Free and useful tools have proliferated since the launch of the CodePlex and SourceForge websites. Join Kevin Kline, long-time author of the SQL Server Magazine column "Tool Time", as he profiles the very best of the free tools covered in his monthly column - dozens of free tools and utilities! Some of the cover tools help to:
- Track database growth
- Implement logging in SSIS job steps
- Stress test your database applications
- Automate important preventative maintenance tasks
- Automate maintenance tasks for Analysis Services
- Help protect against SQL Injection attacks
- Graphically manage Extended Events
- Utilize PowerShell scripts to ease administration
And much more. These tools are all free and independently supported by SQL Server enthusiasts around the world.
5. 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
6.
7. 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.
10. 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
11. 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
12. 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.
13. 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!
14. 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!
15. 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.
17. 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.
18. 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.
19. 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/
20. 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
22. 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/
23. 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
24. 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
25. Don’t forget to complete an online evaluation on EventBoard!
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Thank you!
The Ultimate Free SQL Server Toolkit
Kevin Kline, @KEKline, kkline@sqlsentry.com