How to clear database cache in SQL Server

As you may already know, SQL normally uses cache to speed up queries that are often executed. This is no doubt a very cool feature of SQL Server.

However, sometimes when you are tuning your query, SQL Server caches your query or part of it so you can’t be sure if your query is really fast or is it just fast because SQL Server fetches the result from cache. In this case, you may want to clear SQL Server cache so that the query result is fetched directly from database.

Fortunately, SQL Server provides us with an undocumented stored procedure to do the job.

To clear the cache, run the command as below:

dbcc dropcleanbuffers

That’s it. Now execute your query again to see how it performs 😀

Hope this helps.

Cheers!