• Blog this on Blogger
• Subscribe to the comments for this post?
• Share this on Facebook
• Tweet This!
• Share this on LinkedIn

This feature has been around for awhile in the Toad product family (SQL Server, DB2, MySQL, and Data Analysts), however it was upgraded for Toad for SQL Server, version 5.0.

Here’s a quick run-down:

Open the Editor
Load up your T-SQL and get ready to have fun. You will need to activate the ‘Group Execute’ panel by mouse-right-clicking in the editor and toggling ‘on’ the ‘Show Group Execute’ item at the bottom of the popup list. Then you can click ‘Enable’ in the Group Execute panel and select which servers you want your script executed against.

Select Your Servers (and Optionally Databases)

Database Level Granularity
You can now optionally define at the database level for each server where you want your scripts executed.

Run the script.
You get a ‘nanny’ warning. I advise you do NOT click the ‘hide’ disclaimer on this popup. At some point you will get distracted and try to truncate logs or drop a table somewhere and accidentally do it against multiple sources.

Insurance Worth Keeping

Review the Results
The results panel will show one line per server/database. Selecting a line brings up the data grid hosting the results for that selected server/database.

Merge the Results Into a Single Grid or Report

See All the Results Merged Together in a Single Set

Voila!
The data grids are extremely configurable. Once you have all the data in a single set, you can choose to group by server or database, hide fields, add aggregate functions like Sum or Average, and of course export to the format you need (like MS Access MDB for @BrentO!)

For your MCM certified Access Pals!

• SQL Azure Support – Connect to SQL Azure and utilize the same Toad features as if it were an on-premise SQL Server database
• Debug Tracing – generate a trace on a piece of code and replay it back later to determine what actually happenedduring execution
• Database Administration Object Explorer – enhanced to provide the ability to filter indexes in the Create/Alter Index window and allows you to postpone any Create/Create or Llike/Alter action
• Collaboration – provides a direct connection to RSS and Twitter feeds, including any Toad community postings
• Query Development – includes productivity-enhancing features for code completion, including object multi-select, the ability to resize the code completion box and parameter hints
• Group Execute – execute a SQL script against each specific database within each instance and merge the results of a group executon into a single result set
• Automation – Import/Export templates allow for the use of a default connection or the connection saved to the Import/Export template
• Project Manager – open a new project or save or save a project using buttons on the Project Manager toolbar

To evaluate this new release of Toad for SQL Server, please visit our dedicated product page.

Thank you,

Toad for SQL Server product management team

• Blog this on Blogger
• Subscribe to the comments for this post?
• Share this on Facebook
• Tweet This!
• Share this on LinkedIn

Up to this point, I have demonstrated my mastery of the Roman Numeral System, Toad’s IntelliSense and Group Execute technology, and Toad’s SQL Optimization technology.

In this post I’ll finish the conversation with an overview of Toad’s Compare and Synch feature set.

For your reading enjoyment and my time constraints and sanity, I will show the Server Compare in a step-by-step manner, and then show the Schema and Data compares as an ‘end result.’ The process for each of the three compares is similar, and once you have grasped the wizard conceptually for one, you should be good to go for the others.

Compare and Synch in a Nutshell

Server Compares
To get started you will obviously need to be able to connect to the two servers in question. You will need to use an Administrator-level account for obvious reasons. For example a lower level account would lack the privileges necessary to compare logins between two different servers.

Provide Connection Information for the Compare

Take notice to the ‘Offline Snapshot’ option for the comparison source or target. Once you have performed a server compare, you are able to save the characteristics of each server to a local file. That file can then be used as a ‘point-in-time’ reference point to the server. This could be useful for administrators that would like to keep track of their servers as they upgrade them from one release or patch set to the next.

After the report is generated, the results are then available for review. Missing, different, and equal properties are displayed by default, although you can toggle each category on or off using the Server Compare toolbar. For this example I have selected only the ‘Different’ category.

Select a property, see the difference, view the Synch script for either direction

The Synchronization is Optional!
If you are just looking for a reporting tool, then this will work fill that need as well. However, if you do need to generate change scripts, then continue reading.

Synch SetA to SetB or go the opposite direction

Once the script is generated, it is up to you to validate it for your task.

Read it, review it, run it, or save it for later!

Schema Compare
This feature unfortunately does not get off to a very strong start. The name is misleading as the feature actually does a DATABASE compare. You can compare databases from different servers or from the same server. The offline snapshot technology is also available here.

The Compare Report is available in multiple formats.

View Differences Side By Side or View the Synch Script for each object

Toad does validate the synch scripts and will warn you if the possibility of data loss occurs. For example this difference report shows a column of length 50 in one database and of 25 in another. For Toad to synch A to B, you would lose upwards of 25 characters on that column.

Script warnings alert you to possible data loss. Remember to validate all scripts!

Compare Data
This may be the most interesting of the compare features. This technology allows a SQL user to compare data between one set of tables to another set. The tables can reside in any database on any server. The tables do not need to share common table or column names. Of course it is easier to setup the compare if the names are the same and if they share common primary keys.

