Webcast Wednesday – Register ASAP
SQL Server 2005 Tuning Tools and Approaches
We’ll look into the tools and techniques you have available to you in SQL Server 2005 for investigating performance issues, understanding what your server is doing and how you can use this information to tune your system. From Performance Monitor to watching queries that are executing we’ll show you some of the tools at your disposal for diagnosing server issues of performance and possible tuning targets.
> Register Now
> Live date: 6/11/2008 at 12:00pm Noon Pacific
Great New Tool
Our friends at SQL Sentry have released a brand new tool to monitor performance on your servers and to point out what you need to know about optimization, things that are happening and their impact on your system. If you have a few minutes, you really need to take a look at their information on their web site about the new release. The graphics, capabilities and features are downright cool. They’re at TechEd talking about the new tool and showing off how much information it tracks – from real-time and historical comparison performance metrics to worst performing queries and automated tracing, check out Performance Advisor. Get more information here at their site (including a download for the trial version).
Do You Manage Security – Access Rights – At SQL Server, or the Application?
I read a great article about "Entitlement-" based management of profiles and access to information in Network World (link). The article is about Cigna and their quest for identity and access management. As you read the article, see if you come to the same conclusion that I am, that the security is being enforced largely at the application level, not the SQL Server. Granted, application-based rights are likely easier to manage, and they do talk about examples of how tough it would be with roles in SQL Server to manage granular access rights, but it makes me wonder, perhaps out of my own ignorance of the details about how this really works, but…
If you enforce this type of access control – what happens to your SQL Server roles and responsibilities and how *could* you manage this type of access at your SQL Server, at least without going crazy? They’re talking about the holy grail of security – role-based security that knows how information will be used and roles that are able to travel with you and change to your real needs as you do different things around the company. It sounds good, but ironically, I searched on this type of security and came up with several other articles, about Cigna, talking about other, still different approaches. I had to scratch my head a bit and wonder why this issue hasn’t truly been solved in a meaningful way.
Yes, I realize that’s SO much easier said than done. It’s a huge task to truly manage security for a large organization, even just keeping track of employee turnover and movement in the organization. Add to that the desire to keep track of access based on usage and current job responsibilities and projects and you get, well, a whole bunch of work.
How do you address this today? Do you expect the applications to solve the issues, embed the access there alone and lock down your SQL Server direct access points? Do you have home-grown tools to help you manage things? Do you use third party tools?
Let me know how you approach it.
SQL Server Weekly Show Available
The latest SQL Server show is live – and this week we have Bill Gates on the show. From TechEd, he talks about OSLO and Microsoft’s work there with building out the SOA pieces. Also, SQL Server 2008 Release Date Information, Accidental DBA: File Retention Periods. Also SharePoint Feedback, a Free MSDN Subscription Drawing and a LOT More.
Previous videos:
[Watch] SelectViews – Injection Recovery, Auto-Grow/Shrink, Good Enough Follow-Up
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