How can I see which tables are changed in SQL Server? - sql

I have a database which I didn't make and now I have to work on that database. I have to insert some information, but some information must be saved in not one table but several tables. I
can use the program which have made the database and insert information with that. While I am doing that, I want to see that which tables are updated. I heard that SQL Server Management Studio has a tool or something which make us see changes.
Do you know something like that? If you don't, how can I see changes on the database's tables? If you don't understand my question, please ask what I mean. Thanks
Edit : Yes absolutely Sql Profiler is what I want but I am using SQL Server 2008 R2 Express and in Express edition, Sql Profiler tool does not exist in Tools menu option. Now I am looking for how to add it.
Edit 2 : Thank you all especially #SchmitzIT for his pictured answer. I upgraded my SQL Server Management Studio from 2008 R2 express edition to 2012 Web Developer Edition. SQL Profiller Trace definitely works.

I agree with #Lmu92. SQL Server Profiler is what you want.
From SQL Server Management Studio, click on the "Tools" menu option, and then select to use "SQL SErver Profiler" to launch the tool. The profier will allow you to see statements executed against the database in real time, along with statistics on these statements (time spent handling the request, as well as stats on the impact of a statement on the server itself).
The statistics can be a real help when you're troubleshooting performance, as it can help you identify long running queries, or queries that have a significant impact on your disk system.
On a busy database, you might end up seeing a lot of information zip by, so the key to figuring out what's happening behind the scenes is to ensure that you implement proper filtering on the events.
To do so, after you connect Profiler to your server, in the "Trace properties" screen, click the "Events Selection" tab:
You probably are good to uncheck the boxes in front of the "Audit" columns, as they are not relevant for your specific issue. However, the important bit on this screen is the "Column filters" button:
This is where you will be able to implement filters that only show you the data you want to see. You can, for instance, add a filter to the "ApplicationName", to ensure you only see events generated by an application with the name you specify. Simply click on the "+" sign next to "Like", and you will be able to fill in an application name in the textbox.
You can choose to add additional filters if you want (like "NTUsername" to filter by AD username, or "LoginName" for an SQL Server user.
Once you are satisfied with the results, click "OK", and you will hopefully start seeing some results. Then you can simply use the app to perform the task you want while the profiler trace runs, and stop it once you are done.
You can then scroll through the collected data to see what exactly it has been doing to your database. Results can also be stored as a table for easy querying.
Hope this helps.

Although you describe in your question what you want, you don't explain why you want it. This would be helpful to properly answer your question.
ExpressProfiler is a free profiler that might meet your needs.
If you're looking to track DDL changes to your database, rather than all queries made against it, you might find SQL Lighthouse useful, once it is released in Beta shortly.
Disclosure: I work for Red Gate.

Do you know something like that? If you don't, how can I see changes
on the database's tables? If you don't understand my question, please
ask what I mean. Thanks
Red gate makes a lot of great tools. You can always make a database comparison. That will require that you make a backup, then doing whatever you want to do, and the compare the two databases, there is a free trial, works perfect to compare which tables has changed (deleted/inserted and modified)
http://www.red-gate.com/products/sql-development/sql-data-compare/
what you might maybe be looking for is "SQL Server Profiler". It's a SQL monitor where you can see all the SQL queries running real time.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa173918(v=sql.80).aspx
Hope that helps you.

As far as I know SQL Profiler tool is not included in the Express edition of SQL Server (only Developer edition contains it). Maybe you can purchase it separately.
If you want you can try this https://sites.google.com/site/sqlprofiler/ free tool for profiling. Maybe it has limitations, but it you can check it.
There are also some profiling tools for integration with Visual studio, and also the ReSharper has InteliTrace (if you are using the tool at all).
Cheers.

Related

How can I get SSMS to provide Auto Completion for SQL Azure?

I'm trying to identify a SQL Server Management Studio option (when writing/running queries) that provides table/column auto-complete functionality in the query editor. Unfortunately, SSMS seems to stop giving you Intellisense when you're connected to a SQL Azure database. Is there any way to fix this?
Are there any options, hacks, plugins or anything else that can accomplish this?
I've finally stumbled upon an option. It's non-ideal but it is certainly a huge step in the right direction!
dbForge SQL Complete is a SSMS plugin that replaces SSMS's built-in Intellisense with its own auto-complete engine. This is a HUGE improvement when connected to SQL Azure, but so far the free version feels like a step backwards when connected to traditional SQL Server instances. Overall, I think we're going to prefer using this over not using it. I'll come back in a couple days to report how well (or not) it's going.
At least it's an option, though!
New Release of SQL Server Management Studio V17.2 now support Intelliscence so no need to have any other tools for this.
Please note that this will only work in case of SQL Server Authentication, that means logged in using SA Instance.
https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/3100677/ssms-2016-would-be-nice-to-have-intellisense-on-azure-sql-databases
Visual Studio have enabled basic IntelliSense for Azure SQL, but it isn't avalaible easily.
You have to click on table, select from drop menu DROP AND CREATE TO -> New query window and then IntelliSense will work. If you simply use New query it will not.

