Articles by GRANT FRITCHEY

Backups, What Are They Good For?

Pixar recently confessed, in an engaging video, that Toy Story 2 was almost lost due to a bad backup, but sometimes there is no 'almost'. Grant Fritchey casts a sympathetic eye over some catastrophic data losses, and gives advice on how to avoid what he has...

How to Get Information About Your Backups

By Grant Fritchey

When you need to restore but aren't 100% sure about the contents of your backup files, what do you do? Head to the headers. Grant Fritchey explains how to find the useful bits in these huge stores of information and make sure you restore the right files.

Tuning Red Gate: #2 of Many

By Grant Fritchey

In the last installment, I used the SQL Monitor tool to get a snapshot view of the current state of the servers at Red Gate that are giving us trouble. That snapshot suggested some areas where I should focus some time, primarily in which queries were being...

Tuning Red Gate: #1 of Many

By Grant Fritchey

Everyone runs into performance issues at some point, even Red Gate software. Some of our internal systems were running into some serious bottlenecks. What if I were to, oh, I don't know, use a certain monitoring tool to identify the bottlenecks, figure out...

SQL Cop Review

By Grant Fritchey

Static code analysis is used a lot by application programmers, but there have been surprisingly few tools for SQL development that perform a function analogous to Resharper, dotTest, or CodeRush. Wouldn't it be great to have something that can indicate where...

SQL Test How-To Videos

By Grant Fritchey

Getting started with the new SQL Test is really easy, but once you get started knowing where to go can be a little difficult. I've recorded two, quick little videos showing a couple of pieces of functionality. Please check them out.

Grant Fritchey's SQL Server Howlers

By Grant Fritchey

We decided to ask various well-known SQL Server people to write about their favourite SQL Server Howlers. These are the common misunderstandings about how SQL Server works that end in tears, and plaintive forum questions. Grant Fritchey opens the series with...

7 Preventable Backup Errors

By Grant Fritchey

The loss of a company's data is often enough to put the company out of business; and yet backup errors are generally avoidable with the application of common sense rather than deep technical knowledge. Grant digs into memories of his long experience of giving...

SSMS Tools Pack 2.0

By Grant Fritchey

If you work with SSMS, you'll know how frustrating it can be when tasks you perform every day aren't part of the core features. Malden Prajdic certainly did, which is why he developed his free SSMS Tools Pack. Now on its second version, Grant Fritchey...

Auditing DDL Changes in SQL Server databases

By Grant Fritchey

Even where Source Control isn't being used by developers, it is still possible to automate the process of tracking the changes being made to a database and put those into Source Control, in order to track what changed and when. You can even get an email alert...