The document provides an extensive overview of free tools for SQL Server, covering various aspects including security, administration, monitoring, testing, and automation. It highlights specific tools, resources, and best practices for enhancing SQL Server's performance and security. The document also emphasizes the importance of utilizing available resources rather than reinventing existing solutions.

1. SQLintersection
The Ultimate Free SQL Server Toolkit
Kevin Kline
kkline@sqlsentry.com
SQL123

2. Overview
 Relational Engine Tools
 Security
 Administration
 Transact-SQL
 Testing
 Performance
 DTS/SSIS/SQLAgent
 Analysis Services Tools
 Non-SQL Server Tools too good to miss

3. Freebies!
 Free new ebooks (regularly $10) to all requests to sales@sqlsentry.com:

4. © SQLintersection. All rights reserved.
http://www.SQLintersection.com
Query Tuning
 Free Plan Explorer download: http://www.sqlsentry.com/plan-explorer/
4

5. General Security –
Because there is no patch for stupid
 Bookmark it! http://www.sqlsecurity.com
 SQLPing 3.0: discover all SQL Servers.
 Lockdown.sql: locks down rarely used functionality/security holes, while not
breaking common features.
 Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer:
 Perform a security assessment of your Windows Servers.
 Latest version, Jan 2015, is at http://bit.ly/1IJ6bkg.
 Resource Center, with lots of sample scripts, available at http://bit.ly/1PTBiIT.
 Don’t let security be an afterthought

7. SQL Injection – ever heard of locking the door?
 URL Scan v3.1: http://bit.ly/1Pv4uL6
 Can filter requests based on query strings to help mitigate SQL injection and
other attacks which use a query string payload.
 The ability to created custom rules that scan parts of your HTTP requests.
 Code Analysis Tool for .NET: http://bit.ly/1cMPUNg
 A command-line that tool helps you identify security flaws within a managed
code (C#, Visual Basic .NET, J#) application you are developing
 Scans the binary and/or assembly of the application, and tracing the data flow
among its statements, methods, and assemblies.
 Two cool tools (HP Scrawlr and Microsoft Source Code Analyzer for SQL
Injection) have gone extinct.

9. Monitoring
– WHASSUP?!?

10. Monitoring & Troubleshooting
 SP_WhoIsActive, http://bit.ly/1zgEZpT:
 My favorite for finding out user activity. And it now supports Azure!
 Brent’s Blitz, http://www.brentozar.com/blitz/:
 My favorite for SQL Server health check.
 Performance Analysis of Logs (PAL), https://pal.codeplex.com/:
 A rich set of collectors and GUIs to assess performance across many servers.
Good for Windows, SQL Server, and other products like Exchange.
 Internals Viewer, http://internalsviewer.codeplex.com :
 see how data is written at the 8k page level

11. Monitoring & Troubleshooting
 SP_WHOISACTIVE,
http://sqlblog.com/files/folders/beta/entry42453.aspx:
 My favorite for finding out user activity. And it now supports Azure!
 Brent’s Blitz, http://www.brentozar.com/blitz/:
 My favorite for SQL Server health check.
 Performance Analysis of Logs (PAL), https://pal.codeplex.com/:
 A rich set of collectors and GUIs to assess performance across many servers.
Good for Windows, SQL Server, and other products like Exchange.
 Internals Viewer: see how data is written at the 8k page level,
http://internalsviewer.codeplex.com

12. Administration – Suite! Er, sweet!
 SSMS Tools Pack: http://www.ssmstoolspack.com/
 a snap-in that enhances SSMS with CRUD procedure generation, T-SQL
formatted, generated CRUD stored procedures, and much more,
 SQLPSX: http://sqlpsx.codeplex.com
 A boatload of security management PowerShell scripts for SQL Server
 Finebuild: https://sqlserverfinebuild.codeplex.com/
 Makes it easy for anyone to produce a best-practice installation and
configuration of SQL Server.
 SQL Server Migration Assistants:
 Ready to move off of Oracle, Sybase, or Access? http://tinyurl.com/yht5yon
 The 80/20 principle in action.

13. Administration – mo betta
 Microsoft Assessment & Planning Toolkit (MAP):
http://www.microsoft.com/MAP
 Discovers SQL Servers and takes a full inventory of your estate.
 Great for migration planning and consolidation projects.
 Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide: a Microsoft checklist and decision
tree, http://www.microsoft.com/IPD
 Best Practice Analyser: http://bit.ly/1FxcvdS
 Checks your SQL2012 database for potential performance and configuration
issues.
 Determines if the configurations are set according to the recommended best
practices. Reports when they’re different from Microsoft’s recommendation.
 Recommends some solutions. SOME!

