I've audited a SQLS2008 server with Profiler for one day.. the overhead didn't seem to trouble this new client my company has. They are using a legacy VB6 application as a front-end. They're experiencing timeouts once SQLS RAM usage is high. The server is currently running x64 sqls2008 on a VM with nearly 9 GB of RAM. SQL Server's 'max server memory option' is currently set to 6GB.

I've put the results of the trace in a table and queried them using this query.

SELECT TextData, ApplicationName, Reads
FROM [TraceWednesday] WHERE textdata is not null and EventClass = 12 GROUP BY TextData, ApplicationName, Reads ORDER BY Reads DESC

As I expected, some values are very high.

Top Reads, in pages.
2504188
1965910
1445636
1252433
1239108
1210153
1088580
1072725

Am I correct in thinking that the top one (2504188 pages) is 20033504 KB, which then is roughly ~20'000 MB, 20GB? These queries are often executed and can take quite some time to run. Eventually RAM is used up because of the cache fattening, and timeouts occur once SQL cannot 'splash' pages in the buffer pool as much. Costs go up. Am I correct in my understanding?

I've read that I should tune the associated T-SQL and create appropriate indices. Obviously cutting down the I/O would make SQL Server use less RAM. OR, maybe it might just slow down the process of chewing up the whole RAM. If a lot less pages are read, maybe it'll all run much better even when usage is high? (less time swapping, etc.)

Currently, our only option is to restart SQL once a week when RAM usage is high, suddenly the timeouts disappear. SQL breathes again.

I'm sure lots of DBAs have been in this situation.. I'm asking before I start digging out all of the bad T-SQL and put indices here and there, is there is something else I can do? Any advice except from what I know (not much yet..)

Much appreciated.
Leo.