It gives me great pleasure to announce that as of today, Conchango are making available version 1 of our SQL Server Monitor Gadget for Windows Vista Sidebar.
The gadget does exactly what it says on the tin; it monitors a specified SQL Server database for various metrics and displays them on the Windows Vista Sidebar. It is provided for use by SQL Server DBAs that require a nice'n'easy way of monitoring important metrics on their SQL Server installations. In version 1 the gadget provides the following information:
- Data file size - total file size of the database data files
- Data file used - amount of used space on those data files
- Data file used % - The percentage of the total data size that has been used
- Log file size - total file size of the database log files
- Log file used - amount of used space on those log files
- Log file used % - The percentage of the total log size that has been used
That may seem like a small list but bear with us, we are planning to add more in the future. For now we wanted to get something out there to whet your appetite and solicit some opinion about what you'd like to see in the future. We know there are alot of improvements that can be made but we saw more value in getting this out there early and getting feedback rather than trying to build the "perfect" gadget. If you have any ideas, reply to this blog post with a comment or email me at jamieDOTthomson[AT]conchangoDOTcom. I'm not promising we'll satisfy all requests but we'll do what we can.
Let's show you a demo of it working. Hit play on the video below.
If you want to get hold of the gadget then you can download it from here:
The zip file also includes the video that is embedded here in case you are having trouble viewing it in this blog entry (we're aware that there may be problems in some blog readers).
To install the gadget you will need to be running Windows Vista. Simply unzip the downloaded zip file and double-click on SqlGadget.gadget.This will install the gadget onto your machine and you can then add it to your sidebar and configure it accordingly just as you see in the video.
The last thing I need to do is pass on a massive shout of THANK YOU to my colleague John Rayner who has done a fantastic job of taking my flakey specs and dodgy T-SQL and turning them into a working gadget. Thanks John
Have fun! And don't forget to tell us what you think about the gadget by replying below.
-Jamie
UPDATE: We've released a minor update to the gadget. Read about it here: http://blogs.conchango.com/jamiethomson/archive/2007/08/17/SQL-Server-Monitor-Gadget-v1.0.001.aspx