Talk: Stop scaling and start tuning

When a database is slow, you have two options: burn more money with your cloud provider, or roll up your sleeves and fix it. Many teams click the scale up button first - more RAM and CPU takes 60 seconds and buys them time. But it inevitably comes back worse than before.

My team recently faced the same situation. Scaling up resources had deferred the problem for awhile, but it was time to figure out what was going on. Our system was overwhelming the database in multiple ways: missing indexes, N+1 queries, ORM malfeasance, even a dodgy connection pool.

This talk will walk you through the process we used to fix them: how to decipher telemetry, review query plans, and tune indexes or data access patterns. The issues we uncovered are common in many database applications and you’ll come away with a practical blueprint for resolving them.

Delivered at

• CodeMash 2026

Resources

• N+1
• Database Query Tuning
  • Use the index luke
• Resource Contention