Don't Tune Without a Target

Tuning without knowing your goal leads to wasted time. Instead, start with:

• Functional context: Who/what depends on this query?
• Frequency: How often does it run?
• Failure mode: Has it ever hit a timeout or caused a system issue?

If the answer to any of those is yes—or if the user experience is impacted—then move on to Diagnosing a Slow Query.