Hiding statements from SQL Server Profiler (or other observers)

In SQL Server 2008 R2, I would like to execute a statement that I want to be invisible to the SQL Profiler or other means of observing user queries. Is there a way to control what is displayed by SQL profiler?
I would like to execute something like:
SELECT 'MyPassword' INTO #passwordTable
I don't want to show 'MyPassword' through SQL Server Profiler or other means. Any ideas?
Essentially, no, you can't. You used to be able to do this by adding a comment like this into the batch or statement:
-- sp_password
But this no longer works. Why aren't you hashing your password?
Well, you have to be a server administrator to run the SQL Profiler, so even if you could prevent it from seeing the command, the user could just go grab the password table anyway. Ideally you would be storing hashes of the passwords rather than the passwords, making any viewing from the profiler useless.
If you really want to try and keep the profiler from seeing the statements, you could try a third party tool like this: http://www.dbdefence.com/support/dbdefence-documentation/
I have no idea if it works though, or how reputable that company is.
Denis, Aaron is correct, there is nothing like an "invisible statement", you can't tweak SQL Profiler to NOT show statements: once aboard, one can see all statements running in the DB.
You need to obfuscate this sensible data before submitting it to the DB. There are some obfuscated methods available (one-way hash, symmetric algoritms, home-made methods), you need to choose the more suitable method to your needs and implement it. Unfortunatelly, there is no free-lunch to your case...
I have seen a product called DBDefence.
It hides SQL statements from the profiler completely. I do not know how do they do it.
I use free version because I have small database.
In earlier versions of SQL Server it was possible to add a comment --sp_password
but not in SQL Server 2008 and above.
I don't see the point, really. If one is able to view a query with SQL profiler, surely he could access the database to view the actual data.
The key is to not store sensitive data (like passwords) in clear text.
Preventing people to use SQL profiler will come down to applying the proper security configuration on your SQL Server.

SQL Server activity monitor show all queries

I'm using SQL Server 2005, and I'd like to know if there is any possibility to watch every query sent to SQL server?
SQL Server Management Studio has a built-in tool called the Activity Monitor which gives me nearly what I am searching for in the "Recent Expensive Queries Pane"
This pane shows information about the most expensive queries that have been run on the instance over the last 30 seconds.
I need exactly this for all recent queries, not just the expensive ones...
Can anyone help me?
Name a tool, or give me a hint what to search for...
To watch every query sent to SQL server using SQL profiler, you can use one of SQL Profiler predefined templates. It's TSQL_Duration.
It's designed to track completed stored procedures and TSQL code.
The trace will show you exactly the batch executed.
You can expand the events tracked and columns shown.You can find more information here: How To: Use SQL Profiler
The same feature is also available in ApexSQL Comply, an auditing tool that uses SQL traces to capture the events, then stores them in a central repository database, and provides built-in and custom reports where you can easily filter the transactions, and export them as Excel, Word, or PDF files.
Disclaimer: I work for ApexSQL as a Support Engineer
You're looking for SQL Profiler, it's usually installed along with SSMS.

How do I edit a text field (or ntext) in SQL Server 2000 or 2005 using the GUI?

