March 2013 - Posts

• SSMS 2012 Restore GUI Gotcha

  Today I want to bring to your attention an issue in the SQL Server Management Studio 2012 restore GUI. In many ways the new restore dialog is nicer than the old one, with new features and added convenience – but, as is always the Achilles heel of GUI Read More... Posted Friday, March 15, 2013 10:30 AM by merrillaldrich | 2 Comments Filed under: backup, disaster recovery, logshipping, management studio

• T-SQL Tuesday #040: Files, Filegroups and Visualizing Interleaved Objects

  Early in my career as a DBA, I have to admit I didn’t quite “get” what all the fuss was about with the multiple file and multiple filegroup capability in SQL Server. Over the years, though, as I learned more about partitioning, backup strategies for large Read More... Posted Monday, March 11, 2013 11:08 PM by merrillaldrich | 4 Comments Filed under: storage, T-SQL Tuesday

• Presenting to East Iowa I-380 U.G. March 12

  Tomorrow I’m making the beautiful drive down from Minneapolis into Iowa to present to the I-180 / East Iowa SQL Server Users Group . I’ll be talking about managing lots and lots of unruly databases, and presenting a walkthrough of this maintenance solution Read More... Posted Monday, March 11, 2013 9:13 PM by merrillaldrich | 0 Comments

• March Update to Rules-Driven Maintenance

  This month I have a minor update to the Rules-Driven Maintenance code I originally posted back in August 2012. This update has just two enhancements, but they are nice ones, I think: Much improved handling for instances that use database snapshots. Ability Read More... Posted Monday, March 11, 2013 8:56 PM by merrillaldrich | 2 Comments Filed under: backup, indexes, maintenance, productivity Attachment(s): RulesMaintenanceV1_2.zip

• Trigger Authoring Decision Tree

  Read More... Posted Wednesday, March 06, 2013 11:46 AM by merrillaldrich | 13 Comments Filed under: Best Practice, Dukes of Hazzard, Fun, T-SQL

• Public Release, SQL Server File Layout Viewer

  Version 1.0 is Now Available! I’ve been working off and on, as my real job permits, on this visualization tool for SQL Server data files. This is an educational or exploratory tool where you can more readily see how the individual data pages in MDF/NDF Read More... Posted Friday, March 01, 2013 2:36 PM by merrillaldrich | 9 Comments Filed under: indexes, internals, partitioning, storage Attachment(s): SQLFileLayoutViewerR1.zip