The short of it is this: what I wrote in the tip is cot very clear, and is most likely going to be interpreted wrongly. Aaron’s post does a great job of explaining the difference. I also want people to understand that if you are doing compressed backups, you won’t see much added benefit if you also enable data compression. As Aaron points out in his example, the overall benefit on time and size of the final backup file are comparable whether you are compressing data or not.

The post I Stand Corrected appeared first on Thomas LaRock.

Backup compression is a feature offered with the Enterprise version of SQL 2008. After having native compression available in Sybase ASE for years I was happy to see that Microsoft finally offered the same feature. It is worth noting that while compression is an Enterprise-only feature, you are able to restore a compressed backup to other SQL 2008 editions. So, if you are running SQL 2008 Developer and someone hands you a compressed backup you will be able to restore that backup.

It should go without saying that previous version of SQL cannot restore a compressed backup, but I’ll say it here again anyway. Heck, you cannot restore a non-compressed SQL 2008 database backup to a previous version, so don’t waste your time trying a compressed one.

Lastly, be aware that compression comes at a cost, most notably you will see a higher CPU cost when comparing compression versus non-compressed backups.

The post Backup Compression Tip appeared first on Thomas LaRock.

SQL Server 2008 Auditing Feature
SQL Server 2008 Audit Change Group

I’ve been playing around with SQL Server Audit for over a year now, but I have spent more time on it during the past six weeks. So much time, in fact, that I have submitted a talk for SQL Saturday #39 in New York City on April 24th. The talk will be titled SQL Server 2008 Audit, and I will give an overview of how to use the feature, review the various options, and even try to answer questions. So if you are in NYC on the 24th, stop by for a free day of training.

The post SQL Server Audit Tips appeared first on Thomas LaRock.

First, I have a new article over at MSSQLTips.com, this one on configuring a SQL Server 2008 Audit. Head over there and check it out, I give the details you need in order to get your instance configured for auditing.

Second, and somewhat related, I have submitted a session for SQL Saturday #39 in New York City. The title of my proposed talk will be…wait for it…”SQL Server 2008 Audit”. The event is on April 24th in Manhattan (NY, not KS).

Third, this is my 400th post. Wait, that makes three things, not two. Forget I said anything.

The post Two Things To Tell You appeared first on Thomas LaRock.

The tip helps you configure a policy inside of PBM that will help you to determine how badly your transaction logs are fragmented.

The post New Tip Posted appeared first on Thomas LaRock.

One thing about linked servers is that they use a common set of providers. That means you can have a dozen linked servers all relying on one provider. If you change one option on that provider you are changing the structure of all linked servers that use that provider. While I am certain that you can always find one person who says “I don’t care about anyone else, just change the provider so my stuff will run”, ideally you won’t be making any such changes. And, if you do, you will do so only after carefully communicating the change so that others can take notice.

But let’s say that a change is made, and someone notices an issue with a query, days after the configuration change. How would you know if their issues with the linked server is the result of the change that was made earlier? Well, first thing you need to do is find out if (and when) a changes was made, right?

Well, that is my tip today: find out the last time your linked server was modified. In the tip I use Policy Based Management as a way to get the job done. The tip shows how you can find out the information for one server, but through the use of a Central Management Server you could also run the policy against all your servers, or as many as desired.

The post New Tip at MSSQLTips appeared first on Thomas LaRock.

Every now and then it happens, so I decided to put together some t-sql to display details on what was done. The script essentially details when the restored was started, what backup file was used, when that backup was taken, and the name of the source database.

You can read more about it here.

I just love diving into system information to report back details. I believe that being able to pull such details right from the system tables is close to an art form. Every time I come across custom scripts that pull and twist information right from the system I try running them for myself to see how they can best be applied in my shop. I hope the scripts I try to provide at MSSQLTips can help someone else in the same way.

The post New Tip Over at MSSQLTips appeared first on Thomas LaRock.