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RE: Getting A Clue About Your Databases

Learn_something_new_everyday — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 13:13:19 GMT

Thanks really helped out also big thanks to the godfather Bill Graziano

RE: Getting A Clue About Your Databases

Thomas LeBlanc — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 14:28:44 GMT

This procedure for space does not get space taken up by text fields???I am trying to see why Unused space on a table is large(40GB) through Disk Usage by Table in 2005 management Studio, but shrink database does not reclaim the space.God Bless,Thomas

RE: Getting A Clue About Your Databases

Anipaul — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 08:11:44 GMT

[quote][b]Megistal (1/9/2009)[/b][hr]Each time you post on the forum you get a point, could be the reason.Or it also could be to let a positive feedback for the author. Always feel good to know that you are doing something good even if it's only from few words.[/quote]Hi SanjayYou have asked a very good and genuine question.Thanks Megistal for your reply. Actually the second reason is correct. I am in writing business. I am certified as MCSE, MCSE+I, MCDBA, A+, CCNA. I know what effort it takes to write a technical document. It is not a 'copy paste job'. In this forum we are all SQL Server expert and we write about them. But in reality I know who writes for most of the 'famous' publishers in the world. The people who writes have little technical knowledge. They only get technical tips from the SMEs. But the end product in most cases are fantastic. I keenly watched Brian's videos. Their product is very good. We developed products for many parts of the world may be some of you have read those. A little appreciation is more effective then a long phrase. I even say 'Nice' when I still found errors in the article. I hope this may encourage the author. But if people thinks I am writing for 'points', then I will stop writing the same.By the way Gregor your article is really great.:)

RE: Getting A Clue About Your Databases

mishaluba — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:56:44 GMT

Super! I know I am going to use it someday. Thank you for all the work!

RE: Getting A Clue About Your Databases

OCTom — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:04:21 GMT

I too am asked with some regularity to access data I know nothing about. This code will be very helpful. Poking around is not only tedious but dangerous, too.Thanks for the code. Nicely done article.:)

RE: Getting A Clue About Your Databases

SQLBOT — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 11:38:23 GMT

Great idea, great Article. Keep 'em coming!5 stars!!~BOT

RE: Getting A Clue About Your Databases

Robert Hermsen — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 10:33:17 GMT

Good Article. One thing that we learned the hard way is that size doesn't always matter but often times volume does.SOmething to keep in mind. Also something that was taken into account with SQL Server 2005's canned reports. Very useful when troubleshooting issues as you can see your index and table usage stat from a hits perspective as well as size.

RE: Getting A Clue About Your Databases

noeld — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 10:13:09 GMT

Well done!

RE: Getting A Clue About Your Databases

Megistal — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 09:28:59 GMT

Each time you post on the forum you get a point, could be the reason.Or it also could be to let a positive feedback for the author. Always feel good to know that you are doing something good even if it's only from few words.

RE: Getting A Clue About Your Databases

SanjayAttray — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 09:24:26 GMT

[quote][b]Anirban Paul (1/9/2009)[/b][hr]Nice article...:)[/quote]Just curious ! ! !Why Anirban always had same response to all articles ?

RE: Getting A Clue About Your Databases

Anipaul — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 09:15:41 GMT

Nice article...:)

RE: Getting A Clue About Your Databases

Jesse McLain — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 09:11:45 GMT

Great article, I really like your approach. Working in ETL, I too often have to look at unfamiliar data, with guidance that is missing or unreliable, and it's great having a toolkit to examine such data. I wrote some code that will examine a table and determine possible natural keys for it: [url]http://www.sqlservercentral.com/scripts/T-SQL/62086/[/url]. You might want to consider adding it to your toolbelt. :-)

RE: Getting A Clue About Your Databases

GSquared — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 08:47:35 GMT

Nice, useful article. Good scripts. Thanks.

RE: Getting A Clue About Your Databases

Paul DB — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 08:16:22 GMT

Excellent article! :smooooth:Very impressive topic and easily readable!I look forward to your future articles!

RE: Getting A Clue About Your Databases

Otis-844278 — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 08:02:10 GMT

Hello. It must be noted that to perform the coding as presented, one must have 'Admin' rights to the database.

RE: Getting A Clue About Your Databases

cy-dba — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 07:52:32 GMT

Good article! There's nothing worse than trying to learn a database that has inherent encryption. :)

RE: Getting A Clue About Your Databases

Megistal — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 07:50:44 GMT

Yes I understand your points, there's not a solution that will fit for every problem.If I could have time I would expand your queries to add a weighting mechanism for some criteria (index, size, row count, update date etc) and let the dba choose how she/he what to configure it with default value to run out of the box.

RE: Getting A Clue About Your Databases

Gregor Borosa — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 07:27:26 GMT

Thanks for the suggestion, well worth of consideration! I guess I was so desperate looking at some databases I got recently, with nearly half of all tables empty or with max 1 row (really), so I focused on that metric. Combining few methods or trying various approaches is generally the way to go, I suppose.

RE: Getting A Clue About Your Databases

Megistal — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 07:10:41 GMT

First thanks for the scripts, they will surely help me on some occasions. (the one that get the dependencies instead of viewing them in the tiny box in the enterprise manager)What I would like to bring is when testing them out I used a database that I was very comfortable with and found that the information that I gathered was not very helpful for someone who would need to get a quick overview of that database type in particular.Not because the scripts does not work well but because the database work differently than the intended proposed solution and this is a scenario that could happen to others as well. I would like to propose you an additional approach.I believe, when the database has run a bit, is to get the statistics on index scan / seek etc as the primary way to get information about usefulness of a table instead of the table size / rows.In my case the most worthy tables only contains a few tenth of rows and looking at them from the index scan / seek reveal that information.What do you think of this additional approach?

RE: Getting A Clue About Your Databases

Gregor Borosa — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 06:42:35 GMT

Hi, well thanks :) I also tried to make it more "out of the box thing", so you'd just call one procedure and get some results. But each db is unique, so when you are exploring it, some parameters do have to be adjusted, if only to loose matching of table or column names etc.

RE: Getting A Clue About Your Databases

Ian Massi — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 06:30:21 GMT

What an excellent idea! I used to just poke around blind as well. Trying that on a database where the tables all had 4 character names (which were abbreviations from Russian) and the fields had 8 character names (again, from Russian), it's hard to find stuff. Something like this would have helped a lot. I may use these in the future since I happen to set up data transfers from different systems.

RE: Getting A Clue About Your Databases

SuperDBA-207096 — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 04:13:12 GMT

Good article, lots of useful info. I think this beats going in and poking around blindly!

Getting A Clue About Your Databases

Gregor Borosa — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:09:43 GMT

Comments posted to this topic are about the item [B]Getting A Clue About Your Databases[/B]