this theory is true.

Join me as we dig deeper into statistics, their histograms, and explore what data they contain. We’ll cover how they’re created and updated, along with how they relate to indexes and columns. Then we’ll combine statistics and other SQL Server metadata to uncover any insights they may hold. And finally, we’ll look at the limitations of statistics and what that may mean for our theory.

By the end of this session, you’ll have a greater appreciation of what data is contained within statistics and determine the validity of our theory that their insights can help us better understand our data.