In tracking down poorly performing queries for clients I often encounter the query text in a trace file I've captured, but don't know the source of the query. I've found that many of the poorest performing queries are those written into the reports the business users need to make their decisions. If I can't figure out where they came from, ...

One of the most important things you can do as a DBA is to keep tabs on the errors reported in the error log, but there's a lot of information there and sometimes it's hard to find the 'good stuff'. You can open the errorlog file directly in a text editor and search for errors but that gets tedious, and string searches generally return just the ...

Thanks to everyone who came out for the session today.  It was a lot of fun and I hope you had a great experience as well.  I've attached the demo scripts and slide deck to this post, and I look forward to seeing you in November at the PASS Summit! Allen

There's so much to learn to be effective with SQL Server, and you have an opportunity to immerse yourselves in 24 hours of free technical training this week from PASS, via the 24 Hours of PASS event. I'll be presenting an introductory session on PowerShell called PowerShell 101 for the SQL Server DBA. Here's the abstract: The more you have to ...

So I closed an application that runs when Windows starts up, but it doesn’t have a Start Menu entry, and I was trying to find it. Ok, I could’ve run regedit.exe, navigated through the tree and found the list of things that run when Windows starts up, but I thought I’d use PowerShell instead. PowerShell presents the registry as if it’s a volume ...

As I drove to Dallas for this year's SQL Rally conference (yes, I like to drive) I got a call asking if I could step in for another presenter who had to cancel at the last minute.  Life happens, and it's best to be flexible, and I said sure, I can do that. Which presentation would you like me to do? (I'd submitted a few presentations, so it ...

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 ...

We’ve all been waiting several years for this, and finally it’s here! Coinciding (approximately) with the release of SQL Server 2012, a new Feature Pack has appeared on the Microsoft web site that adds a full suite of PowerShell cmdlets for DDL and other functions. This means that, at last, we can do things like fully-featured SQL deployment ...

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

What is TEC? The Expert's Conference (TEC) is a multi-day event featuring five co-located Microsoft educational conferences at the San Diego Marriott Marquis & Marina April 29-May 2. It's pretty - see! The event includes advanced 400-level training on Microsoft Directory & Identity (including Active Directory), Exchange Server, ...