Mathom Solutions Blog-IT

I am always on the lookout for new tools and when they are free...you can't really complain!

Here are some new ones that are rather interesting so make sure and check them out!

SQL Server 2005 Express Profiler  is a free profiler for the Express Edition of SQL Server.

SQL Scripter is a data export and scripting utility for MS SQL Server.

SSMS Tool Pak  is an Add-In that gives the Management Studio some neat features such as CRUD generation and a whole host of neat little featuers that MS left out.

Sentrigo Hedgehog Standard is a free host-based software solution for real-time database monitoring, auditing and breach prevention.

Red-Gate Log Shipping Monitor is a free tool for collating and summarising SQL Server Log Shipping activity.

I also have a list of several others over at my main website so stop over there and see the full list. 

What are you talking about?  No, we aren't talking about looking inside the box.  But have you ever wanted to see what the internals of what SQL is doing.  Well Danny Gould did and this is a little utility he came up with to learn more about the internals and how data is physically allocated, organized and stored. 

Basically he has created a tool that takes all of the information from Shared Global Allocation Map (SGAM), Global Allocation Map (GAM), Index Allocation Map (IAM), Pages, Extents...and so on and creates a graphical depiction of your memory.   Then you can hover over that visualization and it will tell you what that section of memory is allocated to.  Then if you want you can click on it and it will open the Page Viewer which is a hex dump of the header information, data dump, offset table and row interpretation.  From there you can click again and drill down to the various elements that make up a row, including the internal structure and data values.

Check it out!  SQL Internals Viewer

The good folks just south of me in Kansas City at ClearData Consulting have created a new (beta) utility called ClearTrace. 

This tool imports SQL Server 2000 and 2005 trace (and profiler) files into SQL Server and displays summary performance information.  It is designed to provide the same performance summary as Read80Trace but in a graphical environment and for SQL Server 2005.  Remember this is beta but it pretty handy!

Another tool that I just saw but haven't had a chance to try yet is SQL DMVStats by Tom Davidson.

DMVstats 1.0 is an application that can collect, analyze and report on SQL Server 2005 DMV performance data. (Microsoft SQL Server 2005 provides Dynamic Management Views (DMVs) to expose valuable information that you can use for performance analysis.) DMVstats does not support Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and earlier versions.

Main Components The three main components of DMVstats are:

• DMV data collection
• DMV data warehouse repository
• Analysis and reporting.

Data collection is managed by SQL Agent jobs. The DMVstats data warehouse is called DMVstatsDB. Analysis and reporting is provided by means of Reporting Services reports.

Enjoy!

Idera has some free tools for the taking. 

SQLSafe Freeware Edition:  Idera’s SQLsafe Freeware Edition is free SQL Server database backup and recovery tool based on our award-winning SQLsafe product. SQLsafe Freeware Edition gives you a really high-performance backup and recovery engine, a scriptable interface (command line and XSP) and the ability to backup and compress any size and any number of databases, all for free.

SQLCheck:  SQLcheck is a free performance monitoring tool for SQL Server databases. It provides basic performance information about one SQL Server and runs as a secure screensaver or on demand.

SQLPermissions:  Idera’s SQLpermissions is a freeware tool for copying or moving logins and permissions settings across SQLservers. SQLpermissions automates the time consuming job of configuring logins and permissions on one server to match another by generating a customizable TSQL script to do this for you. SQLpermissions also offers the flexibility to move one login or a group of logins and apply permissions across all databases on the target server, or a single database.

I don't know about you but I am always on the look out for new tools...so it was nice to see two new ones come out. 

1.  RSS Reporter from xSQL software. This is a FREE (for a limited time) utility that creates RSS feeds for your jobs.  The RSS Reported is installed on a server running IIS – any user that has credentials to connect to certain SQL Server instances and view job information can create a profile on the RSS Reporter. The profile for each user contains a list of SQL Server instances, the authentication method, necessary credentials for connecting to each instance, and basic configuration settings. RSS Reporter connects to all the SQL Server instances in the profile and automatically generates a set of predefined RSS Feeds. The user can then subscribe to and read those feeds from any connected device.

2.  Kernel Recovery for SQL by Nucleus Data Recovery.  Kernel Recovery for SQL – data recovery software recovers data from the corrupt Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and 2005. The corrupt, damaged .mdf database files are effectively repaired and data is recovered from them.

Tables, Views, triggers, stored procedures are easily recovered and the damaged unique keys, primary keys and foreign keys are also repaired by Kernel Recovery for SQL - data recovery software. The sql recovery software effectively recovers the deleted records, partly damaged records which get saved in separate batch files. The database rebuilding batch is created automatically by Kernel recovery for SQL with which the database can be easily recreated and the user can again work on it.

I haven't had a chance to play with either one but they do offer some interesting solutions to problems.

I don't know about you but I have my own hard earned bag of tricks and scripts that I have developed over the years.  Each new SQL Server that I inherit gets these stored procedures, jobs, scripts put on them without fail.  However, I have always wondered what Microsoft does for their SQL Servers...what scripts?, what jobs?, how often?...and the like.  Well, I came across this the other day and my questions had been answered. 

Microsoft AITScripts.zip  (downloads a zip file from from the MS download site)

The scripts in here are from Microsoft and give you a glimpse into what they do on their own DB servers for transaction logs, backups, error log cycling, index defragmentation, and so on. 

As always, I would recommned looking through the code throughly, installing them on a test server first and playing with them there as I can't be responsible for their content and I am sure MS would say the same.   

For me I was suprised to see how similar things were.  We had a lot of the same jobs/tasks but for me it was more interesting to see their code and how they do things. 

Enjoy!

I am working on some documentation and samples for installing SQL Server 2005 silently and during some research I was digging from Whitepapers and found it difficult until I came across this site and they had compiled a good list of them. 

http://www.sqlskills.com/whitepapers.asp

Hope this helps you from having to dig too hard. 

Enjoy!

I have worked up a small article on how to install the SQL Performance Dashboard Reports.  Nothing fancy but it is help to know a bit about what you are installing and how to before you go doing it. 

 SQL 2005 Performance Dashboard Setup

This is a Word doc (about 415K) that includes screenshots and a fairly detailed explanation of what is happening. 

If you have questions or comments, please send me an email. 

Enjoy!

One of the fine folks from MS who is a customer support Escalation Engineer, Keith Elmore, has put together a set of Reporting Services reports that will help DBAs diagnose potential performance problems.  These reports were designed to leverage the new Custom Reports functionality in SQL Server Management Studio (Service Pack 2). 

You can get them here:

SQL Server 2005 Performance Dashboard Reports

If you follow this URL http://www.mathomsolutions.com/freestuff.asp?LangID=1, you will see a list of free SQL Server tools for DBA's.  Most of these tools I have used in some form or another and all are quite good.  This just proves that expensive does not always mean quality. 

Please support these individuals as they have given their time and effort to create a quality tool and make sure to respect their license agreement.  Sometimes, a note of encouragement or telling them how their application helped is worth more than money (although money is still nice).  However, most of the time a compliment paid from a fellow DBA, is worth tons!

If you would like your tool listed, just drop me an email with your name, a little bit about your application and where it can be found and I will get it added.