João Fonseca - Microsoft Services Technical Account Manager : SQL Server

SQL Server 2005 Performance Dashboard Reports

jfonseca — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 13:58:00 GMT

The SQL Server 2005 Performance Dashboard Reports are Reporting Services report files designed to be used with the Custom Reports feature introduced in the SP2 release of SQL Server Management Studio. The reports allow a database administrator to quickly identify whether there is a current bottleneck on their system, and if a bottleneck is present, capture additional diagnostic data that may be necessary to resolve the problem. For example, if the system is experiencing waits for disk IO the dashboard allows the user to quickly see which sessions are performing the most IO, what query is running on each session and the query plan for each statement.

Common performance problems that the dashboard reports may help to resolve include:
- CPU bottlenecks (and what queries are consuming the most CPU)
- IO bottlenecks (and what queries are performing the most IO).
- Index recommendations generated by the query optimizer (missing indexes)
- Blocking
- Latch contention

The information captured in the reports is retrieved from SQL Server's dynamic management views. There is no additional tracing or data capture required, which means the information is always available and this is a very inexpensive means of monitoring your server.

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SQL Server Migration Assistant for Sybase ASE

jfonseca — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 22:14:00 GMT

SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) for Sybase ASE is a complete suite of tools that dramatically cuts the effort, cost, and risk of migrating from Sybase ASE database to SQL Server. SSMA automates almost every aspect of the migration process including assessment, schema and data migration, business logic conversion.

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SQL Server Migration Assistant for Access

jfonseca — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 22:10:00 GMT

Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) for Access is a tool for migrating databases from Microsoft Access to Microsoft SQL Server 2005. SSMA for Access converts Access database objects to SQL Server database objects, loads those objects into SQL Server, and then migrates data from Access to SQL Server.
SSMA for Access supports Access 97 - Access 2003 databases.

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