The tool allows you to view table differences side by side at the row and/or column level. You can choose to compare all the data or use a WHERE clause to limit the data being processed. The technology is fairly robust
but will consume quite a bit of PC resources. I have successfully ran a two million to two million row table compare in several minutes. As with all software programs, be careful what you ask for!

Table data differences

For more information on the Data Compares, check out an earlier post of mine on ToadWorld.

• Blog this on Blogger
• Subscribe to the comments for this post?
• Share this on Facebook
• Tweet This!
• Share this on LinkedIn

That’s right folks! Toad for SQL Server has been recognized AGAIN as the best development tool for SQL Server. In a previous post I talked about Toad’s IntelliSense and Group Execute features.

Let’s continue the conversation now with a quick introduction on our SQL Tuning feature.

SQL Optimization
SQL tuning, SQL optimization, SQL plan evaluation, SQL-go-faster: pick your poison, we just want to make your T-SQL more efficient and improve it’s performance profile.

Toad makes this task much more enjoyable. You can concentrate on getting your query ‘right’ in terms of it returning the correct data. Toad then destructs the query and re-builds it using different syntax methods to find the optimal plan.

Toad then gives you the option of testing one or more of these alternatives so you can choose the one best fit for your application.

While in Toad, you can just hit the ‘Optimize the Current Statement’ button, and this will launch you into the Optimizer window.

Help is Just a Click Away!

Tuning Step 1: Evaluate the current Plan and Stats

Tuning Step 2: Generate Alternatives

Tuning Step 3: Execute Selected Alternatives

Tuning Step 4: Evaluate Runtime Stats

Tuning Step 5 (Optional): Suggest and Test Indexes

Scale Test Your Alternatives
With another click, you can also put your queries under load to see which one passes muster. For example, your query might run fine for a single user, but start to break down once you have 10 concurrent sessions running it continuously over a period of time.

Coming Soon: Toad’s Compare and Synch Feature

• Blog this on Blogger
• Subscribe to the comments for this post?
• Share this on Facebook
• Tweet This!
• Share this on LinkedIn

For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past decade, Toad is one of the most popular database administration and development tools for the Oracle RDBMS. It just so happens that Toad is also available for Microsoft’s SQL Server platform.

This blog serves as a quick introduction to Toad for SQL Server for those who may have just heard about it. It seems that many folks find Toad extremely powerful for SQL Server development and administration, as it was just named for the second consecutive year, ‘Best of TechEd‘ in the ‘Database Development’ category by Windows IT Pro® and SQL Server Magazine®.

In the summary for the award announcement, Toad was described as the ‘Swiss Army knife’ for database tools, and had it’s features for Intellisense, Group Execute, SQL Tuning, and Compares singled out as reasons for the award.

I want to spend a few minutes going over these features in detail. If you like what you see, then you can try out the tool for yourself by downloading a 30 day trial from Quest.com.

The Swiss Army Knife of Database Tools
It’s hard to detail everything Toad does, so we often use this comparison. With Toad you get an extremely powerful editor and object browser. These main ‘blades’ are supplemented with a dozen or more utilities to help the SQL Server professional get the job done. Let’s look at a few in detail.

IntelliSense
The easiest way to describe this feature is probably to show it. But to put it into words, it can be described as technology in the editor that attempts to automatically complete your keystrokes.
Here’s the most basic use of the tool. Start typing and let Toad pop-up a list of objects or calls that might satisfy your query/script.

In this case I had AdventureWorks set as my current database and asked for a list of tables that belonged to the ‘Person’ schema. I can now click into that object. I could also start typing and use the CTRL+Period keystroke to have Toad auto-complete the object if possible.

Here’s another example:
Let’s say I want to make a call to a SQL command, i can mouse-right-click and ‘Snippet – Insert a Snippet.’ Once you get to your call, you can then use SHIFT+F1 on the command to bring up the documentation for that snippet.

Once you’ve finished your masterpiece query or script, you can now execute that in Toad with F5. Or, you could execute that set of code against multiple databases.

Group Execute
This feature does exactly what it sounds like – allows you to take one or more commands and issue them concurrently against multiple servers.

I think it goes without saying that this feature is both powerful and dangerous – as are most of our favorite technologies. You do get a ‘Are you sure’ prompt before any of your scripts are executed against multiple servers.

More to come
I’d rather keep this in blog format than do an entire tech brief on Toad, so we’ll stop here and pick this discussion back up later in Part 2.

The editors were quick to point out that “Developers and DBAs get a lot of bang for the buck with this [Toad for SQL Server] comprehensive toolset. Quest Toad is a great set for administrators or developers with crossover responsibilities.”

