Author: Steve Stedman

Database Health Monitor: A Lean DBA Tool for Speed and Efficiency When I think about Database Health Monitor, speed is one of the first things that comes to mind. From the start, I designed it as a performance improvement tool, and I often describe it as a lean-style solution. The timing was intentional—while studying lean principles, I began building Database Health Monitor. Those ideas of efficiency and eliminating waste naturally shaped its foundation. Built for Fast Multi-Server Management Every feature …

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When you’re responsible for keeping SQL Server running smoothly, it’s not always easy to see how performance changes over time. The Performance History Instance Report in Database Health Monitor helps you do exactly that, it gives you a clear visual history of how your SQL Server instance has been performing, making it easier to spot trends, find bottlenecks, and understand what’s really happening under the hood. A Clear View of Instance-Level Activity The Performance History report tracks a range of …

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When SQL Server performance dips, TempDB is one of the first places to check. The TempDB Allocation report gives you clear, historical visibility into how TempDB space is used so you can spot issues before they affect users. See what’s happening inside TempDB TempDB can be considered SQL Server’s “scratch pad.” It is used by nearly every workload on your server, but until now understanding how that space was being used often required digging through DMV queries or relying on …

Introducing the TempDB Allocation Report in Database Health Monitor Read more →

SQL Agent Jobs are the backbone of many database maintenance and automation tasks, ensuring critical processes like backups, index maintenance, and data imports run smoothly. However, keeping track of job performance and identifying failures or bottlenecks can be a challenge, especially in environments with numerous jobs running on tight schedules. Without a clear, visual representation of job history, database administrators often find themselves sifting through logs or writing complex queries to uncover patterns or issues, which can be both time-consuming …

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Improved Index Usage Tracking in Database Health Monitor Many SQL Servers reboot on a regular cadence, and most monitoring tools only show index usage since the last restart, which means that an index used heavily at the end of the month or once a quarter can appear unused for most of the year. This leads to dangerous assumptions and unnecessary index changes. In Database Health Monitor version three, we have introduced an important enhancement: index usage is now stored directly …

Why Accurate Index History Matters and How Database Health Monitor’s New Enhancements Help You See the Full Picture Read more →

When working with databases, the SQL LIKE operator is a powerful tool for pattern matching in queries. However, its performance can vary drastically depending on how it’s used, particularly when a wildcard character, such as the percent sign (%), is placed at the beginning of the search pattern. This seemingly small detail—known as a leading wildcard—can have a significant impact on query execution time and resource usage, often leading to full table scans instead of leveraging indexes. In this post, …

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Database Health Monitor is a powerful tool for managing and optimizing SQL Server Performance, and one of its standout features is the dbAssistant. Available at the Server Overview panel, the Database Overview panel, and integrated into many reports, dbAssistant is designed to simplify database maintenance by proactively scanning for common issues and providing actionable solutions. What is dbAssistant? dbAssistant is an intelligent scanning tool that analyzes your SQL Server environment to identify potential problems that could impact performance or data …

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Schema changes in SQL Server are often treated as routine. A table gets altered, an index is added, a procedure is updated, and everyone moves on. But when something breaks, performance suddenly degrades, or an application starts behaving differently, one of the first questions is always the same: What changed? In many environments, that question is surprisingly hard to answer. The Invisible Problem with DDL Changes DDL operations don’t show up in query performance charts. They don’t always trigger alerts. …

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