Database Health Monitor Version 2 Almost Done
Over the last 4 years I have been working on the Database Health Monitor. I am about a week away from releasing Version 2, which will finally be out of the beta process. In preparation for the release I am sharing some of the history of this program.
In 2011 version 1 was released as a set of my favorite monitoring queries that had been formatted and made available through SSRS. As people started to try it out in late 2011 and early 2012, I quickly discovered that the process for distributing shared queries via SSRS reports wasn’t very easy for the people trying to use them. Many people quickly discovered the difficulty of installing these reports. The set of reports looked something like this.
There were 10 reports that were linked from the top panel in the SSRS user interface. Although SSRS has some great features, it was challenging to switch database connections and monitor multiple servers.
In April of 2012 I gave up on the concept of using SSRS reports, and converted all the queries into a windows application and started enhancing the program. In September of 2012, I finally had the Beta 1 release of Database Health Reports out. It was a bit rough in the beginning, but from 2012 to 2015 through a series of almost 20 beta releases labeled names like Beta 1, Beta 8.2, Beta 10.1, and so forth I kept enhancing the program. Here is an early screenshot of somewhere around Beta 1 or Beta 2.