All information you can choose in the HTML report options, you can also choose to be exported in XML format for further processing in some other application, such as Excel:

The Command Line Interface

Just like almost every other ApexSQL software, ApexSQL Clean supports a rich set of command line switches that allows the user to run the tool in scenarios where there is not human interaction necessary and/or possible. One of the first scenarios that come to mind here is to have a Windows task that kicks off on a predefined schedule the analysis of a database on a server during times of less(er) database activity, so that you do not put more loads on the database as absolutely necessary.

Conclusion

The reasons why a database can get bloated with orphaned objects over time are manifold.

• Time itself
• Changing development staff with changing development “styles”
• Less than optimal documentation
• Changing Management paradigms
• …

Typically you will encounter a mixture of the above mentioned reasons and, almost certainly, a whole bunch of reasons not mentioned here and specific to your own case. Ever heard words like: “I don’t know, what that thing is supposed to do. The original developer left the shop long ago, I’m new here and there doesn’t seem to be documentation at all, so I certainly won’t remove anything from that db.”? My conservative guess would be that 1 out of 1 person, at least from the group of veterans of these coding wars, has heard such words before.

But in the end the reasons why are irrelevant. Much more important is that there are unreferenced objects and that they should be removed from a database. And ApexSQL Clean does a good, efficient, and reliable job on such tasks.

]]>