There are several ways you can use SQLDM Mobile with IDERA Newsfeed to make your life as a SQL Server DBA easier. The following tips and tricks can interest you:
- Announce maintenance plans
- Ignore specific stories
- Search for the stories you want
- Inform your coworkers about your server status
- Use bookmarks to track critical servers
- Kill a session remotely
- Run queries to fix issues on remote servers
- Start or stop a service remotely
Announce maintenance plans
You can easily announce upcoming maintenance plans for a monitored SQL Server instance.
- Announce a server maintenance - you can post in a server wall, mentioning key coworkers who can be affected, in the wall of your team leader, mentioning the server, or you can post to your own wall, mentioning the server and key coworkers.
- Announce an application maintenance- You can post on the application wall or on the wall of your team leader, mentioning the application.
Who gets notified?
| Your Action | Who Gets Notified |
|---|---|
Post to the wall of the server,mentioning key coworkers. | The server owner and the coworkers you mentioned. |
| Post to the wall of an application. | The application owner. |
| Post to the wall of your team leader, mentioning the server. | The team leader and the server owner. |
| Post to the wall of you team leader, mentioning an application. | The application owner. |
| Post to your own wall, mentioning the server and key coworkers. | The server owner and the coworkers you mentioned. |
Ignore specific stories
You can easily ignore specific stories by unfollowing them. Unfollowing a story removes the story from you Most Recent Feed. You can unfollow a story even though you are following the server or person who initiated the story.
How do I ignore specific stories?
Find the story in you Most Recent Feed and then click the X next to the story summary.
How do I follow a story later?
If the ignored story becomes important later and you want to follow it again, click Follow in the story summary on the application, server, or the wall of your coworker. Also, you can bookmark a story, so you can access it later.
Search for specific stories
To search a specific story, you can easily revisit performance issues and see how they were resolved. You can search for current and past stories even if they were originated by servers or coworkers you are not following. Also, you can use the activity timeline to find stories that occurred on specific dates, or use bookmarks to track stories.
How do I access the Search feature?
In the SQLDM Console, the Search feature is available at the top of each view of the IDERA Newsfeed interface.
Inform your coworkers about your server status
You can easily warn your coworkers about a critical server status by mention them in a comment on the related status update from the server, post to their walls, or post to the server wall and mention your coworker in the post.
Use bookmarks to track critical servers
Following the actions you can perform when bookmarking a specific story:
- Quickly access to a critical issue without having to scroll through your Most Recent Feed.
- Compile an informal to-do list of issues you want to track over the course of the day or period of time.
- Keep and ongoing, historical record of important issues and their solutions.
When a story is bookmarked, it is permanently saved so you can always return to it later. You can configure the IDERA newsfeed to send you notifications when activity occurs on a bookmark.
The bookmarked stories are not groomed.
Kill a session remotely
You can use SQLDM Mobile to kill a session that is currently connected to a remote SQL Server database.
Following are the steps to kill a session:
- Navigate to the Dashboard tab for the affected server.
- Under Areas, tap Sessions.
- On the Sessions view, tap the Details tab.
- On the Details tab, click the type of session you want to kill.
- On the Sessions view, swipe or search for the specific session, and then tap it.
- On the Session view, click Kill Session.
Run queries to fix issues on remote servers
You can use SQLDM Mobile to run custom, ad-hoc queries on remote SQL Server instances. SQLDM Mobile also provides several default query templates that perform common administrative tasks on the target database.
The custom queries that you run frequently in your environment, you can save them as templates to rerun later. All query templates can be used by any SQLDM Mobile user. Creating query templates also lets your team easily use approved queries that have been tested and optimized for your environment.
Run a query
To run a query, specify the following parameters, and then tap Run Query.
- Select target SQL Server instance
- Select target database (SQLDM Mobile will run your query against the master system database, by default)
- Choose appropriate query template (optional)
- Limit result set to a specific number of rows
When can I run a query?
You can access the Run Query feature from the action menu on any server view in SQLDM Mobile, letting you immediately address a performance issue or resolve an alert.
Does SQLDM Mobile log the queries that are run against monitored servers?
Yes. SQLDM records every query you run in the application event log. Each log entry includes the following information:
- Version of the browser that sent the query
- Date and time when the query was run
- Whether the query belongs to a sequence of batches
- T-SQL code used in the query
Can I use the GO keyword in my query?
Yes. The GO keyword is supported by the Run Query feature.
What is a query template?
A query template is a T-SQL script saved to the SQLDM Mobile Repository. You can use the default query template to get started, and then later save your own query templates for customized troubleshooting and issue resolution.
SQLDM Mobile provides the following default template:
| Template name | What it does? |
|---|---|
| Backup History | Checks when the most recent backup occurred on each database hosted by the selected SQL Server instance, and then calculates how many days have passed since that operation was run. Both values are returned, along with the name of the corresponding database. |
How do I create a query template?
You can save your own query template that contains a T-SQL script you frequently use.
- Type the appropriate T-SQL code into the query text box.
- Tap the Template pull-down menu, and then tap the Save As template option.
- Type a new name, and then tap Save.
Can I delete a template I no longer need?
Yes. Use the Template pull-down menu to select the template you want to delete, and then tap the Delete template option.
Start or stop a service remotely
You can use SQLDM Mobile to start or stop a SQL Server Agent service that is located on a remotely monitored server.
When the selected service is running on a virtual SQL Server instance (A SQL Server instance hosted by a Windows Server cluster), you cannot stop or start the service using SQLDM. Instead, use the native Microsoft SQL Server tools to manage this service.
Follow these steps, to stop or start a service:
- Navigate to the Dashboard tab for the affected server.
- Under Areas, tap Services.
- On the Services view, tap the SQL Server Agent tab.
- Under Agent Status, move the toggle to either Stop or Start.