Sidebar monitoring of SQL databases

robfarley — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 05:00:00 GMT

A while back I discussed using the Windows Vista Sidebar to display useful information about applications. This led to other conversations, including one with fellow SQL MVP (and Leeds United fan - sorry to hear about the 15 points, mate) Jamie Thomson about monitoring important SQL database statistics using sidebar gadgets. I didn't give it much thought, because I still had my PowerGadgets solution in place, monitoring all kinds of things based on my own queries. (Personally, I like using 'union all' queries. This lets me get a nice collection of numbers for showing in a graph. But I also find that I can easily have a number produced for displaying in a gauge.)

But Jamie has taken this further, and produced a Sidebar gadget to monitor various database statistics. It doesn't use PowerGadgets, so it's completely free. You can grab it from his blog at http://blogs.conchango.com/jamiethomson/archive/2007/08/17/SQL-Server-Monitor-Gadget-v1.0.001.aspx, or the original version from http://blogs.conchango.com/jamiethomson/archive/2007/08/09/Announcing-SQL-Server-Monitor-Gadget-for-Windows-Vista-Sidebar.aspx. Great work, Jamie!

sys.database_files and sys.master_files (rather than sys.sysfiles)

robfarley — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 06:00:00 GMT

Whenever there are changes, people can be slow to embrace them. One I've come across recently is that looking in sysfiles is no longer the best way of getting information about your database files. sys.database_files will tell you a lot more about them, and give you much nicer ways of filtering them. So for example, if you want a list of the log files for your database, try:

select * from sys.database_files where type = 1

And sys.master_files will list them for the whole system. So it becomes really easy to look at the state of things from within T-SQL.

For more information on these, check out http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms174397.aspx and http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms186782.aspx.

Now go and make yourself a Vista Sidebar gadget (or use PowerGadgets to do it really easily) to show you the size of your log files (or whatever). Have it update every hour, sitting alongside those gadgets which tell you how nice the Adelaide weather is and show you pictures of the blue skies in Australia.

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Sidebar monitoring of SQL databases

sys.database_files and sys.master_files (rather than sys.sysfiles)