The check for Cost Threshold for Parallelism check has be added to the Database Health Monitor – Quick Scan Report. The Cost Threshold For Parallelism setting in SQL Server controls the level at which the query optimizer decides to have a query be processed using parallelism, or multiple threads. The default setting is 5 which may have made sense 15 years ago in …

SQL Server – Cost Threshold For Parallelism Read more »

With the updated release of Database Health Monitor yesterday, here is the updated list of documentation on the Quick Scan Report.  All of the following (plus a few more) are checked from the Database Health Monitor Quick Scan report. The Quick Scan report checks some common problems that can cause grief on your SQL Server database, and reports on those, …

Database Health Monitor Quick Scan Report Read more »

The check for MAX DEGREE OF PARALLELISM has be added to the Database Health Monitor – Quick Scan Report. The max degree of parallelism setting in SQL Server is used to control the maximum number parallel threads available to process your query. The default setting of 0 means use as many as possible. The problem with this default is that you …

SQL Server MAX DEGREE OF PARALLELISM Read more »

With over 7500 downloads worldwide to date, I have just released the next installment of the FREE Database Health Monitor application. Here what one person had to say about it “Excellent – It’s the first tool I open every morning to see what is going on in my production environment! Thanks for the great work!” Download today: Database Health Monitor …

Database Health Monitor – Version 2.3 Released Read more »

Today I released another beta release of SchemaDrift. Part of this release was some redesign of the main screen, as shown here. I had some great help from some of the beta testers, and there have been many bugs fixed and feature enhancements completed in the last week. Here is a list from the release notes: Feb 28, 2016 Release Notes …

Beta release 1.2 of SchemaDrift – the database schema comparison tool Read more »

SchemaDrift is a tool that I have created to compare the schema between two databases. It can also compare (and save) the schema to a directory in a file system. Point it to a directory in your source control system, and you are off and running with your database schema in source control.     Watch the video below to …

Sync your database with source control Read more »

The video shown here is entirely unsolicited feedback from a client that I had the opportunity of working with recently on a SQL Server performance assessment. Part of what I love about being in business for myself is being able to do what is needed to create happy customers. Thanks for the feedback Patrick! For this and other feedback on Stedman Solutions, visit …

Recommendation Read more »

This weekend I had some spare time, so I started coding on a new project on Friday night. This project is something that I intend to include in the next release of Database Health Monitor. THis project allows users to compare the database schema between two SQL Server databases. As you read this, consider two questions that I will ask …

SchemaDrift – Database Schema Differences – My Weekend Project Read more »

This last week I had the opportunity to do some work with SSRS, determining some stats on report usage. I ended up digging up some queries that I wrote a couple years ago against the ReportServer database, and thought they would be worthwhile to share, so here they are.  These have been tested against SQL Server 2008, and 2008R2 databases. …

SSRS Report Usage Queries Read more »