Have you ever wanted to dump all the SSIS packages stored in msdb out to files? Of course you have, who wouldn’t? Right? Well, at least one person does because this was the subject of a thread (save all ssis packages to file) on the SSIS forum earlier today. Some of you may have already figured out a way of doing this but for those that haven’t ...

Earlier today I was doing a little work using datadude/DBPro/Visual Studio Database Tools/pick your name and had a need to write a Powershell script that I think might be useful to other folks so I’m sharing it here. Often when you’re putting together database projects you will have a need for multiple .sqlcmdvars files – one for each environment ...

This is a very simple script - but it's one I run each morning. It searches the Windows System Event Log for an error condition. You can replace ''System'' here with ''Application'' or ''Security'', or any of the other logs that are created on your Windows Server. This is run at the server, since I have each server check itself and make a file of ...

Intro Of late I have been getting down and dirty with the Database Development tools in Visual Studio 2010. You may know this feature set by one of the plethora of other names it has had over recent years such as: Visual Studio Team System for Database Professionals DBPro Datadude For the rest of this post I’ll stick with the colloquial ...

I use Extended Properties on databases and their objects all the time. They are a great way to include information about the object – I use them for versioning the database, detailing what a column is used for and so on. They can be a little tricky to set, but it’s really not bad once you learn how.  Ken Simmons, a SQL Server MVP ...

I ran into an issue the other day where I couldn't set up some features in SQL Server 2008 because they ddon't support the use of Rules or Defaults. Let me explain a little more about that. In older versions of SQL Server, you could decalre a ''Rule'' or ''Default'' just like you do with a Table Constraint today. You would then ''bind'' these ...

The other day I blogged that the version of the SQL Server PowerShell provider (sqlps) follows the version of PowerShell. That’s all goodness, but it has appeared to cause an issue for PowerShell 2.0. the Get-Command PowerShell command-let returns an error (Object reference not set to an instance of an object) if you are using PowerShell 2.0 and ...

There may be some misunderstanding on how the PowerShell Provider for SQL Server works. I’ve written an article or two explaining that you can use PowerShell with SQL Server, without having the SQL Server 2008 (or higher) provider around. After all, PowerShell just uses .NET, and SQL Server “Server Management Objects” or SMO listen to that ...

SQL Server used to have  cool little tool that would let you track your licenses. Microsoft didn’t use it to limit your system or anything, it was just a place on the server where you could put that this system used this license key. I miss those days – we don’t track that any more, and I want to make sure I’m up to date on my licensing, so I ...

I read Jeffery Hicks’ article in this month’s Redmond Magazine on a new add-in for Windows PowerShell 2.0. It’s called the PowerShell Pack and it has a some great new features that I plan to put into place on my production systems as soon as I finished learning and testing them. You can download the pack here if you have PowerShell 2.0. I’m ...