Practical Maintenance Plans in SQL Server: Automation for the DBA

This book is a complete guide to setting up and maintaining maintenance plans for SQL Server Database Administrators. Maintenance plans too often consist of a backup task and that’s it, but there is so much more that can and must be done to ensure the integrity of your most important company resource – the data you are tasked to manage and safeguard. This book walks even the newest of users through creating a powerful, automated maintenance plan.

Automate your job using SQL Server Agent to leverage the power of Maintenance Plans to deliver real, proactive solutions to common issues. Schedule common tasks such as backups and index rebuilds to run automatically, and get early-warning notifications of impending problems relating to resource usage and query performance. By the time your boss knows to call you about a problem, you’ll have already called him to describe your solution.

The large majority of books never really cover the topic of inheriting a database server with multiple live databases; the common thread is that the databases will be created and maintained by the reader forever and ever. In the real world, that scenario rarely happens. Practical Maintenance Plans in SQL Server covers that scenario and provides you with the knowledge and tools needed to get comfortable writing your own maintenance plans for any SQL Server database, whether created by you or inherited.

• Shows the different tasks that can be run in a maintenance plan.
• Explains how and why those tasks can be implemented.
• Provides a roadmap to creating your own custom maintenance plan.

What You Will Learn

• Implement a completely automated backup maintenance plan
• Be alerted to performance problems and outages ahead of your boss
• Learn the different types of database maintenance tasks
• Plan the workflow of tasks within a maintenance plan
• Automate your work by implementing custom maintenance plans

Who This Book Is For

Practical Maintenance Plans in SQL Server is for any level of database administrator, but specifically it’s for those administrators with a real need to set up a powerful maintenance plan quickly. New and seasoned administrators will appreciate the book for its robust learning pattern of visual aids in combination with explanations and scenarios. Practical Maintenance Plans in SQL Server is the perfect “new hire” gift for new database administrators in any organization.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction to Maintenance Plans
Chapter 2: Backing Up a Database
Chapter 3: Checking Database Integrity
Chapter 4: Executing SQL Server Agent Jobs
Chapter 5: Cleaning Up SQL Server Agent History
Chapter 6: Cleaning Up Maintenance Files
Chapter 7: Rebuilding Indexes
Chapter 8: Reorganizing Indexes
Chapter 9: Shrinking the Database and Files
Chapter 10: Updating Object Statistics
Chapter 11: Executing T-SQL Statements
Chapter 12: Notifying Database Operators
Chapter 13: Tying It All Together