Most DBAs have their own favorite set of tools and utilities they like to use and so do I. In this blog series, I’ll be introducing you to my favorite tools of the trade. Most of these utilities are made by the members of SQL Server community and all of these have one thing in common, they are free. While people often turn to commercial solutions (if they have the budget to do so), I would consider the following free tools essential for anyone working with databases or database servers.
While these tools are free to download and use, if you do use them I encourage you to go and leave a “thank you” note/post/email for the folks who have put in a lot of hard work to bring us these utilities.
Without further ado, here are some of the contents of my toolkit (in no specific order)!
1. sp_WhoIsActive by Adam Machanic
2. SQL Server Maintenance Solution by Ola Hallengren
3. Diagnostic Scripts by Glenn Berry
4. Plan Explorer Free by SQLSentry
5. PAL Analyzer by Clint Huffman
I’ll add a proper links to the actual reviews to this page, for ease of access, as soon as I get them done.