If we are trying to detect activity in a "unused" DB then the overhead of a trace or extended event should not be of concern.
I'd be more worried about...

Take a look at http://www.aquafold.com/aquadatastudio.  It makes a decent fist of being a DB IDE for multiple DB platforms.  I think SSMS needs to give a nod to other platforms...

Nice article.  We used traces on DBs we believed to be inactive.  We worried about mystery monthly processes so needed a long running trace to be certain we identified this.

Where there is a dev box of course they do but without a means to simulate full production loads it's extremely difficult to gain full measure of the production issues. ...

I use AWS RedShift and HP Vertica quite a lot. I have developer privileges not super user privileges and this has thrown out some interesting conundrums.
The system tables and...

At the QCON 2014 conference there was a very senior guy who said that he detested the term best practice because it implies that it's as good as it's going...

Really good (easy to use) music notation/sequencing software, high end sound card and interfaces to my digital piano.  Plus a tutor/mentor to teach me to use it properly.

You get what you bonus for.  It is very hard to design any benefit or incentive scheme that achieves its aim without highly undesirable consequences.
An example would be Payment...

I think SQL Server on Linux will present Red-Gate with some interesting challenges.  With the shift to Linux servers comes the rise of the Macbook as the developer hardware of...

I think I've been lucky in being a developer before choosing the DBA route.  The debate about whether something belonged in the DB or app never occurred because I was...