Search results matching tags 'Administration', 'People', 'Tips', and 'Tools'

Database Maintenance Scripting Done Right

KKline — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 13:16:00 GMT

I first wrote about useful database maintenance scripts on my SQLBlog account way back in 2008. Hmmm - now that I think about it, I first wrote about my own useful database maintenance scripts in a journal called SQL Server Professional back in the mid-1990's on SQL Server v6.5 or some such. But I digress... Anyway, I pointed out a couple useful sites where you could get some good scripts that would take care of preventative maintenance on your SQL Server, such as index defragmentation, updating statistics, and so forth. One of the script kits came directly from Microsoft's internal database management team. But, alas, they haven't published any updates in quite a while. On the other hand, the other set of scripts came from Ola Hallengren, who has done a great job keeping his scripts up to date. Recently, Ola added support for updating column statistics, both in a generalized update and also updates for only those columns whose statistics have been modified. He's added some other goodies to the latest release, which you can read about here, http://ola.hallengren.com/Versions.html for all details. In addition, I'd like to remind you of the white paper I wrote a while back called Automating DBA Processes, which covers many aspects of database automation and cherry picks some of the best practices from many different thought leaders, such as Ola, Michelle Ufford (blog | @sqlfool) who will be speaking at the 24HOP soon, and Allen White (blog | twitter).

2009: The Year in List Form

KKline — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 18:53:00 GMT

Before I jump onto the Goals and Themeword meme started by my buddy, Thomas LaRock (blog | twitter), I decided I'd spend a few minutes looking back on both the year 2009. (From a personal standpoint, the 00's were my most difficult decade yet. Major problems of every stripe beset me on all sides and with alarming frequency throughout the decade. I was all "Good Riddance" and "Don't let the door hit y'ass on the way out, 2009!" as the ball dropped in Times Square.)

Rather than spend a lot of time cooking up my own top 10 lists, I reckoned (that's Southern for "thought", btw) I'd recap a few others top X lists that are in the ballpark of my own personal opinion. I couldn't resist putting together my own list at the end, which I'd love to hear your thoughts on. In addition, I want to hear about your Top 10 (or 5 or 3) for 2009!

Their Lists

Time Magazine's list of Top 10 of Everything 2009 was a pretty good recap for the year on big ol' cultural touch points like movies and music. I found at least one thing to agree with in each of their pop culture lists: movies - The Hurt Locker - check; TV shows - my personal favorite for its brilliant cohesive multiyear storyline and excellent character studies, Lost - check; album - I and Love and You by the Avett Brothers - check; books (sigh - if only I had more time) included the wonderful The Age of Wonders by Richard Holmes.

Lifehacker's Top 5 Hive Topics of 2009 is a very interesting list covering lots of topics and pointing out a lot of interesting tools that I hadn't encountered before. My personal favorite among them was the Top 5 Alternative File Copiers, since the Windows Explorer copy feature reminds me of hungrily awaiting my food in the microwave and just as the counter gets to the T-10 countdown, it goes back up to 30, then down to 8, then back up to 42, then down to 14.

I'm not sure if they meant to be funny but Digg's Top 10 Most Popular Stories of 2009 is hilarious, much in the same way that Brent Ozar (blog | twitter) and I were when we put on an unintentionally hilarious performance at the PASS 2009 Summit Quiz bowl. Go ahead - ask Colin Stasiuk (blog | twitter) what he thought of our performance...

Impressed by Our Quiz Bowl Performance?

Speaking of unintentionally funny, have you seen Yahoo's Top 10 Searches of 2009? Evidently, the median Internet user (at least from their metrics) is hormone-laden, teenage redneck with a thing for fast cars (Nascar), Hollywood hotties (Megan Fox), and an unassailable but secret love for Mormon-influenced Vampires (Twilight).

My List

I usually try to blog at least once per week and, when I can, even more. I still have this deep down urge to post lots of small blog posts of just a couple paragraphs. But for some reason, I always seem to come out with these big ol' epistles. Despite my verbosity, y'all still read what I write and for that I'm very thankful. Over the last year, these were my top ten blog posts according to your interest:

Best of the [SQL Server] Blogs and its sister post Great Blogs from the Microsoft SQL Server Teams, also my number one spam generators. Ever spammer on the planet seems to want their comment appended here.
Microsoft Resources Too Good Not to Share, which I can't honestly remember if they were any good or not. But I bet they were.
Are We There Yet, Mom? in which I flashback to my childhood road trip experiences when considering Microsoft's overall product strategy.
Does the Down Economy Have an Impact on Your Job, cuz it sure punched mine in the mouth.
Why Do I Keep Seeing This Mistake, in which I learn that "Hello World" type applications can lead to massive misunderstandings.
Microsoft [Corporate] Marketing Throws SQL Server Under the Bus. We can't get no respect, not even from corporate HQ.
Looking for Good DMV Database Admin Queries, where you can find just about every good DMV query ever written except those other really good ones that are posted here in the comments.
Old Performance Recommendations Die Hard, and when I saw "die hard" I don't mean like Bruce Willis.
Things You Know Now, a semi-successful meme I started where I asked participants to tells us about stuff they'd do differently if they knew it way back in the day.
Understanding SQLIOSim Output, because no one seems to fully understand this tool, including me.

I excluded a few posts that were numerically in the top ten because, well, they're my blog posts and I didn't want them in the top ten. So there! But those that I excluded were things like reposting an interview done by another blogger or maybe a product or book that I plugged for some reason or an other.

I hope you've enjoyed my blogging and found it valuable. Tomorrow, I'm jumping on the themeword and goals meme. In fact, I'm crashin' the party because none of my peeps called on me. [pout]

Be well!

-Kevin

Twitter @KEKline

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More SQL Server Automation Scripts

KKline — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 20:12:00 GMT

If you've read SQL Server Magazine, then you know that I write a monthly column about free SQL Server tools called Tool Time. I recently wrote about a set of automation scripts from Microsoft's internal MIS group that automates all sorts of regular tasks they perform on their SQL Server's.

Today, I'd like to share some more scripts brought to my attention by Ola Hallengren. Ola wrote some great scripts for backup, integrity check and index optimization that add to what Microsoft had written. I think that it in some areas has some advantages over Microsoft's solution.

Ola's index optimization stored procedure rebuilds indexes online or offline, index reorganization, statistics update, index reorganization and statistics update or nothing based on fragmentation level and lob existence. This solution was made about 6 months ago and it has been running in a large production environment since then. You can see them at:

Ola's homepage - http://ola.hallengren.com
Release notes - http://ola.hallengren.com/Versions.html
Documentation - http://ola.hallengren.com/Documentation.html
Scripts - http://ola.hallengren.com/scripts/MaintenanceSolution.sql

Ola has put a lot of time in this and would really appreciate your feedback. You can see more of his work on other topics at http://ola.hallengren.com.

I'd love to hear about any other database automation scripts you may have written. Be sure to let me know so I can share them with the community.

Enjoy!

-Kevin