Author Archives: Tom.Randle

Microsoft’s SQL ROI

By Tom.Randle | Published: February 3, 2010
While browsing the internet yesterday, we stumbled across this site, which attempts to persuade prospective purchasers of database solutions that SQL Server offers measurable long-term cost savings compared to Oracle. Click on the image to see it in action; it’s quite entertaining. It made us chuckle, but we’re not entirely sure what we think about [...]
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Clock Skew

By Tom.Randle | Published: January 22, 2010
Einstein famously discovered that all time is in fact relative. This is all very well when travelling at near-light speed or when considering theoretical inter-galactic spacemen, but for monitoring SQL Servers, knowing the correct time can be a big issue. We’re currently having some pretty brow-furrowing, head-scratching discussions about how to handle the synchronization of [...]
Posted in Metrics | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Garage Check-list Inspired Monitoring UI.

By Tom.Randle | Published: January 21, 2010
I just came across this concept UI for a monitoring widget designed by Ely Sarig. In the description he says: “The design is inspired by garage check-up sheets, displaying information on stained forms, much like a mechanic’s paperwork.” We think it’s brilliant! If only it displayed info for remote servers and SQL Server stats too…! [...]
Posted in Design A Dashboard | Leave a comment

Alert Notification

By Tom.Randle | Published: December 3, 2009
When SQL Response detects a problem on a server, it raises an alert. This alert contains a summary of the problem and information about the state of the system when the alert was generated. The alert will always appear in the main user interface, but you can also choose, on an alert by alert basis, [...]
Posted in Alert | Tagged | 8 Comments

Disk usage on the global overview

By Tom.Randle | Published: October 8, 2009
We think we’re going down the right track with our ‘global overview’, the part of the UI designed to give you a summary of the current status across your entire system, but a lot of you are asking us to show current disk usage in addition to CPU and Memory. The problem is we’re not [...]
Posted in Designs, Metrics | Tagged | 9 Comments

What do you want from a Global Overview?

By Tom.Randle | Published: September 10, 2009
One of the really cool features we’re planning for SQL Response 2 is the Global Overview. This is a kind of ‘front page’ that is designed to draw your attention to any significant issues across your entire enterprise. The global overview is the top level of a hierarchy of ‘overview’ pages that include: A Physical [...]
Posted in Designs | 10 Comments

What do you dislike about installers?

By Tom.Randle | Published: September 3, 2009
We’re in the middle of designing the SQL Response 2 installer at the moment. We’re trying our hardest to make the installation process as painless and as user-friendly as we possibly can. So, we’d like to know: What irritates you most about installers? Have you installed a product recently where the installation process really annoyed [...]
Posted in Designs | 6 Comments