Tools and Scripts

Most open source, all free. Scripts, tools, and resources pertinent to SQL Server and beyond.

Table of Contents
T-SQL Scripts
References
SSMS Plugins
Tools
Education
Articles
Other

T-SQL Scripts

• Ola's Maintenance Scripts (opens new window)
• Brent Ozar's First Responder Kit (opens new window)
• Glenn Berry's Diagnostic Queries (opens new window)
• SQL CAT's Tiger Tool Box (opens new window)
• Adam Machanic's sp_WhoIsActive (opens new window)
• Aaron Bertrand's sp_InEachDB (opens new window) - replacement for the undocumented sp_MSForEachDB (opens new window)
• Jeff Moden's DelimitedSplit8k (opens new window) - string splitter function
• John McCall's DBA MultiTool (opens new window) - Suite of administrative scripts

References

• SQL Style Guide (opens new window)
• T-SQL Style Guide (opens new window)
• DBATools Build Reference (opens new window) - Open source SQL Server build tracker
• SQLServerUpdates.com (opens new window) - Brent Ozar's SQL Server build tracker
• MSSQL Waitopedia (opens new window)
• Module Signing Info (opens new window)
• SQL Server & Azure Database Permissions Poster (opens new window)
• The Data Loading Performance Guide (opens new window)
• Database Hiearachy of Monitoring Infographic (opens new window)
• Scheduling Powershell Tasks With SQL Agent (opens new window)
• ColumnScore.com (opens new window) - Quiz to find if you should use columnstore indexes on your table
• Use the Index, Luke! (opens new window) - A site explaining SQL indexing to developers—no crap about administration.
• Modern SQL (opens new window) - A site explaining modern features of the SQL standard & which products use them.
• EndofLife.Date (opens new window) - EOL for MSSQL (and many others).
• Query Store Best Practices (opens new window) - by Erin Stellato

SSMS Plugins

• SQL Sentry Plan Explorer (opens new window)
• Dell Spotlight Essentials (opens new window)

Azure Data Studio Extensions

Micosoft curates a list of first and third party extensions here (opens new window).

Tools

Name	Type	Open Source	Author
DBA Tools (opens new window)	Admin	👍	SQL Collaborative (opens new window)
DBA Checks (opens new window)	Admin	👍	SQL Collaborative (opens new window)
MinionWare (opens new window)	Admin		MinionWare (opens new window)
DLM Dashboard (opens new window)	Devops		Redgate (opens new window)
DBOps (opens new window)	Migrations	👍	SQL Collaborative (opens new window)
Flyway (opens new window)	Migrations	👍	Axel Fontaine (opens new window)
Is It SQL? (opens new window)	Monitoring		Bill Graziano (opens new window)
lowlydba.sqlserver (opens new window) Ansible collection	Admin	👍	John McCall (opens new window)
OpServer (opens new window)	Monitoring	👍	Stack Exchange (opens new window)
Spotlight Cloud Basic (opens new window)	Monitoring		Quest (opens new window)
SQLTop (opens new window)	Monitoring	👍	Channel Advisor (opens new window)
SQL Watch (opens new window)	Monitoring	👍	Marcin Gminski (opens new window)
SchemaZen (opens new window)	Scripting	👍	Seth Reno (opens new window)
mssql-scripter (opens new window) (may be dead)	Scripting	👍	Microsoft
DBDiagram.io (opens new window)	Sharing		holistics.io (opens new window)
Format Text as Table (opens new window)	Sharing		Senseful Solutions (opens new window)
DBFit (opens new window)	Testing		Yavor Nikolov (opens new window)
DB Fiddle (opens new window)	Testing/Sharing		Jack Douglas (opens new window)
SQL Fiddle (opens new window)	Testing/Sharing		Jake Feasel (opens new window)
SQL Query Stress (opens new window)	Testing	👍	Erik Ejlskov Jensen (opens new window)
Paste The Plan (opens new window)	Tuning/Sharing		Brent Ozar Unlimited (opens new window)

Education

• Vertabelo's Academy (opens new window) - Various database patterns and schema design examples
• 5 Rules of Normalization by Marc Rettig (opens new window)
• SQL Murder Mystery (opens new window) - Introduction to SQL as a murder mystery story
• Select Star (opens new window) - Interactive introduction to SQL

Articles

AlwaysOn

• The AlwaysOn Health Model Part 2 - Extending the Health Model (opens new window)
• When Always On Isn't: Handling Outages In Your Application (opens new window) by Brent Ozar
• SQL Server 2016/2017: Availability group secondary replica redo model and performance (opens new window) - Detailed information on parallelism in redo worker threads

Patterns / Anti-Patterns

• SQL Server UPSERT Patterns and Antipatterns (opens new window) by Michael J Swart (opens new window)
• T-SQL Code Smells (opens new window) by Phil Factor (opens new window)
• Fighting Evil in Your Code: Comments on Comments (opens new window) by Michael Sorens (opens new window)
• The Data Loading Performance Guide (opens new window)

Misc

• Erland Sommarskog's articles on SQL Server (opens new window)
• Modern Data Analysis: Don't Trust Your Spreadsheet (opens new window)
• T-SQL Interview Questions (opens new window) by Jeremy Kadlec (opens new window)
• Developer Interview Questions (opens new window) by Brent Ozar
• Tuning Cost Threshold (opens new window)
• The Security of Modern Password Expiration: An Algorithmic Framework and Empirical Analysis (opens new window)

Other

• Wide World Importer Database (opens new window) - Successor to the AdventureWorks sample database for SQL Server 2016+
• Stack Overflow Database (opens new window) - Brent Ozar's packaging of the Stack Overflow database
• idownvotedbecau.se (opens new window) - Linkable downvoting rationale for Stack Exchange comments.
• Open Source Pull Request Template (opens new window) - Whimsical choose-your-own-adventure that climaxes with a customized pull request template by Tal Ater (opens new window)
• SQL Server Kit (opens new window) - Compendium of everything SQL Server & R by Konstantin Taranov (opens new window)