When SQL Server first introduced table and index partitioning in SQL 2005, it was the same version that all the metadata changed. So I decided that I could learn a lot about metadata and a lot about the organization and storage of partitions if I tried to write a query, and then a view, that included almost everything anyone would ever need to ...

I read this interesting article on using PowerShell and the registry, and thought I would modify his information a bit to list the SQL Server Instances on a box. The interesting thing about listing instances this was is that you can touch remote machines, find the instances when they are off and so on. Anyway, here’s the scriptlet I used to find ...

I'm working on a PowerShell script to show me the trending durations of my backup activities. The first thing I need is the data, so I looked at the Standard Reports in SQL Server Management Studio, and found a report that suited my needs, so I pulled out the script that it runs and modified it to this T-SQL Script. A few words here - you need ...

Whenever you want to know something about SQL Server’s configuration, whether that’s the Instance itself or a database, you have a few options. If you want to know “dynamic” data, such as how much memory or CPU is consumed or what a particular query is doing, you should be using the Dynamic Management Views (DMVs) that you can read about here: ...

In the past few blog posts I’ve showed you how to use several methods to track things in SQL Server. You can use the “tags” to the right of this post here at this site to list things like PowerShell, Performance Tuning and so on. Now that you’re armed with these tools, what should you track? Well, one of the items I track is time. I track the ...

Give us easier to read execution plansMichelle Ufford (@SQLFool) recently asked for help pinpointing the most expensive node(s) in a complicated execution plan.  Mladen Prajdic (@MladenPrajdic) has a useful workaround; he coded up a quick query to parse the showplan XML and order results by cost descending.  The Connect item that would ...

Ahhh, attention to detail. I misread Adam's T-SQL Tuesday rules and posted early. So here I go again :) This time the puzzle is how to add and update metadata via extended properties in the database with minimal headaches. SQL Server supports a great feature for storing database object metadata in the database in the form ...

As I mentioned last October, my PASS preconference seminar was a whole day about the transaction log. I told the attendees all kinds of things about the structure of the log, and told them about one of the best tools for exploring the structure: the command DBCC LOGINFO. This command is officially undocumented, but numerous bloggers have discussed ...

In my last post, I told you I'd post something technical before I left for Sweden. I almost made it. I wrote this in the Seattle airport, but wasn't able to post it until I got to Stockholm. For as long as I've been working with SQL Server, I've been hearing/reading questions about how to quickly get a count of the number of rows in a table. ...

I was looking at some metadata access today and this reminded me of when I talked about this topic two years ago at the PASS Summit in Denver.   Back in SQL Server 2000 most of the existing metadata was available to members of the public role, that is, to any login that can connect to the SQL Server instance. SQL Server 2005 promises ...