Over the last year or so the Optimizer development team has presented at a number of conferences and we got a lot of questions that start with "How do I ...". Where people were looking for a specific command or set of steps to fix a problem they had encountered. So we thought it would be a good idea to create a series of small posts that deal with these "How do I" question directly. We will use a simple example each time, that shows exactly what commands and procedures should be used to address a given problem. If you have an interesting "How do I .." question you would like to see us answer on the blog please email me and we will do our best to answer them! Watch out for the first post in this series which addresses the problem of "How do I deal with a third party application that has embedded hints that result in a sub-optimal execution plan in my environment?"