Guru's Guide to SQL Server Architecture and Internals, The

Primitive Allocations

Before any pages can be allocated from the BPool, SQL Server must allocate the support structures required to manage it. The first of these that we'll talk about is a global variable to hold a reference to an instance of the class that defines the BPool. Because this variable has global scope, you can see it yourself using WinDbg and the public symbols that ship with SQL Server. Exercise 11.1 takes you through locating both the global variable and its host data type.

Exercise 11.1 Using WinDbg to Find the Buffer Pool

1.	Attach to your nonproduction SQL Server with WinDbg.
2.	Make sure your symbol path is set correctly as described in Chapter 2.
3.	Our next step will be based on two assumptions. Due to its very nature and ubiquity ...