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SQL Guard HOWTO
Anti Blocker strategies
SQL Guard 2000 is a tool for software developers, quality assurance managers and database administrators for Microsoft SQL servers. It was developed during one of my projects and has since been used in several projects and improved. The current version of SQL Guard supports versions 7.0 and 8.0 (2000) of the MS SQL server.
SQL Guard 2000 monitors the SQL server for block situations, file size and response times. The monitoring intervals are configurable.
It is especially useful when an application is in the pilot or beta testing phase, when an SQL server is used as a backend for an application considered to be "unstable" or when conducting tests of performance and transaction security for an application.
Block situation check
The MS SQL server can handle deadlocks with no problem. The problems start when there are programming errors, and a database process fails to conclude a transaction. This process can then paralyze operations for the entire database.
SQL Guard checks at configurable intervals whether a database process is blocking resources that another process is waiting for (block situation). If this situation is detected, the program records this immediately in the Guard log. This log records all information that can help to identify the blocking process (process ID, user name, workstation name, input buffer, output buffer, list of blocked resources and much more). If the blocking process is still blocking other processes at the time of the next check, this is also recorded, so that it can be determined how long the block situation existed.
If the SQL detects the same process several times in a row, it closes the blocking database process, thus ensuring that all other processes continue to function (the time that expires before the blocking process is shut down can be configured). The user at the workstation that caused the blocking and a configurable number of administrators are informed of the event via "net send".
This makes it possible to achieve the following goals:
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File size check
If desired, SQL Guard 2000 can monitor the file size of any file. (The file must be available in the file system).
Three escalation levels can be configured. If the monitored file exceeds the configured size for an alarm level, the alarm is activated. This is recorded in the Guard log. A configurable "external" process is initiated. This is generally a batch file, which can notify administrators via "net send", for example.
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Response time check
This feature is a simple performance test.
At regular intervals, SQL Guard attempts to execute standard operations on a database. During this test, the response time of each individual action is measured. The data is summarized and logged. The log data can be viewed directly or prepared in graphic form using Excel, for example. This makes it possible to draw conclusions about the capacity utilization of the system.
This function is useful especially in test cases.
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