14. Administration – mo betta
 Microsoft Assessment & Planning Toolkit (MAP):
http://www.microsoft.com/MAP
 Discovers SQL Servers and takes a full inventory of your estate.
 Great for migration planning and consolidation projects.
 Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide: a Microsoft checklist and decision
tree, http://www.microsoft.com/IPD
 Best Practice Analyser: http://bit.ly/1FxcvdS
 Checks your SQL2012 database for potential performance and configuration
issues.
 Determines if the configurations are set according to the recommended best
practices. Reports when they’re different from Microsoft’s recommendation.
 Recommends some solutions. SOME!

15. Admin Preventative Maintenance Scripting – Joke:
How do you eat an elephant? Punchline…
 AbaPerls, http://tinyurl.com/yez6sq7:
 Automate and manage configurations & schema objects and builds,
 OlaHallengren, http://tinyurl.com/ya72ll6:
 A great collection of PM scripts from Ola Hallengren.
 Microsoft Product Sample Scripts:
 Great scripts for alerts and event notification from Microsoft,
http://tinyurl.com/y8aktck
 DBMinion, http://www.midnightsql.com/minion/:
 Similar features to Ola Hallengren’s script, but more flexible (and complex).
 Best preventative maintenance solution in very large estates.

16. Testing

17. Testing
 tSQLt, http://tsqlt.ogr/:
 a unit testing tool for Transact-SQL code
 Diskspd, https://github.com/microsoft/diskspd:
 An IO workload simulator to test disk IO capabilities.
 Successor to SQLIO and SQLIOSim.
 SQLQueryStress, http://tinyurl.com/ydm55yl:
 Stress test your queries to see how far they can scale
 HammerDB, http://hammerdb.com/:
 Run highly scalable TPC-C and TPC-H against your database servers.

18. Testing
 tSQLt, http://tsqlt.ogr/:
 a unit testing tool for Transact-SQL code
 Diskspd, https://github.com/microsoft/diskspd:
 An IO workload simulator to test disk IO capabilities.
 Successor to SQLIO and SQLIOSim.
 SQLQueryStress, http://tinyurl.com/ydm55yl:
 Stress test your queries to see how far they can scale
 HammerDB, http://hammerdb.com/:
 Run highly scalable TPC-C and TPC-H against your database servers.

19. SSIS and SQLAgent – let automation do the heavy
lifting
 DTLoggedExec:
 Makes logging SSIS inside packages fast & easy while providing lots of
performance info, http://dtloggedexec.codeplex.com/
 SSISUnit:
 A declarative testing tool based on Xunit tailored to SSIS environments,
http://ssisunit.codeplex.com/
 cspJobMonitor:
 Track the activity of all your SQLAgent, http://tinyurl.com/ybvupzg
 BIDS Helper and BIML:
 Visual Studio add-in with oodles of extra features to augment BIDS, IS, and RS,
http://www.codeplex.com/bidshelper/

20. Analysis Services – because we really needed yet one
more way to write SQL queries
 Reporting Services Scripter:
 move reports easily between servers, http://tinyurl.com/ylshp44
 RSBuild:
 executes scripts, publish reports RS & data sources,
http://rsbuild.codeplex.com
 Analysis Services Product Samples:
 loads of cool tools including backup & recovery, activity viewer, tracing, AMO
browser, and Data Mining WebControls,
http://msftasprodsamples.codeplex.com/
 Also available, IS, RS samples
 MDX Performance Analyser:
 collects metrics on your MDX queries,
http://www.codeplex.com/mdxscriptperf

21. Non-SQL Server Tools

22. Non-SQL Server Tools
 PowerGUI: http://www.powergui.org
 Don’t want to learn PowerShell? Use this free GUI tool and it’s huge library of
pre-built scripts.
 Scriptomatic:
 Don’t want to learn WMI? Use this free tool instead,
http://tinyurl.com/yguku2y
 Log Parser:
 Read just about any data source from XML to the Event Log to the Registry,
http://tinyurl.com/58uxe
 mRemote:
 manage all your remote connections from one GUI, http://www.mremote.org/

23. Summary
 Don’t reinvent the wheel! Reuse what’s available.
 Free script-based tools are usually better maintained than Free GUI
tools.
 Microsoft’s versions and release cycle are the biggest issue with free tools
 Remember – you get what you pay for; free tools are free after all

24. Resources
 http://tinyurl.com/ylauses
 My long-running SQLMag Tool Time column.
 http://www.codeplex.com
 A fantastic collection of Microsoft-centric tools, including many for SQL Server
tools, free to registered members
 http://www.sourceforge.com
 Free tools from a large, independent open source community
 http://thisindexed.com
 Great images by Jessica Hagy

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Thank you!
The Ultimate Free SQL Server Toolkit
Kevin Kline, @KEKline, kkline@sqlsentry.com