Category: Tools

James Serra looks at putting together a VM for 2016:

With Windows Server 2016 just been released, now is the perfect time to build an Azure VM with SQL Server 2016 on Windows Server 2016.  In a matter of minutes you can be playing and learning both platforms.  Below I will document the steps I took to build the VM along with the additional software I installed.  This is a fully-loaded VM that I use for demo’s and to build small projects:

(Software updates as of 11/4/2016)

There’s a lot of good software here.  And Java.

Richard Douglas has a great post on things to think about when evaluating a monitoring tool:

A question that often comes up in meetings is, “What would success look like?” To me, it’s my favourite football team Spurs winning the English Premier League! This is never a popular answer to the person asking the question in the meeting, but generally raises a few smiles and lightens the mood. However, you’re more likely interested in monitoring software and what success means in that scenario. As I see it, success means finding an outcome that is beyond doubt. Now success could mean that the software you are evaluating is not as good as the current incumbent. That is a successful outcome. You have decided that you already own the best solution for you. Congratulations! It can also mean that a particular solution meets all of the criteria needed by your business in order for it to solve technical issues and to grow.

The advice is vendor-agnostic and is worth reading if you plan to evaluate monitoring tools anytime soon.

Brent Ozar announces that the sp_Blitz series of scripts is now open source:

Our prior copyright license said you couldn’t install this on servers you don’t own. We’d had a ton of problems with consultants and software vendors handing out outdated or broken versions of our scripts, and then coming to us for support.

Now, it’s a free-for-all! If you find the scripts useful, go ahead and use ’em. Include sp_Blitz, sp_BlitzCache, sp_BlitzIndex, etc as part of your deployments for easier troubleshooting.

This is very good news.

Jens Vestergaard grabs some code and is left with line numbers he wants to remove:

Only too often I find myself searching the web for pieces of code, that I need for some odd solution. And almost every time, I come across a web page, where the code sample is displayed with line numbers. It’s always annoying to have to sit and delete those manually. No longer I say! Yes, you heard me right. Actually Visual Studio has a neat trick to help you get this done in a jiff.

This is useful for a lot more than just removing line numbers.

Ed Elliott has an update to SQLCover, his code coverage tool:

This includes a few minor fixes but also support for SQL Azure so if you run your test in a v12 database or higher you can now get an idea of code coverage from that.

If you are interested in using this but don’t know where to start, there is a powershell script in the download (https://the.agilesql.club/SQLCover/download.php) and if you also get reportgenerator (https://github.com/danielpalme/ReportGenerator/releases/tag/v2.4.5.0):

Check out the tool and add a few database tests…or any database tests…

Chrissy LeMaire praises Trello:

The SQLPS Trello board worked out so well, that when the topic of getting overdue some improvements into SSMS was brought up, Microsoft suggested that setting up another board for SQL Server Management Studio might work well too.

If you use either of these products, I strongly suggest you join us and give Microsoft your feedback. They actively participate on both boards which is just amazing.

I’ve never been a huge Trello fan, but I do admit that I’m looking for a good tool for personal planning, so maybe I’ll give it another try.