SQLintersection

The Ultimate Free SQL Server Toolkit

Kevin Klinekkline@sqlsentry.com

SQL123

Overview Relational Engine Tools

Security Administration Transact-SQL Testing Performance DTS/SSIS/SQLAgent

Analysis Services Tools Non-SQL Server Tools too good to miss

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Query Tuning

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General Security – Because there is no patch for stupid

Bookmark it! http://www.sqlsecurity.com SQLPing 3.0: discover all SQL Servers. Lockdown.sql: locks down rarely used functionality/security

holes, while not breaking common features. Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer:

Perform a security assessment of your Windows Servers. Latest version, Jan 2015, is at http://bit.ly/1IJ6bkg. Resource Center, with lots of sample scripts, available at http://

bit.ly/1PTBiIT. Don’t let security be an afterthought

SQL Injection – ever heard of locking the door?

URL Scan v3.1: http://bit.ly/1Pv4uL6 Can filter requests based on query strings to help mitigate SQL

injection and other attacks which use a query string payload. The ability to created custom rules that scan parts of your

HTTP requests. Code Analysis Tool for .NET: http://bit.ly/1cMPUNg

A command-line that tool helps you identify security flaws within a managed code (C#, Visual Basic .NET, J#) application you are developing

Scans the binary and/or assembly of the application, and tracing the data flow among its statements, methods, and assemblies.

Two cool tools (HP Scrawlr and Microsoft Source Code Analyzer for SQL Injection) have gone extinct.

Monitoring – WHASSUP?!?

Monitoring & Troubleshooting SP_WhoIsActive, http://bit.ly/1zgEZpT:

My favorite for finding out user activity. And it now supports Azure!

Brent’s Blitz, http://www.brentozar.com/blitz/: My favorite for SQL Server health check.

Performance Analysis of Logs (PAL), https://pal.codeplex.com/: A rich set of collectors and GUIs to assess performance across

many servers. Good for Windows, SQL Server, and other products like Exchange.

Internals Viewer, http://internalsviewer.codeplex.com : see how data is written at the 8k page level

Monitoring & Troubleshooting SP_WHOISACTIVE,

http://sqlblog.com/files/folders/beta/entry42453.aspx: My favorite for finding out user activity. And it now supports

Azure! Brent’s Blitz, http://www.brentozar.com/blitz/:

My favorite for SQL Server health check. Performance Analysis of Logs (PAL), https://pal.codeplex.com/:

A rich set of collectors and GUIs to assess performance across many servers. Good for Windows, SQL Server, and other products like Exchange.

Internals Viewer: see how data is written at the 8k page level, http://internalsviewer.codeplex.com

Administration – Suite! Er, sweet! SSMS Tools Pack: http://www.ssmstoolspack.com/

a snap-in that enhances SSMS with CRUD procedure generation, T-SQL formatted, generated CRUD stored procedures, and much more,

SQLPSX: http://sqlpsx.codeplex.com A boatload of security management PowerShell scripts for SQL

Server Finebuild: https://sqlserverfinebuild.codeplex.com/

Makes it easy for anyone to produce a best-practice installation and configuration of SQL Server.

SQL Server Migration Assistants: Ready to move off of Oracle, Sybase, or Access?

http://tinyurl.com/yht5yon The 80/20 principle in action.

Administration – mo betta Microsoft Assessment & Planning Toolkit (MAP):

http://www.microsoft.com/MAP Discovers SQL Servers and takes a full inventory of your

estate. Great for migration planning and consolidation projects. Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide: a Microsoft checklist

and decision tree, http://www.microsoft.com/IPD Best Practice Analyser: http://bit.ly/1FxcvdS

Checks your SQL2012 database for potential performance and configuration issues.

Determines if the configurations are set according to the recommended best practices. Reports when they’re different from Microsoft’s recommendation.

Recommends some solutions. SOME!

Administration – mo betta Microsoft Assessment & Planning Toolkit (MAP):

http://www.microsoft.com/MAP Discovers SQL Servers and takes a full inventory of your

estate. Great for migration planning and consolidation projects. Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide: a Microsoft checklist

and decision tree, http://www.microsoft.com/IPD Best Practice Analyser: http://bit.ly/1FxcvdS

Checks your SQL2012 database for potential performance and configuration issues.

