Skip to content

SQL Server

SQL Data Partners – SQL Server Podcast

I am excited to announce that I have joined Carlos Chacon to become the co-host of the SQL Data Partners – SQL Server podcast. The weekly show has just reached 50 episodes, and Carlos has asked me to join him as co-host on the podcast.

In episode 50 Carlos introduces me as the co-host, the Corruption Compañero or the West Coast Compañero. I think I like the Corruption Compañero best. If you are a listener of the podcast you will recognize the word Compañero as companion, as in SQL Compañero or SQL companion. It’s a catchy term, and I am excited to be the Corruption Compañero on the podcast.

Read More »SQL Data Partners – SQL Server Podcast

Database Health Monitor Version 2.4 Released

If you haven’t tried Database Health Monitor Version 2.4 might be a good time to try it out. Five and a half years of my development time has gone into Database Health monitor, and hopefully the features will show it.

Star_of_life

Here is what people have to say about Database Health Monitor.

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!

I personally used Database Health Monitor to manage over 100 instances of SQL Server, and it speeds up many of the daily maintenance checks.

Version 2.4 Release Notes

Over the last several months I have added several new features, and many bug fixes. Here are some of the features and fixes included in this update.

Read More »Database Health Monitor Version 2.4 Released

Updating SQL Server Statistics

Updating SQL Server statistics may not be as obvious as it may sound.

IUpdating SQL Server Statisticsmagine this scenario. I invite you over for dinner and a game of Scrabble. After dinner, I start to do the dishes, while you set up the game. Rather than just doing the dishes that are dirty from our dinner, I decide to take all the dishes from the shelves, and drawers in my kitchen. I create a gigantic pile of all of the dishes, both clean and dirty on the kitchen counter. You get the game setup, and we start playing the game. Between turns, I jump back into the kitchen, and wash a few dishes, then on my turn, I jump back into the game and play my turn, then back to the kitchen again. During the game you are constantly waiting for me to jump back into the game to make my move. You could see how long this would draw out the game with me washing all the dishes, even the ones that were already clean. 4 hours later, I finally finish the dishes, and shortly thereafter we finish the game. It is unlikely, even if you love to play Scrabble that you would ever return to my house for dinner and a game again. Tomorrow night, when I have dinner with my family, I do the same thing, and every night after dinner I wash all the dishes in the kitchen, even the clean ones. You can see how wasteful this sounds, and perhaps some people would even label me as OCD or something worse in this scenario.

Although this is obviously the wrong way to do things, often times we end up doing the equivalent of this in our SQL Server maintenance tasks.

Read More »Updating SQL Server Statistics

Is enabling xp_cmdshell a security risk?

After listening to an interview of Sean McCown (twitter) and some lively discussion on xp_cmdshell, I decided it would be a worthy enough discussion to create a blog post. At a minimum it might stir up some opinions.

There are many varying opinions out there, including some really good opinions that applied to SQL Server 2000, but don’t really apply any more.

Read More »Is enabling xp_cmdshell a security risk?