How to Update Statistics in SQL Server
Statistics are the optimizer's picture of the data, and that picture ages every time rows change. When a table grows faster than its statistics are refreshed, plans keep being built for the row counts it held weeks ago. Refreshing the statistics is often the fix, and the work is knowing which ones to refresh and with …
Read MoreSQL Server DBCC Commands Guide
Jun 8, 2026 / · 10 min read · sql server dbcc commands database maintenance database administration maintenance scripts sql scripts consistency checks dbcc checkdb dbcc shrinkfile plan cache sys.dm_exec_requests sys.dm_db_log_space_usage sys.dm_exec_cached_plans sys.dm_exec_input_buffer sys.dm_exec_sql_text ·An incident rarely announces which DBCC statement it needs. A log file stops truncating, a query slows after a plan changes, an identity column runs ahead of its table, and each one has a Database Console Command that answers it, sitting next to a few that can make the same situation worse. The DBCC statements are …
Read MoreSQL Server DBCC CHECKDB Guide and Repair Options
Jun 7, 2026 / · 10 min read · sql server database corruption consistency checks database maintenance dbcc commands database administration maintenance scripts sql scripts dbcc checkdb sys.databases ·Running DBCC CHECKDB on a schedule is only the start, because its options change what it checks, how long it takes and what it can do to your data. This post covers the check options, a script that runs the command against every online user database, and the three repair levels, including why REPAIR_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS is …
Read MoreSQL Server DBCC SHRINKDATABASE: When and When Not to Shrink
A one-time data load doubled a data file overnight, the load is done, the rows are deleted, and the file is now mostly empty space. The reflex — reach for DBCC SHRINKDATABASE and give the disk back — is a common way to hurt performance without meaning to. This post explains what shrinking does to your indexes, when it …
Read MoreSQL Server DBCC CHECKIDENT: Check and Reseed Identity
A logging table grew to forty million rows, the bulk of it was archived out, and now only the last week's data remains — but the next insert still gets identity value 40,000,001, leaving a vast gap below it. Or a botched data load left the seed sitting far above the real maximum, and future inserts skip millions of …
Read MoreDBCC DBREINDEX vs ALTER INDEX REBUILD in SQL Server
Open the SQL Agent job history on an instance that has been running for a decade and you will still find DBCC DBREINDEX in a nightly maintenance step, quietly doing its job. It works — which is exactly why nobody has touched it. But it has been deprecated for the better part of twenty years, it locks tables it does not …
Read MoreSQL Server Duplicate and Overlapping Index Detection Script
Duplicate and overlapping indexes waste storage, slow down every write, and split optimizer statistics across redundant copies. This T-SQL script compares each non-heap index in the current database on its first sixteen key columns and surfaces any pair of indexes that overlap, giving the DBA a short list of cleanup …
Read MoreSQL Server Backup Compression: Enable and Verify
Apr 17, 2026 / · 7 min read · sql server backup recovery backup compression sp_configure msdb sql scripts database administration maintenance scripts sys.configurations ·Backup compression reduces the on-disk size of SQL Server backup files and can significantly shorten backup duration by reducing the amount of data written to disk. This post shows how to enable compression at the server level, verify the setting is active, and confirm compression ratios from backup history using the …
Read MoreSQL Server Backup History: Duration and Size Report
Apr 13, 2026 / · 6 min read · sql server backup recovery msdb sql scripts database administration backup monitoring maintenance scripts reporting sys.databases backupset ·Query Backup Duration and File Size from SQL Server History This script queries SQL Server's msdb backup history to report the backup type, start and finish time, duration in minutes, and file size in both megabytes and gigabytes for every backup across all user databases on the server. Purpose and Overview Knowing …
Read MoreSQL Server Agent Job Failure History Report
Apr 11, 2026 / · 8 min read · sql server sql server agent msdb sql scripts database administration job monitoring maintenance scripts reporting sysjobs sysjobhistory sys.server_principals ·Report SQL Server Agent Job Status and Failure History This script queries the SQL Server Agent job history stored in msdb to produce a detailed report of each job's most recent run for each status (failed, succeeded, and so on), failure and success counts over the last 60 days, total lifetime run counts, and job step …
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