Tuesday, May 28, 2013

New Releases!


I don't always blog about new versions, but today I do - because there are 3 new versions released today!

Here's what's new:
ClipTable:
- Repository instant groups by version has been fixed
- Advanced options now allow you to view ClipTable's main parsing engine messages
- UI enhancements
- v1.0.3.9 Released

Database File Explorer:
- Extended table properties: Estimated row size, index drill-down from column and more...
- On Database-based view, each drive (used by the database) will not also show the exact database size on that drive
- Better size unit display (kb/mb/gb/tb) - everywhere
- Animated indicator icon on TreeView when loading special analysis data
- Repository: Fixed some stability issues
- Repository: Fixed instant-grouping by version, added # of servers icon for each version
- UI enhancements
v1.0.3.0 released


Log Table Viewer
- Added support for auto server load (from repository)
- Server info changed to DoccoLabs standard server window
- Maximum log file size modified to 2mb
- Repository: Fixed instant-grouping by version, added # of servers icon for each version
v2.0.2.0 Released

Get it all here: http://www.doccolabs.com
If you already have it installed, you'll get a message allowing you to upgrade automatically.

Enjoy and as always - share your feedback.

Cheers,
Adi



Tuesday, May 21, 2013

What's taking my space?

Here is a common scenario I bet you've had - if you are, or were a Database Administrator;
You receive an alert, indicating that a certain drive (either storage or local) is running out of space.
And it's painted RED of course, to make sure you're not smiling!

If your alerting system is configured to give you some 'grace' time (i.e. 1% free space left), you have just a little time to figure out which databases/tables are taking that space.

In this post, I am going to show some samples from our Database File Explorer on how you can quickly troubleshoot such cases.
Big emphasis on the "some" - there is a full set of features not shown here.

So, let's begin on the main screen, showing me which drives are being used by my databases: (already letting you distinct between database space and other "stuff" on that hard drive)

Great! Now let's have a look on a graph showing me a pie slices for all databases.
Click on the Chart menu --


Choosing "Databases Size", and getting this:



OK. I can clearly see that there are two databases taking almost 100% of my disk space. Let's drill into one of them:


I've selected the 2nd largest database. If you look at the screenshot above you can see that it's using 2 drives (E:, F:)
Now note something interesting - When looking at the "Top 10 Tables by Size", I can quickly see that there is one table, taking 68% out of the entire database space.

I'm going to right-click the table and choose "Table Properties"



Getting a lot of useful information here, but something specific caught my eyes - note that this 85gb table is less than 20% data, and about 80% indexes!


 So the next step would be drilling into the indexes in order to figure our which indexes are consuming so much storage space.

I'm going to click on the "Chart" button below: 
And get this screen:


OK. See the last line on the graph legend? That's the "Data", and the rest is all index.

Going back to the previous window, I'm going to expend the "Indexes" node and get the list of all the indexes and their sizes/filegroups.


I've expended one of the indexes (taking almost 13gb) and saw it's built from multiple columns, where one (ApiKey) is indexed, while the rest are INCLUDED columns. This is a common problem, since included columns data is stored on the index leaf level. So while tempted to use for query performance reasons, including many fields - especially strings/blobs, will create huge indexes!

To sum things up - I've used Database File Explorer to quickly understand what's taking my disk space.
This is only a small part of what this app has to offer. (I will soon post a video showing a full demonstration of the product)
If you don't have it already, get it here:
http://doccolabs.com/products/dbfileexplorer