I'm nearing the end of a SQL Server upgrade project, migrating from SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 2008 R2. The company uses SQL Server Agent to run about 150 jobs which execute DTS packages to do the work of moving data around. Now, there are any number of ways to move these jobs from one server to the other, but I wanted to be able to exclude ...

Yesterday I delivered a session on maintaining a system inventory and gathering performance data with PowerShell.  The session went well and I had great questions and I'd like to thank everyone who attended the session.  I've attached the slides and demo scripts from the session for your use. Allen

There's a lot of excitement in the SQL Server world right now, with the RTM (Release to Manufacturing) release of SQL Server 2012, and the availability of SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT). My personal speaking schedule has exploded as well. Just this past Saturday I presented a session called Gather SQL Server Performance Data with PowerShell. There ...

In yesterday's post I showed you how I set up performance data gathering in an environment where I can't directly update my analysis database. Today I'll show you how I load that data into SQL Server for the analysis. First, I create tables to contain the performance counters in my analysis database. Here's what they look like: CREATE TABLE ...

In a session yesterday I was reminded of the power of a tool on every server, Logman, to manage performance data gathering. It's a pretty amazing tool, and I'm starting to get to know how much more it can do than I've even considered, but here's a simple example of what I've done so far. First things first, I'm going to leverage the SMO Server ...

In my last blog post I walked through a way to grab the duration from the EnumHistory method of the JobServer/Job object. As I worked through getting a solution in place for a client I found that the duration calculation was only part of the problem. First, when EnumHistory() is invoked, it runs the sp_help_jobhistory stored procedure. You can ...

Lately I've been very busy with client work, and one of my projects is to capture the history for SQL Agent jobs across all their servers so they can evaluate when to schedule jobs. (Yes, I know SQL Sentry has an excellent product for this, but right now there are budget constraints.) Anyway, I can do this in PowerShell with SMO. Once you ...

After a week of data recovery (see my blog post here) and travel via train with no internet access, I've finally been able to get my presentation materials together from the Training Day and two regular sessions I did at SQL Bits #9 in Liverpool last week.  I've uploaded the materials here for the training day.  If you were in the room ...

Other than changing planes once at Heathrow Airport, I've never been to England, so I'm getting really excited about traveling there next week for SQLBits 9 - Query across the Mersey! My wife and I will be spending a couple of days in London first, and since I'm a descendant of the Howard family from the Tudor period, I'm most interested in ...

Mark Freeman (@m60freeman) posted a question on Twitter using the #sqlhelp hashtag today, asking ''Does anyone have a script to assign db_backupoperator for all databases in an instance to a login?'' I looked and didn't really have anything that fit, but felt it'd be useful to understand the SMO process to create it. Note: one glaring hole I've ...