New White Paper: SQL Server Extended Events and Notifications

KKline — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:13:00 GMT

SQL Server comes with a wide array of tools for monitoring your environment. There are logs and traces that provide information when errors occur, but these are often used passively to react to events that have already occurred. There's PerfMon, and Profiler, and loads of Dynamic Management Views to check. But where to look?

As database administrators (DBA), we need to monitor our environments proactively and create solutions as issues arise. In this white paper, we will look at a couple technologies – event notifications and extended events – that can help you achieve these goals. With these two features, we’ll look at the error log and deadlocks, and demonstrate how you can get relevant information delivered as it occurs. We’ll also look at ways that run-time errors can be captured and used to help reduce the amount of time required to investigate issues.

This white paper, written by SQL Server MVP Jason Strate (blog | twitter), is a free download but requires a registration. Download the Extended Events white paper here.

And, as always, I enjoy your feedback. Thanks!

-Kev

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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).

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New White Paper: SQL Server Extended Events and Notifications

Database Maintenance Scripting Done Right