Share via

SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer (January 2008) -- Now Available!

  • Article

It's a new year and, with it, we come bearing gifts!  We have a pretty significant update to SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer.  It contains many new and updated rules for Analysis Services, a few important rules for the Relational Engine, a couple bug fixes for the UI and command line tools.  And all of these rules have rich documentation telling you what need to know.

New Rules

Analysis Services

In the last release, only a few rules for Analysis Services would be displayed.  These were mainly around security.  With this release, we detect potential issues with the design of your cubes.  If you have taken a look at SQL Server 2008, you’ll see that these are the same warnings you’ll find in Business Intelligence Development Studio.  Thus, the recommendations from SQL BPA will be perfectly in sync with the recommendations from SQL Server 2008.

Relational Engine

We have worked closely with CSS to identify a number of common issues that customers have been facing.  In SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2, we started logging events regarding extensive amount of memory being paged out.  With this update of BPA, it will check to see if this happened and let you know if can determine the root cause.

Documentation

The documentation is what makes these rules worthwhile.  Each new rule has a breakdown of:

  • How it was detected
  • Why it’s important
  • What you should do about it
  • Links for more information

Not only will you be able to solve problems with your SQL instances more efficiently, you'll have a very targeted list of reading material to teach you why it's important.

Future of BPA

We will continue to release periodic updates to the rules for SQL Server 2005 BPA.  We will also fix any major bugs reported by customers.  However, our focus for development is on the next major version.  Our team is hard at work to incorporate BPA’s functionality into the core product for its debut in SQL Server 2008.  If you’d like to see how this works, download the latest CTP of SQL Server 2008 or search the web for Declarative Management Framework.

If you have any recommendations for rules, you can submit them to https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/.

Latest Updates

The January 2008 package contains:

  • BPA UI and command line tools
  • Rules (previous rules + ~60 new rules)
  • Rich documentation

Check out the latest release here: https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=da0531e4-e94c-4991-82fa-f0e3fbd05e63.

(Note: January 2008 is version 9.00.1007.00.  The text on the page may take a while to update.)

Paul A. Mestemaker II
Program Manager
SQLCAT – Best Practices

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 18, 2008
    It's a new year and, with it, we come bearing gifts! We have a pretty significant update to SQL Server

  • Anonymous
    January 18, 2008
    18 января на сайте загрузки Майкрософт стала доступна очередная версия популярной утилиты SQL Server

  • Anonymous
    January 21, 2008
    SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer更新(January 2008版)

  • Anonymous
    January 21, 2008
    In case you have not noticed yet, the SQLCat team has released a new version of the Best Practices Analyzer.

  • Anonymous
    January 22, 2008
    So I have 1 critical issue but in order to resolve it, apply some hotfixes, I have to log a support request with Microsoft. Surely if it is a recommended best practice I should be able to download the hotfixes without opening a support request with Microsoft. The how to resolve it link points to the following KB's  937745, 933564, 927396 or says I should simply apply cumulative update 3 which also isn't available for download. This is the text for the critical issue: "On versions of SQL Server before 9.0.3171.0, a known issue can degrade query performance on 32-bit and 64-bit systems with 2 gigabytes (GB) or more of memory..." ?? Scott

  • Anonymous
    January 22, 2008
    Hey Scott, Thanks for your feedback.  SQL BPA is a tool meant to identify potential causes of problems as determined by Microsoft.  We think it's pretty good, but cannot perfectly detect 100% of issues.  If we could detect when something is definitely wrong, we'd just build that logic into SQL Server itself. In this specific instance, it is a very broad recommendation (every 64-bit server below 9.0.3171.0 with 2+GB of memory)... the fix is to get a CU that you can request from the web.  Cumulative Updates are, well, cumulative :).... so you can request CU#5 from the web... or if you don't want to pick up the other fixes, you can probably call CSS and request access to CU#3. CU#5 Knowledge Base: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943656 CU#5 Download: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6294451 There are risks associated with changing your environment without proper levels of testing.  So please keep that in mind. Paul A. Mestemaker II
    Program Manager
    SQLCAT - Best Practices

  • Anonymous
    January 31, 2008
    An update for SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer is available which comes with new rules as of January

  • Anonymous
    February 14, 2008
    In case you have not noticed yet, the SQLCat team has released a new version of the Best Practices Analyzer

  • Anonymous
    July 16, 2008
    Ultram in mexico. What is ultram.