If you don't subscribe to SQL Server Magazine (or didn't pick up the specific issue some other way), you've been missing out... you don't yet have the SQL Server 2008 System Views poster.  Well, lucky you, it is now available for download from Microsoft.  Now get out your $30,000 wide format color plotter and print that puppy up.  ...

I have been involved in several discussions over the past week involving getting more diagnostic information out of the DMVs in SQL Server 2008 and beyond. Yesterday, I asked for procedure recompiles to be tracked in the new sys.dm_exec_procedure_stats DMV: http://connect.microsoft.com/SQL/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=388218 Today, ...

sysdepends, sp_depends and sys.sql_dependencies Since my very first experience with SQL Server (version 6.5), I have used the system table sysdepends and the system stored procedure sp_depends to track dependency information in my databases.  The purpose of tracking dependency information is to allow me to determine which objects are ...

A frequently asked question that surfaced again today is, ''how do I see when my data has been accessed last?''  SQL Server does not track this information for you.  SELECT triggers still do not exist.  Third party tools are expensive and can incur unexpected overhead.  And people continue to be reluctant or unable to constrain ...

Yesterday Denis Gobo told you about 33 new DMVs in SQL Server 2008; previously, I had noticed that a few of the existing DMVs from 2005 had changed slightly.  So, Denis sparked my curiosity, and I ran the following query on a recent build of SQL Server 2008, which had a linked server pointing to SQL Server 2005: SELECT s1.vn, s1.cn ...