Bill Ramos, Principal Program Manager, SQL Server Manageability Up until this point, I’ve walked through step by step how the MDW reports could be recreated to use SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 R2 and edit them in Report Builder 3.0. ...

In my next series of blog posts, I’ll explore the Transact-SQL Debugger for SQL Server 2008. This feature only works against database instances of SQL Server 2008. If you need to use a debugger for SQL Server 2005, you’ll have to use the Visual Studio...

I just wanted to let the community know that we have just released a new Express edition called SQL Server 2008 Management Studio Express to the web today! We teased out the Tools portion of SQL Server 2008 Express with Tools into it’s own download. It...

Scott Cate has been publishing a video series of Visual Studio tricks over the last few months from Sara Ford’s blog . It turns out when you use the Standard keyboard scheme in SSMS under Tools | Options Keyboard, many of them work because SSMS is built...

In my MDW Reports series, I attached V1 of the RDL files in my post - May the source be with you! MDW Report Series Part 6–The Final Edition . Since that post, Rachna Agarwal from MSIT in India updated the RDL files that are ready to go in a single ZIP...

Over the weekend, I was playing around with trying to use my hotmail email account for SQL Server 2008 Database Mail. After searching, I found a promising post on the MSDN Forum under SQL Tools . In the forum posted, it was suggested that you need to...

This blog will go over what you need to know for setting up your environment for remote debugging along with best practices and other things to consider when using the debugger in SSMS. This 3 part series covers: Basic debugging Configure remote debugging...

In part 3 of working with the debugger, I’ll talk about how to set breakpoints and the trick to setting them in stored procedures and triggers. This 3 part series covers: Basic debugging Configure remote debugging & best practices Debugging triggers...

By Bill Ramos, Program Manager, SQL Server Manageability Team In part 3 of the report series , I showed how to get CPU data from the MDW and display it as a thumbnail chart in the Server Activity History report. In part 4, I’ll show how to extract...

By Bill Ramos Principal Program Manager, SQL Server Manageability Abstract In this blog post, I will go over the steps to install System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) 2007 R2 and the recent release of the SQL Server 2008 R2 Management Pack (MP...

The new version of Activity Monitor for SQL Server 2008 Management Studio has a new look and feel from the old one in 2005. The new Activity Monitor has a Recent Expensive Queries pane that allows you to see which of your active queries based on...

This is the first of a series of video based blog entries where I will share tips and tricks within the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) shell. Many of these techniques are the result of using Visual Studio as the shell for SSMS. This video demonstrates...

Technorati Tags: SQL Server 2008 , Activity Monitor , SSMS You may have heard – we rewrote the Activity Monitor from the ground up. However, I’ve seen feedback on the Connect site and from others looking at SQL Server 2008 who claim they can’t find...

Now that you know where to find the Activity Monitor in SQL Server 2008 Management Studio, here are some things you should know about how the refresh interval works that isn’t completely documented. Unlike the previous version of the Activity Monitor...

This is the second in a series of posts highlighting Scott Cate ’s video series of Visual Studio tricks over the last few months from Sara Ford’s blog . As I mentioned in Part 1 , many of the commands are documented in the  SQL Server 2008 help topic...

I recently had a chance to preview the Release Candidate of Database Manager 1.0 for IIS7 . If you are looking for a very lightweight tool that is easy to install for doing basic operations against SQL Server used by your IIS applications, this tool is...

There have been quite a few blog postings about the new Search feature in SQL Server 2008 Management Studio. Here are some examples of what you can find: MSDN - Using Object Explorer Details and SQL Server Object Search Buck Woody’s Carpe Datum - SQL...

Bill Ramos, Principal Program Manager, SQL Manageability In my previous blog post Installing the SQL Server 2008 R2 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 I showed how you can install SCOM 2007 R2 on a “bare-metal”...

By Bill Ramos, Principal Program Manager, SQL Server Manageability Team It just dawned on me that in preparing for SQL PASS and helping folks understand more about the existing MDW reports, that there is zero documentation on what reports are in SSMS...

Bill Ramos, formally Principal Program Manager, SQL Server Manageability Now WorkStream Manager for http://www.advaiya.com Hi All,       As of November 22, after 15 years at Microsoft as a Program Manager, I'm joining a new company...

One of the attendees of my TechEd session “DAT315 - Manageability Series: Uncover Hidden Secrets of T-SQL Scripts with Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio” suggested that I post the list of demos that I did for the session so that they could remember...

This post is how to configure SQL Agent to use Database Mail for sending an email to an operator in the event a job fails. I was hoping that there was a single MSDN topic on how to do this, but no such luck. The steps are fairly straight forward, but...

I’ve been playing around Chad Miller’s SQL Server PowerShell Extensions – SQLPSX 1.5 on CodePlex getting ready for my TechEd session Manageability Series: Microsoft SQL Server Automation on Steroids, Including Powershell on Wed 5/13. Chad has developed...

This is my first TechEd in a long time. The last time I spoke at a TechEd was back in 1997 in Japan! I have three sessions this Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday that talk about how to get the most out of our manageability suite of tools in SSMS. ...

I’d like to thank everyone who attended my TechEd session today titled “Manageability Series: Microsoft SQL Server Automation on Steroids, Including PowerShell Support”. Sean McCown – SQL MVP – and all around DBA – creator of the Midnight DBA videos available...