For doing trend analysis, you can query the data directly or export to Excel for charting, etc. I will leave this up to you as it’s often a matter of personal taste or specific work requirements how you analyze it or predict what’s going to happen in the future by extrapolating historical trends.
Summary Table Diagram
I have included this picture of a database diagram to illustrate how the tables used in these 2 schemes fit together.
Conclusion
The purpose of this article is to help you reduce time spent doing mundane, but highly important monitoring work as a DBA or system administrator. With a little work and initiative, you really can help yourself and your organization save time on routine tasks, and make your checking routines sleeker and more efficient.
Tom Pullen has been a DBA for 6 years. He currently works for Oxfam, a large UK charity. He has experience in SQL Server 6.5, 7.0 and 2000. He is married with two children. Contact him at: tpullen@oxfam.org.uk
Copyright 2005 by the author.
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