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SQL Server Best Practices Analyzer - Progress

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Thank you to everybody who posted comments in newsgroups, forums, and on the first SQL Server™ Best Practices Analyzer blog entry.  We have been able to complete a lot of your requests already.

 

We’ve had some great short-term success with SQL BPA 2.0.  Thanks to a lot of help from the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer team, in just a couple of weeks we’ve been able to put together a prototype with the following features:

  • A good looking, functional GUI
  • An extensible engine to execute rules
  • About 10 configuration/security checks for SQL Server 2005 database engine
  • A few rules for SQL Server Analysis Services
  • One basic check for SQL Server Integration Services packages
  • Multiple reports (view by issue type or server)
  • Ability to save your scan as XML or export the report you’re viewing to HTML

All of this is very exciting.  In the coming month, we will be adding a few more features to the prototype in case we get the opportunity to demo it at a conference like TechEd.  More importantly, we will continue our investigation on a few topics:

  • What level of support will we have for SQL Server 2000?

  • What features and rules from the original version of BPA will we transition?

  • Will we provide the ability for people to write custom rules?

  • Should we localize this tool? 

     

These are four of the most difficult questions we face in the project.  I could write an entire blog entry about the difficulties with each of these topics.  Each one could dramatically change the scope of the project.  The more feedback we get from customers, the better we can judge what is important.  I’ll post a blog entry on one of these four topics within the next two weeks.  Please let me know which one interests you the most.

 

-Paul

Comments

  • Anonymous
    May 27, 2006
    I'd be really interested in having the ability to write my own rules so I could codify the written policies we have for SQL Server and then use BPA to audit servers regularly.

  • Anonymous
    May 31, 2006
    I agree with Simon.  The ability to add rules would be great.....especially from a TSQL standpoint.  The other thing that would be helpful is to have the ability to use 'OR' for prefixes and sufixes.  This way, for example,  if you have more than one prefix for tables, it would at least validate more than just one...it would look at the group.

  • Anonymous
    July 02, 2006
    I tested this tool from its first beta days and I immedialtely liked
    I was and I'm still disappointed by the fact that I can not customize it.
    So I'm more than excited to see a new version that adds custom rules
    As a corporate DBA, I'm managing hundred of servers.
    Such tool will make my life a bit easier by cheching very quickly corporate policies

  • Anonymous
    August 07, 2006
    When is the release?  Can we have some more info on thsi project, please?  

  • Anonymous
    August 15, 2006
    Yes definitly look forward to an ETA.

  • Anonymous
    January 14, 2007
    An update on this would be great. Release date? CTP bits?

  • Anonymous
    January 15, 2007
    I've answered many questions about SQL BPA:

  1. When it will ship
  2. What features are available You can read about it here: http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlrem/archive/2007/01/12/SP2-and-BPA-FAQ.aspx