Is there a way to do this with SQL Server tools?
If not, is there a 3rd party tool that does this?
There doesn't seem to be a good way to edit longer text columns in the SQL Server Managers for SQL Server 2000 or 2005. While SQL Server Manager is really not for editing data in your db, what other tool does Microsoft provide that would normally allow you to do this? Every other field is pretty easy to edit, except long text fields. In Access, you could hit shift-f2 and it would pop up a nice dialog to edit your text in.
alt text http://techinterview.org/edit.png
Generally, SQL Management Studio is an administrative tool for your database and not meant for data entry other than a quick edit here or there. Generally you would script the data or it would be entered by an application that uses the database for persistence.
(Although I have pointed Access to my SQL Server DB for a better quick and dirty UI.)
This may fight your bill - SQL LOB Editor.
The other option you might want to look at is EMS SQL Studio for SQL Server.
Marc
If you are specifically after a nice big multi-line edit dialogs, then yes you definitely need to look outside of the Microsoft SSMS line of tools. They don't support it.
This is just stupid. Enterprise Manager for SQL Server 2000 handled multiline text just fine. Just silly to go backward and loose functionality that was pre-existing. Not like it is rocket science to reproduce formatted text. Someone really dropped the ball on this one.
In the Management Console, isn't it possible to do an "Open Table" context-menu action and then edit the data from there?
I totally recommend DBVisualizer. The nice thing about it is, it supports a long list of databases and generic all JDBC Drivers (since it is written in Java). You can browse your various databases, change data and explore schema in nice graphs. It comes as a free and a personal edition for 149 $ and is totally worth it! Look at this matrix for a comparison.
You'll be able to edit text and ntext in SQL Server 2000, 2005 and surly for upcoming versions as well.
If I had to make the edits only occasionally I would probably use SQL Query Analyzer and just script the UPDATE command.
If that was too inconvenient I would next look at linking to the database in Access, and to really quick and dirty ease of use I would just use an AutoForm to generate a UI for the table. If you don't have Access I believe OpenOffice Base can connect through ODBC and has similar form building functionality.

Logging ALL Queries on a SQL Server 2008 Express Database?

Is there a way to tell SQL Server 2008 Express to log every query (including each and every SELECT Query!) into a file?
It's a Development machine, so the negative side effects of logging Select-Queries are not an issue.
Before someone suggests using the SQL Profiler: This is not available in Express (does anyone know if it's available in the Web Edition?) and i'm looking for a way to log queries even when I am away.
SQL Server Profiler:
File → New Trace
The "General" Tab is displayed.
Here you can choose "Save to file:" so its logged to a file.
View the "Event Selection" Tab
Select the items you want to log.
TSQL → SQL:BatchStarting will get you sql selects
Stored Procedures → RPC:Completed will get you Stored Procedures.
More information from Microsoft: SQL Server 2008 Books Online - Using SQL Server Profiler
Update - SQL Express Edition:
A comment was made that MS SQL Server Profiler is not available for the express edition.
There does appear to be a free alternative: Profiler for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition
There is one more way to get information about queries that has been executed on MS SQL Server Express described here.
Briefly, it runs smart query to system tables and gets info(text, time executed) about queries(or cached query plans if needed). Thus you can get info about executed queries without profiler in MSSQL 2008 Express edition.
SELECT deqs.last_execution_time AS [Time], dest.TEXT AS [Query]
FROM sys.dm_exec_query_stats AS deqs
CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_sql_text(deqs.sql_handle) AS dest
ORDER BY deqs.last_execution_time DESC
…Late answer but I hope it would be useful to other readers here…
Using SQL Server Express with advanced auditing requirements such as this is not really optimal unless it’s only in development environment.
You can use traces (www.broes.nl/2011/10/profiling-on-sql-server-express/) to get the data you need but you’d have to parse these yourself.
There are third party tools that can do this but their cost will be quite high. Log explorer from ApexSQL can log everything but select and Idera’s compliance manager will log select statements as well but it’s cost is a lot higher.
You can log changes. SQL Server 2008 will make this especially easy with Change Data Capture. But SQL Server isn't very good at logging SELECTs.
It is theoretically possible with the profiler, but it will kill your performance. You might "get away with it" on your desktop, but I think you'll notice your machine acting slow enough to cause problems. And it definitely won't work after any kind of deployment.
One important point a couple others have missed already: unless they changed something for 2008 I didn't hear about, you can't trigger a SELECT.
Just for the record, I'm including the hints to use DataWizard's SQL Performance Profiler as a separate answer since it's really the opposite to the answer pointing at SQL Server Profiler.
There is a free trial for 14 days, but even if you need to buy it, it's only $20 for 3 servers (at the moment of writing, 2012-06-28). This seems more than fair to me considering the thousands everybody using SQL Server Express edition has saved.
I've only used the trial so far and it offers exactly what the OP was looking for: a way to trace all queries coming in to a specific database. It also offers to export a trace to an XML file. The paid version offers some more features but I haven't tried them yet.
Disclaimer: I'm just another developer messing with DBs from time to time and I'm in no way affiliated with DataWizard. I just so happened to like their tool and wanted to let people know it existed as it's helped me out with profiling my SQL Server Express installation.
I would either use triggers or use a third party software such as Red Gate to check out your SQL log files.
Seems that you can create traces using T-SQL
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/283790/
That might help.
The SQL query below can show simple query logs:
SELECT last_execution_time, text
FROM sys.dm_exec_query_stats stats
CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_sql_text(stats.sql_handle)
ORDER BY last_execution_time
This is how it looks like below: