I once talked about the DBA team building about 3 years ago, now when I look back, I still believe my original idea is a good start, however, I feel it is not enough, so I’d like to explore some other areas for DBA team building, that is how to… Read more

I once wrote a post to find the largest tables in a database, and now after studying PowerShell, I feel it can be written in a more concise and efficient way.

The following script is to find the largest 3 tables in row count in AdventureWorks

$srv = Get-SQLServer –sqlserver… Read more

I feel somehow sad today (Aug 31, 2011) to see one of my colleagues “laid-off”. I put quotation mark around “laid-off” because he is a contractor (same as myself), so it is not, strictly speaking, the real laid-off, however, this “laid-off” was a bit unexpected as the project we are… Read more

As a DBA, we have a lot to work on and also we have a lot to learn about. The asset that makes us as a DBA is our professional knowledge and skills, and as such, from time to time, we need to review our knowledge/skill portfolio and how we… Read more

One of interesting tasks I once had is to check the # of code lines for all user stored procedures (SPs) in a user database.

I once developed a pure yet lengthy t-sql solution by counting the new line ASCII code (i.e. char(0×13) + char(0×10) ).

However, with PowerShell and… Read more

In my company, every two years, we have a tradition to collectively ponder at the technology road map for the next two years, this may include what OS / server products / development tools / management tools / hardware architecture we will adopt, and this road map may also include… Read more

For almost all sql backup jobs, we want to have a step to delete old backup files older than a specified time.

Usually there are two ways, one is to use Maintenance Plan or we create our own “cleaning” step using various ways. I am not a big fan of… Read more

From time to time, I need to find the largest tables in terms of rows / used space / total space etc. I originally used sp_spaceused, a temp table and a cursor (or sp_MSForEachTable) and put them into a stored procedure to get the information I need.

But now as… Read more

One of my test servers, due to the unexpected growth of a user db, the local drive is used up, and because the original default trace was on the same local drive,  the default trace stopped. After cleanup the local drive to have sufficient free space, I want to… Read more

 Recently quite a few MVPs (here, here and here ) are handling out MSDN Ultimate subscriptions in the community. What interests me most is that most of them require the receivers will make a good use of the subscription, esp by contributing to the IT community. I… Read more

This is an old topic, and there have been quite a few blogs (and following comments) that illustrate how to quickly find the information, mainly by checking tempdb creation time (http://www.sqlservercentral.com/blogs/sqldbauk/archive/2010/04/29/when-was-sql-server-last-restarted_3F00_.aspx) and check session_id=1 information (http://www.sqlservercentral.com/blogs/joewebb/archive/2010/04/28/how-to-tell-when-sql-server-started_3F00_.aspx). However, as a DBA, one of the common post-event reports I have to… Read more

In case you are considering to apply SQL Server SP3 CU5 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972511) to your system, I'd like to point out one issue / bug we found with CU5.

Finding: SQL Server 2K5 SP3 CU5 will damage your replication if the following two conditions are met in the replication framework

1.… Read more

I was working on a table partition management task yesterday. The table is partitioned on a datetime column, and each partition has one and only one dedicated filegroup, and each filegroup is dedicated to one and only one partition and contains only one file in the filegroup.

After I cleaned… Read more

I have been reading blogs from various sources, such as blogs on SSC, and on sqlblog.com etc. However on all these blog sites, I find that there is no collective efforts (from the blog hosting site) to promote a common brand for the site, instead, individual blogger only plays his/her… Read more

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I always consider taking seminars and technical conferences as a key component in my DBA education framework

Last week (Jan 21 to 22, 2008), I attended MS TechDays Canada 2008 in Vancouver, BC. Though the quality of the sessions is above the usual business-promotion-focused sessions, I still feel the quality… Read more

I have tried hard to google a SQL query to find what objects exist in a specific filegroup, but in the end, I am not satisified with my findings.

I know there is an undocumented SP called sp_ObjectFileGroup, but I do not know how useful this is. My issue is… Read more

There is a saying that "The important is often not urgent and the urgent not important". I could not agree more when I think of my DBA work. Most of the time, we DBAs are driven by daily routine job and some "accidents" from time to time. We seldom think about what… Read more

With each new release of SQL Server version, there is something new to learn. In SQL Server 6.5 days, it seems I knew almost everything about SQL Server with decent depth. But in SQL Server 2005, I feel there are so many things I do not know or know very… Read more

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