Introducing The Darling Data Blocking Monitor App

Introducing The Darling Data Blocking Monitor App

Video Summary

In this video, I introduce a new application developed by my friend Josh Darnell to help monitor blocking on SQL servers. This tool uses SP WhoisActive to notify users immediately when blocking occurs, providing a more proactive approach compared to relying solely on SQL alerts or other methods. If you’re already a member of my YouTube channel and have purchased any of my training materials, you can download this application now and start monitoring your SQL servers for blocking issues. The app allows you to add the servers you care about and receive notifications directly when blocking happens. I also walk through the setup process and demonstrate how it works in real-time, showing off its features such as detailed blocking chains and query plans.

Full Transcript

Erik Darling here with Darling Data. And in today’s video, we’re going to talk about kind of a cool new add-on application that I wanted to develop to help people out in the world monitor blocking on their SQL servers. A lot of my clients have requested something like this because what happens is they’re not sitting there watching their SQL servers all the time. They just want to know when blocking is happening, but they don’t want to like sit there and rely on like SQL alerts and other stuff like that. So I had a friend of mine, Josh Darnell, develop this application that runs SP WhoisActive that like will tell you when blocking occurs. And the whole idea of it is that you get a more immediate notification about blocking than if you are, than like, you know, almost any other way. So if you’ve signed up for a YouTube channel membership, or if you paid for a membership or if you paid for a membership or if you paid for my training right now, you can go download and use the application right now. You can add in the servers that you care about and get notified when blocking occurs. So in my videos, when I talk about like, like signing up for a membership and the link down in the video description, that’s what you do and you should see a members only post with a link to download this. Also in my videos, when I talk about if you buy my training, you can get all of it for with that discount.

Again, link in the link in the video description for about 150 USD for life. You can also go download this right now as part of the training. If you if you’re looking to access it via the training, it’s going to be under the locking and blocking course is going to be a little zip way down at the bottom that says block monitor. That’s what you download in order to get it. Right now it is Windows only. And it only supports Windows and SQL authentication. There’s we’ll talk about roadmats roadmats stuff in a minute. But of course, two people who this wouldn’t have been possible without Josh Darnell, web developer extraordinaire who did the actual application work on this. You can find him at Josh the coder dot com. And of course, my friend Adam mechanic who gave me permission to use SP who is active in this is like a scripted thing. And of course, you can find SP who is active the script itself at who is active dot com. There are some again roadmap items that are on the list that just aren’t aren’t aren’t in there yet. More filtering based on what who is active allows you to filter on some per connection filtering stuff. Saving off historical blocking right now if you close out the application, you lose the blocking stuff that was in there before but working on that. And then more connection options for cloud stuff. I think like intro or whatever.

I don’t have an exact timeline on this because you know Josh is a busy fella and he works on this as he can. So this stuff will get in there. It’s just not like an immediate timeline thing. But let’s go kind of look at the application and see what it looks like and what it does. So we of course have a little about screen that tells you a little bit about the application. We have the global connection settings. So minimum block duration and minimum block session count and then the manage connections window where you manage your connections. Of course, you need the server name and if you want Windows authentication, leave that checked. If you don’t want Windows authentication, just uncheck that so you can enter in a username and password there. But then once once once that’s all in there, you should like and you get blocking. You should see a little notification pop up. It looks like this down here. This little window will pop up in the corner that says new blocking has occurred. And in the application itself, you’ll see a line that looks like this. Now, if you click on this, you’ll get more information, right? So if you double click on this, you will see the blocking chain that happened on the server. And you’ll see stuff that looks again like SP who is active output with the duration and the SQL text and the SQL command and all that other good stuff. And even if you scroll across, you will be able to save off the query plan that you will see the query plan. So all of the query plan that got captured. So all of the stuff that you would expect to see, like when SP who is active runs and you find blocking, this will give you in the application. So if you’re on the fence about, you know, channel stuff or training stuff, maybe this will convince you to finally become a loving, caring, darling, data, darling, data, darling, the four D’s quadruple D crew. Anyway, thank you for watching. Happy lock monitoring. And, you know, let me know what you think, how it works. And I don’t know. Maybe we can troubleshoot these blocks together someday. All right. Goodbye.

Bye.

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