Finding the runtime of a task by name Can this query be improved? I iterate over a couple of thousand times, and if I can improve it, it should decrease the run time.  Otherwise I might look into using a batch instead of doing one at a time. I'm using MS SQL 11.

job
****
id
name


job_stats
*************
id
job_id
median_runtime

select js.median_runtime from job_stats js 
      join job j 
      on j.id = js.job_id 
      where j.name = '%s'
With a query this simple, it's going to be hard to make any major improvements.

Firstly, you should use INNER JOIN as opposed to JOIN it makes the query much easier to understand at a glance.

I would argue that you don't need to alias job_stats or job, they are both already fairly short and are much more meaningful names than J and JS 

You should use consistent indentation and you SQL is typically written with all the keywords in uppercase like this: 

SELECT job_stats.median_runtime
FROM job_stats
INNER JOIN job
    ON job.id = job_stats.id
WHERE job.name = '%s'


Lastly, is the final statement supposed to be this:

WHERE job.name LIKE '%s'


or is it correct as is, I can not tell.