Featured Article(s)
What do you execute once you have connected to your server with DAC?
If your server is having problems and you can’t even connect to it what do you do? The DAC – Dedicated Administrators Connection tool is what you need. It comes with SQL 2005 and SQL 2008 and allow you to connect (with limited abilities) to your troubled server. But once you are connect via DAC what would you look for. This article shows my approach to this question.
Recent Microsoft Download Issues – SQL Server is Root Cause?
I was surprised to learn about Microsoft’s recent issues with SQL Server as a back-end component of the downloads that were having issues last week. Kevin Kline talks about it a bit here on his blog (and some good comments below the blog entry).
The thing that I keep coming back to though is the whole concept of automating this type of maintenance. I have wondered several times why some of these things aren’t completely automated – I mean – really. A lot of time is spent on wizards and finessing the admin UI in Management Studio. Heck, we even have DMVs that tell us what’s not performing right, or where indexes are not used or where indexes would be helpful…
Why aren’t some of these things just handled? Don’t want to completely automate? Fine. How about an email or even just a log entry or alert that says "Hey, DBA, the indexes – they need help!" I think it would be a logical step and should be part of the core system. I can’t imagine a case where a DBA would sit cursing at the system, banging his fist on the table because the system performance increased.
What am I missing here? Had the system notified or just taken care of the issue, the downloads and other functionality wouldn’t have been impaired – and we wouldn’t even really be talking about this whole issue.
I do think the transparency of acknowledging the issue is great. I think there will be whitepapers and articles forthcoming, also great. I just have to wonder when it’ll lead to SQL Server adding some of these clear automation capabilities.
vConference – Second Chance!
By popular request, next Weds, Thurs and Friday we’ll be re-broadcasting the SQL Server, Business Intelligence, SharePoint and .NET Developers vConferences. You can get your ticket now and you’ll be all set – just head to the conference site and get your tickets and we’ll see you at the conference next week. You’ll have full access immediately to the sessions on-demand and you’ll also have access to the scheduled sessions for next week. You’ll have on-demand access for 30 days, and you can take advantage of some great SSWUG memberships and other goodies, let alone seeing what others are raving about with the SSWUG VC (Twitter chatter is here). Find out why SO many people tell us they won’t be going to other conferences and paying for travel, hotel, etc. for a very long time. You’ll get to see what all the noise is about and attend ALL of the excellent sessions.
Get registered here for instant access, and we’ll see you May 13, 14 and 15 starting at 9:00a Pacific.
Featured White Paper(s)
10 Things you can’t do with LiteSpeed
HyperBac’s uniqueness, innovativeness and differentiators vs all other third party compression utilities is described in this… (read more)