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.

Bradley Beard is a professional software developer residing in the lovely city of Palm Bay, Florida. He started off designing websites using PHP and MySQL in the late 90’s, and gradually moved on to ColdFusion and SQL Server. His breadth of SQL Server experience began with SQL Server 7, mainly concentrated on SQL Server 2000, and then picked up again in SQL Server 2008. He earned his MCSA: SQL Server 2012 certification in July 2013, and he was the Technical Reviewer for Mike McQuillan’s Introducing SQL Server, also available by Apress.