Author: Peter Whyte
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Get Database File Names and Paths in SQL Server
As a DBA, you regularly need to know where your database files live, how big they are, and how they’re configured to grow. Capacity planning, migration prep, new environment review, disk space incidents: they all start here. This script gives you a full picture of every user database file on the instance: physical path, drive…
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DBA Scripts: Get SQL Agent Job Overview
🔧Part of the DBA-Tools Project, copy/paste SQL Server scripts and health checks.In: Maintenance & Automation › SQL Agent & Jobs Most SQL Server instances end up with a handful of Agent jobs that quietly run backups, index maintenance, and monitoring collectors in the background. Nobody looks at them until something breaks, and by then it…
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DBA Scripts: Get Services Information
🔧Part of the DBA-Tools Project, copy/paste SQL Server scripts and health checks.In: Server & Configuration › Server Inventory A SQL Server instance is really a handful of Windows services working together, and it is surprisingly common for one of them to be quietly misconfigured. The SQL Server Agent service set to Manual startup instead of…
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How to Increase Maximum Characters Displayed in SSMS
🛠️Part of the SSMS Complete Guide, installing, configuring and fixing SQL Server Management Studio. By default, SQL Server Management Studio limits the number of characters displayed per column when using Results to Text. The default limit is 256 characters. If a query or system stored procedure returns more than that, the output is silently truncated.…
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Applying Data Retention Safely in SQL Server
Data retention in SQL Server usually means deleting old data in a controlled and repeatable way. That might be driven by compliance requirements, table growth that’s starting to hurt performance, SQL Server Express size limits, or simply keeping log and audit tables under control. Whether this is a one-off cleanup or a permanent maintenance task,…
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DBA Scripts: Get Backup Coverage
🔧Part of the DBA-Tools Project, copy/paste SQL Server scripts and health checks.In: Backup & Recovery Most production SQL Server environments have backup jobs configured. The question that actually matters is whether those jobs are running, and succeeding, for every database that needs them. A database added last month might never have been folded into the…
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DBA Scripts: Get Instance Configuration Snapshot
🔧Part of the DBA-Tools Project, copy/paste SQL Server scripts and health checks.In: Server & Configuration › Server Inventory Every sp_configure setting on an instance tells a small story: a value someone changed deliberately, a value nobody’s touched since install, or a value that’s been changed but is still waiting for a restart to actually take…
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Understanding WHERE 1=1 and WHERE 1=2 in SQL Queries
In SQL, you will often see queries written using WHERE 1=1 or WHERE 1=2. At first glance, both look pointless. One is always true, the other always false. In practice, both are deliberate patterns used for query construction and control, not filtering logic. They exist to make SQL safer, easier to manipulate, and more predictable…
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DBA Scripts: Get MAXDOP Configuration
🔧Part of the DBA-Tools Project, copy/paste SQL Server scripts and health checks.In: Server & Configuration Max Degree of Parallelism is one of the first things worth checking on any server, and one of the most commonly wrong. The default of 0 lets a single query use every scheduler on the box, which sounds efficient until…
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DBA Scripts: Get Memory Configuration and Usage
🔧Part of the DBA-Tools Project, copy/paste SQL Server scripts and health checks.In: Server & Configuration Max Server Memory is the single most important memory setting on any SQL Server instance, and it’s astonishing how often it’s left unconfigured. Without a cap, SQL Server will happily consume nearly all available RAM for its buffer pool, leaving…
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- Dynamic Data Masking: What a WHERE Clause Still Reveals
- DBA Scripts: Get Log Shipping Status
- SQL Server Row-Level Security: The Filter Does Not Stop Cross-Tenant Writes
- View the Definition of a Stored Procedure in SQL Server
- TempDB Is Full or Still Growing: Find What Is Using It, Right Now
- SQL Server Service Will Not Start: Error 17113, 17058, 1067 and Where the Real Reason Is
- Backups & Recovery (17)
- DBA Scripts (152)
- High Availability (HA) (13)
- Installation & Configuration (49)
- Maintenance (25)
- Migration & Upgrades (14)
- Monitoring (9)
- Performance Tuning (37)
- Security (Encryption & Permissions) (21)
- Storage & Capacity (16)
- T-SQL Fundamentals (15)
- Troubleshooting (94)
- Wait Types (235)