SQL Saturday #143 - Washington, DC

Last week, I attended my very first SQL Saturday event in Washington, DC.  Although I don't live anywhere near Washington,...

T-SQL Terminator

You may have noticed in my code examples, I always include a semicolon ";" at the end of my TSQL statements. ...

Get Performance Counters from within SQL Server

I think most DBAs know that you can use the Windows Performance Monitor to capture performance metrics for your SQL...

How to Use xp_delete_file to Purge Old Backup Files

Continuing on my recent trend of using undocumented stored procedures, this week I thought we can cover using xp_delete_file to...

How to Use xp_dirtree to List All Files in a Folder

UPDATED -- Dec 31, 2012 -- Be sure to read Part 2 of this post discussing xp_dirtree.

Last week I blogged about how...

Dynamically Create a Folder for Each Database

If you're a DBA like me then you're probably pretty detail-oriented and like to keep things very organized.  For example,...

Customize the Management Studio Toolbar

Management Studio is great tool with almost everything you need right at your fingertips.  Notice I said "almost".  I like...

Capture Index Usage Statistics for Better Analysis

Starting with SQL Server 2005, Microsoft introduced Dynamic Management Views to help DBAs see what's going inside of SQL Server....

Which SQL Instance is Killing Your CPU?

You have 5 instances running.  How do you know which one is killing your CPU?

As you can see from Windows...

Grant Execute Permission on All Stored Procedures

Right out of the box, SQL Server makes it pretty easy to grant SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE to all...