While looking through the new features and improvements in SQL Server 2008 Management Studio (SSMS) we found a potentially interesting one called Activity Monitor. Database developers and Database Administrators can use Activity Monitor to get a quick overview of an SQL Server 2008 system performance. Can you give us a detailed explanation of how we go about using Activity Monitor?  Read more...

This article describes a utility that allows you to identify what SQL statements are currently executing.  Read more...

How do I effectively find out if the Tempdb database is suffering from an allocation bottleneck? Should I create multiple TempDB files per core on this server to improve performance? How do I check this information programmatically?  Read more...

With SQL Server 2005 DMVs, we can easily find query performance statistics. Every DBA has a favorite script to find query performance stats. I also have one. But, are all the queries captured by the DMVs? In this tip I will walk through capturing some of this data and show what is capture and what is not captured by the DMVs.  Read more...

Should you buy or build a monitoring system for your SQL Server? Todays' guest editorial from Grant Fritchey talks about the resistance to recommendations that many people seem to have.  Read more...

Should you buy or build a monitoring system for your SQL Server? Todays' guest editorial from Grant Fritchey talks about the resistance to recommendations that many people seem to have.  Read more...

Should you buy or build a monitoring system for your SQL Server? Todays' guest editorial from Grant Fritchey talks about the resistance to recommendations that many people seem to have.  Read more...

Should you buy or build a monitoring system for your SQL Server? Todays' guest editorial from Grant Fritchey talks about the resistance to recommendations that many people seem to have.  Read more...

Rodney Landrum describes in his own unique style how he, as a working DBA, goes about troubleshooting problem queries, and investigating various types of locking and blocking problems. In the process, he passes on valuable tips learned from practical, and sometimes stressful, experience.  Read more...

In this, the third of the four part series on persisting the rowset results from the indexing Dynamic Management Views cached in temporary internal SQL Server structures we will explore what is required to store the missing index-related metadata.  Read more...

You have about 100 SQL Servers installed in your production environment. You have performance problems on few of the servers, but they happen during the time when you are not watching the servers. So, how can you automate performance statistics collection on all the servers around the clock so we have the statistics for 24/7/365.  Read more...

Quite frequently I find myself in situation where I need to get detailed information on performance monitor counters. For example I need to determine which processes are consuming all CPU at certain times.  Read more...

An article sponsored by SQL Sentry that compares how the Data Collector in SQL Server 2008 and SQL Sentry's Performance Advisor can be used with your SQL Server. Written by MVP Aaron Bertrand.  Read more...

This article describes a utility that allows you to identify what SQL statements are currently executing.  Read more...

Some reasons for the slow-running of database applications aren't obvious. Occasionally, even the profiler won't tell you enough to remedy a problem, especially when a SQL Statement is being forced to wait. Now, in SQL Server 2008, come XEvents, which allow you to look at those waits that are slowing your SQL Statements. Mario Broodbakker continues his series about SQL Server Wait Events  Read more...

This article presents an excerpt from the book, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services Step by Step, by Stacia Misner and Hitachi Consulting. Learn how to monitor reporting services by implementing an execution logging database and reviewing reports that query that database.  Read more...

Database developers need to write stored procedures which are not only fully functional, but also which perform acceptably. This article concentrates on some of the counters used to measure performance and analyses methods of capturing these counters.  Read more...

SQL Server MVP Kevin Kline focuses on PerfMon counters for SQL Server and shares best practices for tracking IO intensive access methods and buffer manager activity.  Read more...

This article looks at the new Management Data Warehouse (MDW) that is incorporated into SQL Server 2008. This warehouse is performance analysis and capacity planning tool for DBAs. This article will discuss the basic architecture of the MDW and how to set it up using a wizard.  Read more...

Learn how to use SQL Server PerfMon counters to track Windows memory. SQL Server MVP Kevin Kline explains the maximum numbers to watch for when using PerfMon memory counters.  Read more...