Determines if the configurations are set according to the recommended best practices. Reports when they’re different from Microsoft’s recommendation.

Recommends some solutions. SOME!

Admin Preventative Maintenance Scripting – Joke: How do you eat an elephant? Punchline…

AbaPerls, http://tinyurl.com/yez6sq7: Automate and manage configurations & schema objects and

builds, OlaHallengren, http://tinyurl.com/ya72ll6:

A great collection of PM scripts from Ola Hallengren. Microsoft Product Sample Scripts:

Great scripts for alerts and event notification from Microsoft, http://tinyurl.com/y8aktck

DBMinion, http://www.midnightsql.com/minion/: Similar features to Ola Hallengren’s script, but more flexible

(and complex). Best preventative maintenance solution in very large estates.

Testing

Testing tSQLt, http://tsqlt.ogr/:

a unit testing tool for Transact-SQL code Diskspd, https://github.com/microsoft/diskspd:

An IO workload simulator to test disk IO capabilities. Successor to SQLIO and SQLIOSim.

SQLQueryStress, http://tinyurl.com/ydm55yl: Stress test your queries to see how far they can scale

HammerDB, http://hammerdb.com/: Run highly scalable TPC-C and TPC-H against your database

servers.

Testing tSQLt, http://tsqlt.ogr/:

a unit testing tool for Transact-SQL code Diskspd, https://github.com/microsoft/diskspd:

An IO workload simulator to test disk IO capabilities. Successor to SQLIO and SQLIOSim.

SQLQueryStress, http://tinyurl.com/ydm55yl: Stress test your queries to see how far they can scale

HammerDB, http://hammerdb.com/: Run highly scalable TPC-C and TPC-H against your database

servers.

SSIS and SQLAgent – let automation do the heavy lifting

DTLoggedExec: Makes logging SSIS inside packages fast & easy while providing

lots of performance info, http://dtloggedexec.codeplex.com/ SSISUnit:

A declarative testing tool based on Xunit tailored to SSIS environments, http://ssisunit.codeplex.com/

cspJobMonitor: Track the activity of all your SQLAgent,

http://tinyurl.com/ybvupzg BIDS Helper and BIML:

Visual Studio add-in with oodles of extra features to augment BIDS, IS, and RS, http://www.codeplex.com/bidshelper/

Analysis Services – because we really needed yet one more way to write SQL queries

Reporting Services Scripter: move reports easily between servers,

http://tinyurl.com/ylshp44 RSBuild:

executes scripts, publish reports RS & data sources, http://rsbuild.codeplex.com

Analysis Services Product Samples: loads of cool tools including backup & recovery, activity

viewer, tracing, AMO browser, and Data Mining WebControls, http://msftasprodsamples.codeplex.com/

Also available, IS, RS samples MDX Performance Analyser:

collects metrics on your MDX queries, http://www.codeplex.com/mdxscriptperf

Non-SQL Server Tools

Non-SQL Server Tools PowerGUI: http://www.powergui.org

Don’t want to learn PowerShell? Use this free GUI tool and it’s huge library of pre-built scripts.

Scriptomatic: Don’t want to learn WMI? Use this free tool instead,

http://tinyurl.com/yguku2y Log Parser:

Read just about any data source from XML to the Event Log to the Registry, http://tinyurl.com/58uxe

mRemote: manage all your remote connections from one GUI,

http://www.mremote.org/

Summary Don’t reinvent the wheel! Reuse what’s available. Free script-based tools are usually better maintained than Free GUI

tools. Microsoft’s versions and release cycle are the biggest issue

with free tools Remember – you get what you pay for; free tools are free after

all

Resources

http://tinyurl.com/ylauses My long-running SQLMag Tool Time column.

http://www.codeplex.com A fantastic collection of

Microsoft-centric tools, including many for SQL Server tools, free to registered members

http://www.sourceforge.com Free tools from a large, independent open source community

http://thisindexed.com Great images by Jessica Hagy

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Thank you!

The Ultimate Free SQL Server ToolkitKevin Kline, @KEKline, kkline@sqlsentry.com