Custom Metrics for Monitoring Database Mirroring

SQL Monitor comes with plenty of metrics, but there are always going to be things that you want to measure that can't be done 'out of the box'. Taking database mirroring as an example, Grant shows that custom metrics can be used to monitor and alert whatever aspect of SQL Server or database that you need.

Using FULL JOINs to Compare Datasets

This article describes a technique of using FULL JOINs to compare two datasets within a numerical tolerance.

SQL Server Central Webinar Series #23: Safeguard your data offsite with SQL Backup Pro

You may already have a great backup and recovery plan. However, if something were to happen to your databases and you needed to restore from your backups, you’d want to be in control, with the ability to access a copy of those backups quickly, restoring them with minimal downtime and minimal fuss.

In this session Grant Fritchey, SQL Server MVP, will discuss the key reasons why you need to have offsite backups, and the advantages of hosted storage. He’ll address some of the fears surrounding cloud backups, and show how offsite backup is made quick and easy with the new ‘backup to hosted storage’ features in SQL Backup Pro 7.3.

Stay Backed Up by Monitoring Your Backup Process

Based on a linked server setup, you can check your SQL Server backups on multiple instances.

Diagnosing Common Database Ails

When a database starts showing signs of an illness, it's up to the DBA to get to the root of the problem, fast. Kat Hicks takes a look at the most common causes of database troubles, free tools that can help, and the misconceptions that get in the way.

Using Regular Expressions to Convert PL/SQL code to T-SQL

When converting Oracle PL/SQL to T-SQL, there are a number of ways to do this, but this article shows us how this can be done with regular expressions in Management Studio.

Comparison of Queries Written in T-SQL and SQL Server MDX

Beginning to learn and comprehend SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) MDX queries can be difficult after one has spent years writing queries in T-SQL. When trying to write SQL Server MDX queries, it's worth considering "How would I write this query in T-SQL?"

SQL 2000 DBA Toolkit Part 1

SQL Server 2005 builds some great encryption tools into the product, but what if you are stuck with SQL Server 2000? SQL Server expert Michael Coles brings us the first part of a series along with a free toolkit to manage encryption and keys.

Disaster Recovery in the Enterprise – Paying the Price to Avoid Extra Costs

Data Protection and Disaster Recovery (DR) are IT tasks that seldom get the same level of attention as development… until disaster strikes. Only if planning is adequate can an organisation be resilient in the face of unexpected problems. There are several steps that are needed to achieve an adequate DR process and the ability to restore business operations after a disaster.

Configure SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups Read-Only Routing using PowerShell

With SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups, you can configure read-only routing and to automatically redirect the read-only workloads to a secondary replica after a failover. Can this be done using Windows PowerShell?