SQL Server Desired State Configuration

1 July 2020 - Bill Graziano

At one of my clients, I've seen the benefits of using tools like Puppet to push configurations to servers.  I've long tried to write idempotent configuration scripts for my servers.  Those are scripts that can be run multiple times without changing the end result.

Naming Linked Servers v2

28 April 2020 - Bill Graziano

I've always had a love-hate relationship with linked servers.  On one hand, they are very easy to use and query.  On the other they can be a pain to configure, secure, and performance tune.

I wrote about naming linked servers in 2011.  After living with

ClearTrace for Extended Events

7 July 2019 - Bill Graziano

I found the time to update ClearTrace to support Extended Events.  You can download ClearTrace for Extended Events from my corporate site.  A few notes about this build

• It's a very early release.  Everything seems to work for me and it passes all the tests.

PASS Summit Speaker Idol 2018: Part 1: The Lyrics & Video!

11 November 2018 - Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

HOLY COW!! I was once again selected to participate in Speaker Idol at PASS Summit, and I advanced to the final! Many thanks to PASS for providing the Speaker Idol sessions, and even more thanks to Denny Cherry for originating, arranging and hosting the event for all these years.

Running GO as a Windows Service

17 July 2018 - Bill Graziano

Checklist for successfully running a GO executable as a Windows service

Send SQL Server Extended Events to Logstash (ELK)

13 June 2018 - Bill Graziano

xelogstash is a great way to send SQL Server Extended Events to Logstash and Elastic Search and Kibana (ELK)

SQL Server Extended Events in Production

16 May 2018 - Bill Graziano

I have finally jumped on the Extended Events bandwagon. It was tough to pry Trace and Profiler from my cold, legacy hands! But I'm mostly there. I'm still working on a good way to hook up ClearTrace to these things. It might be as simple as

Is It SQL - 1.0.28 now with better AG backups

15 May 2018 - Bill Graziano

It's finally time to push another release of Is It SQL out the door. This has a few big features I've been working on.

Backups

First, it handles remote Availability Group backups properly. In an AG, you can run a backup on a secondary node. IsItSQL

SSMS Tools Pack 4.7 is out with new features (Expand SELECT *, Find Item in Object Explorer), and a few bug fixes

28 March 2018 - Mladen Prajdić

SQL Editor Plus New: Expand SELECT * to show columns from the tables, views, UDFs, CTEs, etc used in your query. New: Quickly find an object in Object Explorer by pressing F12.

SSMS Tools Pack 4.5 is out with full support for SSMS 17 and various feature improvements.

11 October 2017 - Mladen Prajdić

Full support for SSMS 17 All reported issues during the beta support have been resolved. Connection Coloring Connection Coloring is now improved by coloring the server/database in Object Explorer as well.

Get a Phone Alert When a Query Finishes

5 October 2017 - Bill Graziano

Today, through various snafus and situations, I found myself waiting a LONG time for a lock to clear up. Here's how I got an alert to pop up on my phone (an iPhone) when that stupid SPID finally rolled back.

You'll need to have database mail

PASS Summit Speaker Idol 2017

25 September 2017 - Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

I’m extremely honored to have been chosen once again to participate in Speaker Idol at PASS Summit 2017! I’m in deep trouble too, considering the contestants this year: https://www.dcac.co/syndication/your-pass-summit-2017-speaker-idol-contestants-are I’ve previously blogged about why Speaker Idol is such a great opportunity: http://weblogs.

Is It SQL - 1.0.27

27 July 2017 - Bill Graziano

I'd like to tell you this release has some great unifying theme. It doesn't. It's just a bunch of things I felt like fixing.

But let's start with tags. That's what I originally wanted to focus on for this release.

Is It SQL has an Admin GUI

11 May 2017 - Bill Graziano

It's finally time to push Is It SQL 1.0.25 out the door. I sent it to the newsletter subscribers last week and we haven't discovered any problems yet.

Before upgrading, please read the README in the zip file! Especially if you have custom connection

Is It SQL build 24 shows missing backups

20 April 2017 - Bill Graziano

The latest release of Is It SQL now shows missing backups.

Backups

The top section gives you a summary of all servers with missing backups and the bottom section lists each individual database that doesn't have a good backup. Right now a "good" full backup is

Configuring MSDTC Across Domains

31 December 2016 - Bill Graziano

One of my clients has applications that use MSDTC.  We’re spinning up a SQL Server 2016 Availability Group to take advantage of the MSDTC support it introduced.  Most of these distributed transactions take place across linked servers.  And of course the new servers are in

Is It SQL now shows Availability Groups

19 December 2016 - Bill Graziano

The latest release of Is It SQL is out and includes a variety of features.  I’d like to start with some screen shots of previous features.  First up is database mirroring.  You can see the mirroring status of a database when looking at the databases

SSMS Tools Pack 4.2 is out with beta support for SSMS 17 RC1, new features and minor bug fixes.

28 November 2016 - Mladen Prajdić

Beta support for SSMS 2017 RC1 Beta support for SSMS 17 RC1. Due to beta status this might have various bugs. Since SSMS 17 RC1 has just been released and is not recommended for production use the SSMS Tools Pack for it might run into various issues as well.

Database Mirroring in Is It SQL

10 November 2016 - Bill Graziano

Release 1.0.22 is out and available at the Is It SQL home page.  The biggest feature here is database mirroring. 

There are two ways to see database mirroring.  The first is on a server page it will show the databases that are mirrored.  There

My Statement of Support of Wendy Pastrick for the PASS Board

4 October 2016 - Denise McInerney

As part of the PASS Board election process community members can provide statements of support that are included in a candidate's application. I was pleased to provide such a statement on behalf of Wendy Pastrick.