Faster workloads
Reduce unnecessary reads, waits, contention, and inefficient query patterns that slow applications and jobs.
Database health
Slow is a symptom. The workload tells the story.
A database issue may appear as a slow screen, blocked order process, unreliable report, growing cloud bill, failed import, or overnight job that no longer finishes. Adding hardware or indexes without understanding the workload can move the bottleneck, increase write costs, or hide a deeper data-design problem.
Naper Solutions examines the database in the context of the applications and business processes using it. We review expensive queries, execution plans, waits, locks, indexing, data growth, schema choices, batch processes, integrations, backups, recovery objectives, and the way software opens and uses connections.
We support SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, and mixed application environments. Engagements range from a focused performance investigation to architecture, migration, reporting, integration, and long-term operational support.
What improves
Performance, resilience, and a clearer path forward.
The exact result depends on the workload, but the engagement should leave the environment more understandable and less risky.
Safer operations
Strengthen backup, recovery, access, change, monitoring, and maintenance practices around business-critical data.
Better architecture
Clarify schemas, ownership, retention, integration boundaries, and platform choices before complexity grows.
More dependable reporting
Separate and shape analytical workloads so decision support does not destabilize transactional operations.
Scope
Focused diagnosis or broader data-platform work.
We adapt the scope to the decision at hand, from resolving an urgent bottleneck to preparing a major migration.
Performance and reliability
Find the actual constraints, make controlled changes, and verify the effect under representative workload.
- Query, execution plan, wait, lock, and index analysis
- Schema, statistics, maintenance, and capacity review
- Backup, restore, recovery, and availability planning
- Monitoring, alerting, runbooks, and ongoing support
Architecture, migration, and data use
Plan how data should be stored, moved, governed, and exposed as applications and reporting needs change.
- Database design and application data-layer review
- Version, cloud, platform, and consolidation migration
- Data cleanup, transformation, and integration
- Reporting stores, dashboards, exports, and secure access
How we work
Measure, explain, change, verify.
Database work should produce evidence and an understandable decision trail, especially when the environment supports critical operations.
Establish context
Confirm the business impact, workload pattern, architecture, recent changes, constraints, and recovery needs.
Collect evidence
Review metrics, plans, waits, locks, logs, configuration, schema, code paths, and representative transactions.
Prioritize changes
Rank improvements by benefit, risk, effort, dependencies, and the ability to validate or reverse them.
Implement and verify
Apply controlled changes, compare results, document decisions, and establish monitoring or follow-up work.
1997
Built for continuity, not a handoff.
Naper Solutions has solved business technology problems since 1997. The same senior team can carry an engagement from assessment through implementation, deployment, and ongoing support.
Common questions
Database consulting questions.
Can you help with an urgent database performance problem?
Yes, subject to availability and access. We first establish the business impact, recent changes, platform health, and evidence such as waits, blocking, resource use, logs, and expensive queries. We avoid high-risk changes until there is enough information to choose a controlled response.
Do we need a database administrator on staff to work with you?
No. We can work with business owners, application developers, managed IT providers, or an existing DBA team. We make responsibilities, access, findings, and operational recommendations understandable to the people who will own the environment.
Can you tune SQL written by a vendor application?
Sometimes. Vendor restrictions may limit code or schema changes, but we can still analyze the workload, configuration, indexing options, infrastructure, blocking, maintenance, and evidence to take back to the vendor. Any change must respect support agreements.
How do you approach a database migration?
We inventory applications and dependencies, profile data and workload, define compatibility and recovery requirements, plan transformation and validation, rehearse the cutover, and keep a rollback path. A migration is complete only when applications, integrations, reporting, and operations are verified.
Can you improve reporting without slowing production?
Yes. Options include query and index improvements, workload scheduling, read replicas, data extracts, reporting databases, data warehouses, or application changes. We choose an approach based on freshness needs, volume, cost, and operational risk.
Do you provide SQL Server consulting for Chicago businesses?
Yes. Naper Solutions is based in the Chicago area and works with organizations throughout Chicagoland and nationwide. We can handle focused SQL Server performance investigations, architecture and migration planning, application data-layer work, and ongoing database support.
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Start with the real problem
Describe the symptom and the business impact.
We can help determine whether the next step is a focused performance review, architecture work, migration planning, or ongoing database support.