We recently released version 4.6 of Toad for SQL Server which includes these new features that DBAs and database developers are sure to welcome:

• Advanced Group Execute – execute SQL against multiple database instances, intelligently group results, and save query and SQL Server connections for later execution
• Connection Colors – optionally color code connection tabs to provide a visual indication of the type of server to which you are connected
• Trace Management – see a list of running traces on the SQL Server instance, examine bound events and filters, and optionally pause or stop traces
• Pre-Defined SQL Formats – select a pre-defined SQL formatting template or create your own to quickly format your code based on company standards
• DBA Query Code Snippets – execute interesting queries from our included set of DBA Code Snippets that cover: Backup & Restore, Jobs, Server Information, SQL Activity, Table and Index information including fragmentation, and Trace Activity
• And more…

Combine that with our outstanding set of included features:

• SQL Tuning –performance tuning with automated optimization and benchmarking
• Compare and Sync  –compare and synchronize servers, schemas, and data to easily identifying differences between environments / databases
• SQL Script Recall – a time-saving feature designed to automatically capture and eliminate the need to retype commonly used SQL statements
• Transaction Log Reader — audit and recover data and schema stored in transaction log files by undoing or redoing any operation and reconstructing transactions
• Job Manager – an Outlook-style management console for SQL Server Agent Jobs and Windows Tasks
• Debugger – debug T-SQL scripts and stored procedures
• IntelliSense –simplify T-SQL script creation through our configurable keyword auto completion feature
• Version Control –integrates with your Visual Source Safe (VSS), Concurrent Version System (CVS), Subversion, and Team Foundation Server (TFS) version control systems
• Reporting, Charting, and Pivot tables 

Toad for SQL Server also has this transaction log reader built-in, too!

• Quest Discovery Wizard for SQL Server 3.0 Beta
• Toad for SQL Server 4.6

Discovery Wizard for SQL Server is our freeware SQL Server discovery tool. If you do not have a comprehensive list of SQL Servers in your environment, you can use the Discovery Wizard to check your network for installed instances of SQL Server. If you already have a comprehensive list of instances registered in Toad for SQL Server, you can skip to the next section.

The Discovery Wizard uses a variety of scan methods to search for SQL Servers by Domain or IP Address, including:

• Domain searching using NetEnum discovery
• Domain searching using Active Directory
• IP Scan using Network Registry
• IP Scan using WMI
• IP Scan using Login Attempt
• IP Scan using TCP Connection

Select the scan method (Domain or IP Address), enter the domains and/or IP Address ranges, check the appropriate scan types, and click the Start button.

The Discovery Wizard maintains a list of login credentials for each discovered instance. Right-click on instance and select the Test Connection option to enter the login credentials and then select the Collect Data option to query the instance. Once this is done, you’ll see a list of all the interesting SQL Server and Operating System information as well as the installed LiteSpeed version:

If you don’t have a comprehensive list of SQL Server instances, this is a good place to start. But you can do even more when you combine the results of the Discovery Wizard with the Toad for SQL Server 4.6 Group Execute functionality.

Group Execute is a feature of Toad that allows a user to easily run a query across multiple SQL Server instances. Using this feature, we can query each instance for LiteSpeed licensing information, and then review these results in Toad or export to Excel.

First things first. If you used the Discovery Wizard to find your instances, you can easily export them to Toad using the “Export to Toad for SQL Server” option on the main menu.

This feature creates a compatible Toad Connection file which you can then import into Toad using the Import function on the Toad Connection Manager:

Once your connections are imported into Toad, connect to any instance, open an Editor window, and select the Group Execute tab on the left (default location). If you don’t see it, right-click in the Editor and select the “Show Group Execute” function.

First check the “Enable Group Execute” option in the Group Execute tab. Second, select the instances you want to check for LiteSpeed. In order for Group Execute to work, you must save login credentials for each connection so Toad can automatically connect, so make sure this information is entered in the connection properties before proceeding.

Now we’ll write a simple query to check for LiteSpeed on each instance. This T-SQL batch executes the LiteSpeed Licensing extended stored procedure if it is installed in the master database:

IF EXISTS (

  SELECT 0

  FROM master..sysobjects where name = N'xp_sqllitespeed_licenseinfo')

EXEC master.dbo.xp_sqllitespeed_licenseinfo

GO

Let’s save the file before executing. Use the default TEF file format. This Toad file format saves both the selected connections and the SQL statement in a single file to make it easier to execute in the future.

Last step is to execute the SQL. Toad automatically connects to each instance and runs the query. If there is a connection or execution problem, the Status column next to each connection will indicate there was an error. Simply click on the Messages tab for more detail about the issue and try and correct.

The results are combined into a single grid for easy review. You’ll notice a “Connection” column in the output. This allows you to see which SQL Server each row of results belongs to. Looking at the Evaluation column, you can determine the type of license:

• 0 = a permanent license that does not expire
• 1 = a license that is only good for a specified number of days, like the built-in 15 day trial key (see the Evaluation Days columns)
• 2 = A license that expires on a specific date (see the Expires column)

If you prefer working in Excel, simply right-click the results and select the Quick Export to Excel option.

You now have a repeatable way to not only discover your installed SQL Servers, but also check to see where you have LiteSpeed deployed.

Toad does that. Connect to the source SQL Server in Toad and click the Migrate Security button in Connection Manager:

Migrate Security in Toad for SQL Server

The Migrate Security wizard starts and asks which logins you’d like to copy.  It gives you a script that you can copy/paste, or just tell Toad which server you’d like to run it against.  This works with SQL Server 2000, 2005, and 2008.