It’s easy to start tinkering with the gears of SQL query optimization. You open up SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), monitor wait time, review the execution plan, gather object information and begin optimizing SQL until you’re running a finely…
It’s easy to start tinkering with the gears of SQL query optimization. You open up SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), monitor wait time, review the execution plan, gather object information and begin optimizing SQL until you’re running a finely…
In our blog, “An introduction to 8 ApexSQL tools,” we introduced our Toad World® readers a new member in the Quest® family of database tools, ApexSQL. While ApexSQL has 29 (and growing) DBA and developer tools, we narrowed our focus to 8 tools that…
Foglight SQL Performance Investigator (PI) is a powerful workload analysis tool set for database professionals, which brings deep visibility into database performance. It comes with unique features such as historical multi-dimensional analysis…
With the pressures they face every day, database administrators and developers sometimes need a friendly voice of encouragement – someone who understands their struggles and can speak their…
According to Microsoft SQL Master, Brent Ozar, he’s made some terrible database performance tuning decisions throughout his career. Luckily for us, we can benefit from his mistakes and don’t have to figure everything out on our own. He’s shared his hard…
I recently had a customer ask if they can audit SELECT operations for 1 table and 1 view in a specific database where the SELECT only contains certain keywords.
This article covers advanced filtering in ApexSQL Audit. This post will provide a tutorial…
Brent Ozar knows all about going fast – he races cars and he revs up SQL Servers with breathtaking performance results daily. In his recent webcast “How to Measure SQL Server,” for Quest’s Database Training Days series, Brent reminded…
If you missed the recent webcast on SQL performance tuning presented by Janis Griffin, you are definitely going to want to watch it on-demand. She packed so much information into 60 minutes, it’s a wonder there weren’t thousands of heads exploding across…
We were recently asked if Foglight can be used to monitor Google Cloud SQL instances, specifically MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQL Server. To clarify, these are the PaaS (or DBaaS) offerings from Google. Within Google Cloud Platform, you can use Compute Engine…
Pinal Dave has done it again as he brought his signature style and enthusiasm to Quest’s Database Training Days. With over 1,000 people in attendance, Pinal addressed the age-old question, “Who doesn’t have a database performance problem…
In our new reality of social distancing and remote work, it’s nice to hear a friendly voice that isn’t your spouse, kids or dog! It’s even better when that friendly voice is imparting words of wisdom that make your job easier. So, that’s what Quest has…
When dealing with large number of connections, the power and advantage of PowerShell API can be leveraged to manage, automate, and administer Spotlight configuration. The efficiency gains obtained through command line access to automate configuration…
The Spotlight Cloud services lets you monitor your servers on the web and mobile devices. It also analyzes your server performance data and gives health checks on your servers, evaluates their capacity and provides other insights into their performance…
All is well. Megan is having a good day. She’s a SQLServer DBA and her environment is humming along. Then…. someone drops a critical table bringing efficient data retrieval to a screeching halt. Now what? It’s a weekday morning and business…
There are a couple easy, free ways to get VMware metrics collected by Foglight for SQL Server. This first part shows the easier way.
When setting up the monitor for SQL Server, you can select (or not) to provide VMware credentials.
Foglight will connect…
Just like most people’s goal towards incorporating more raw food into their daily diet, accessing and manipulating raw data is very much a coveted functionality.
The Spotlight Statistics Repository database is a repository for historical data collected…
Spotlight Enterprise 12.4 comes with some neat features you do not want to miss!
Query Execution Plans available when needed the most:
The Workload Analysis and the Query Execution Statistics drilldowns expose the most resource intensive transactions…
We all get excited when our cell phone plan includes so called “Unlimited Data.” But, you know what happens if we push your luck. That’s right; we start to experience performance issues and get tossed into the dreaded 2G zone!
A similar…
Imagine this.... you're hosting a Holiday Party...and the phone rings. You answer and the person on the other end says with a tense voice, "I'm sorry but we will be unable to deliver your beer, wine, and liquor order. The product never shipped."…
We’re excited to announce that with Spotlight version 12.3, the Plan Visualizer feature now includes several new enhancements. In my last blog, I covered the Plan Visualizer feature included in version 12.0 which provides a display view of the estimated…
Spotlight Cloud is a cloud hosted database monitoring and diagnostics application providing DBAs with diagnostic tools to quickly identify and help resolve performance issues. The Workload Analyzer of Spotlight Cloud is a very robust query evaluator tool…
Foglight for SQL Server Business Intelligence (BI) provides analysis monitoring for SQL Server BI services: Integration services, Reporting services, and Analysis services.
In this (Part 1) blog, the focus is SQL Server Integration Services or ‘SSIS’…
Congratulations! You have Foglight installed and it is collecting meaningful performance data. There’s no doubt it is providing a ‘smorgasbord’ of actionable information about your mission-critical environment. Help yourself to delicious servings of baseline…
I’ve been interested in weather, meteorology and clouds in the sky for as long as I can remember; which may explain why one of my favorite songs is Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now”. I’ve learned that some clouds are pretty, and…
Having fun with the "SQL de Mayo" theme at the conference
One of the best things about working for Quest has been the numerous opportunities we get to participate in conferences, user groups and meet-ups related to the database technologies…