With the introduction of the instance-level option “optimize for ad hoc workloads” in SQL Server 2008, DBAs have a tool to deal with a problem known as plan cache pollution, or plan cache bloat. It’s often caused when one-time use ad hoc queries are sent to SQL Server from Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) solutions, such as LINQ, NHibernate, or Entity Framework. The problem can prevent SQL Server from using its available memory optimally, potentially hurting performance.

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