SQL Server DBA Dashboard

Let me show you one of the “Database Information” Reports. Remember you can only see the “Database Information” reports section if you bring up the “SQL Server DBA Dashboard” from the context of a database node within the “Object Explorer” section of SSMS. Below is a report that shows the record counts for each table in the AdventureWorks database.

Note this report also supports sorting on any one of the columns, and scroll bars are provided because the report is larger than a single screen worth of information.

Custom reports can be also be printed or exported to a file in either Excel or PDF format. To print or export a given report just right click in the report window, and select the “print” or “Export” option. Since you can’t highlight and copy text from a custom report window, the “Export” function is a useful method to save the reports into a format that you can then edit. Being able to edit an exported report lets you copy some of the report text into the clipboard. This is really handy when you want to get the text of one of those resource intensive queries, or the “create index” statement from the “Missing Indexes” report.

Obtaining the SQL Server DBA Dashboard

To “SQL Server DBA Dashboard” code is easy to install into any environment provided you are running SQL Server 2005 SP2. The code for the dashboard consists of a number of rdl files, some stored procedures, and one SQL Agent job. I have packaged up the code into an “msi” file to help simplify the sharing of this code with others. If you are interested in obtaining this code, you can download it from “SQL Server DBA Dashboard” link on my website at: http://SQLServerExamples.com.