Last week, I talked about Discovery Wizard's Plugin Query Pack concept: the ability for DBAs to write their own inventory queries to figure out what's going on in their environment. I talked about how we'd only deliver a few basic Plugin Query Packs with the product, because those types of queries are difficult (and ...
In my last post about the development process of the next version of Quest Discovery Wizard for SQL Server, I talked about how DBAs need to track what's going on in their environment. Companies with big bucks bring in a configuration management database (CMDB) to monitor this stuff, but for the rest of ...
As a production database administrator, you're responsible for making sure databases don't have little icons next to them that say "Suspect". Here's what you want to know when I walk in the door: What am I dealing with? How many servers are out there? I don't want to take somebody's word for it, either, because I ...
Quest Discovery Wizard for SQL Server is a free program that goes through your network and your Active Directory looking for SQL Servers. It discovers things about the server, like what databases are on it, what applications are connected, what version numbers it has, and so on. Version 2.0 just came out today. I ...
A few months back, Microsoft gave MVPs a few MSDN Ultimate subscriptions to pass on to community members, no strings attached. I quietly gave mine to a few deserving folks who I thought could be future MVPs, but Arnie Rowland (Blog – @ArnieRowland) had a better idea. Arnie’s Project Phoenix encourages developers to propose a [...]
Read More »A few months ago, I had The Idea. I wanted to conduct SQL Server training on a cruise ship. I emailed a few buddies and offered to start a company called SQLCruise with them, and out of three friends, only one could say yes. I don’t have anything against the two who said no. I [...]
Read More »Most SQL Server DBAs don’t even like MySQL, let alone NoSQL. They cringe when they hear people say things like, “I don’t need transactions” or “The data will eventually be consistent” or “Indexes will be supported in the next version.” SQL Server and Oracle people are constantly trying to out-feature each other, and the abject [...]
Read More »In August 2008, Lady Gaga released her premier album The Fame. This 13-track work produced several hit singles including Just Dance, Poker Face, and Paparazzi – but it also produced plenty of controversy. Her exaggerated use of fashion, musical cliches, and sex gave her plenty of media attention – both good and bad. If you’ve [...]
Read More »Pop quiz: should you be worried if your SQL Server’s page life expectancy is averaging 214? There’s only one correct answer: it depends.
Performance tuning is all about finding the RIGHT bottleneck, focusing on it, and fixing it to the application owner’s satisfaction. Learn what happens if you don’t do it right.
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