Professional SQL Server® 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting

Chapter 14. Using Management Studio Reports and the Performance Dashboard

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER

• How to get basic troubleshooting information by pointing and clicking in SQL Server Management Studio

• Where to get more reports from Microsoft for even deeper information

• The basics of building your own reports

SQL Server 2005 brought with it a number of built-in SQL Server Reporting Services reports for use inside SQL Server Management Studio. This allows users to get insight into all aspects of the database including schema information, engine health and performance. Database administrators could right-click on objects such as servers or databases, click Reports, and access a variety of graphical dashboards. These reports provide valuable troubleshooting data that SQL Server normally hides in difficult to access places like system tables and dynamic management views (DMVs).

Note

Because most of the reports rely on the DMVs and the default trace, both of which were new in SQL Server 2005, they do not work on SQL Server 2000 instances.

Service Pack 2 for SQL Server 2005 added the ability to include your own custom reports, and the Microsoft Customer Support Services (CSS) team for SQL Server took advantage of this feature to create a custom set of reports called the Performance Dashboard.

In SQL Server 2008, Microsoft shifted focus away from SSMS reports in favor of the new Management Data Warehouse (MDW). The MDW addresses some weaknesses of the Standard Reports and the Performance Dashboard, ...