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...

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...

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...

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...

Bill Ramos Principal Program Manager, SQL Server Manageability If you missed SQL PASS or you didn’t get your copy of SQL Server code named “Denali”, you’re in luck. You can now download it from: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID...

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...

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”...

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...

By Bill Ramos, Program Manager, SQL Server Manageability Team The Management Data Warehouse (MDW) overview report that I mentioned in my previous blog post on Viewing MDW Reports with a Low Privileged User Account provides a list of database instances...

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, 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. ...

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...

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...

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...

In this blog post, I will go through the steps needed to prepare for a proof of concept (POC) for using the SQL Server 2008 R2 Data Collector (DC) and Management Data Warehouse (MDW) reports (covered in part 2) to get you up and running. I’ll cover the...

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...

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...

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...

By Bill Ramos, Program Manager, SQL Server Manageability Team In this post, we’ll complete the MDW Overview report from part 1 of this series and then start into the makings of the Server Activity report as shown below. The Server Activity...

By Bill Ramos, Program Manager, SQL Server Manageability Team In part 2 , I added the hyperlink to the MDW Overview report to launch the Server Activity History report. In this post, I’ll show how to get the data and display the thumbnails in...

Over 900 attended my web cast on Monday. With the help of Bruce Prang and Michael Benkovich, they were able to keep up with most of the questions. This article lists the questions that were asked and their responses. There are still several handfulls...

Times are certainly tough and bound to get tougher in 2009. As a DBA, you and your teammates are in a unique position - given all of the relationships you build with your customers - to generally survive a layoff. If you want to increase your odds of...

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...

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...