Bennett Scharf (11/27/2012)
Hey Erin,This is great - especially the idea of baselining your configuration data!
On a related note, I log and analyze my performance counters through Performance Monitor, mainly because it's quick and easy to use it's built-in graphical tool. I'd be interested to know how you and others *quickly* graph stuff like performance counters when the data is stored in a SQL table.
Thanks again,
Bennett
If you just want to look at it yourself from time to time, maybe Excel will be enough. You can use the wizard (Data >> Get External Data >> From Other Sources >> From SQL Server) to query and import data into the sheet and use its graphing tools to present it nicely enough.
If you need a few others to see it too, you can host the data on a central database and the Excel file on a network share. You will need to make sure that the connection details in the Excel file absolutely reference the SQL Server (e.g. SERVERNAME\INSTANCENAME not .\INSTANCENAME).
If you need lots of other people to see it, regularly, Reporting Services might be your friend -- it is designed, after all, to present data, although it obviously more server-centric. But, if you need something a bit more custom, you might need to look at a bespoke app, in ASP.NET (or any other SQL Server/OLEDB/ODBC-capable language).
(Of course, the name/value storage database structure might not lend itself too well to graphing -- expect to have to create complex pivoting queries and/or views)