Professional Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Administration

4.2. Management Studio

As you probably know by now, SQL Server Management Studio is where DBAs spend most of their time. This tool enables you to perform most of your management tasks and to run queries. It's a major evolution of Enterprise Manager (SQL Server 2000's management interface) and uses a light version of Visual Studio 2008. Because this is a professional-level book, we won't go into every aspect of Management Studio, but instead cover some of the more common and advanced features that you might like to use for administration.

4.2.1. Reports

One of the most impressive enhancements to the SQL Server management environment is the integrated reports that help a DBA in each area of administration. Standard reports are provided for server instances, databases, logins, and the Management tree item. Each runs as a Reporting Services report inside of SQL Server Management Studio. Server-level reports give you information about the instance of SQL Server and the operating system. Database-level reports drill into information about each database. You must have access to each database you wish to report on, or your login must have enough rights to run the server-level report.

New in SQL Server 2008 is the capability to write custom reports and attach them to many other nodes in the Object Explorer window.

4.2.1.1. Server Reports

You can access server-level reports from the Object Explorer window in Management Studio by right-clicking an instance of SQL Server and selecting Reports ...