One question that comes up quite a bit pertains to how you can handle errors generated by the LiteSpeed Extended Stored Procedures (XP’s) in your own custom scripts.  Scripting with XP’s is fairly straight forward, because they accept parameters just like any other stored proc, but how they handle errors is a bit different.  Unlike  standard SQL Statements that will populate @@error and can be handled with TRY/CATCH blocks, XP’s simply return an error code.  By capturing the value returned by an XP you can succesfully trap and code around many types of errors.  View the following block of code to show how this is done.  In this example, the drive I am trying to backup to does not exist, therefore the backup fails with error code 50003.

DECLARE @rc INT
EXEC @rc = master.dbo.xp_backup_database
  @DATABASE='master'
  ,@filename ='V:\backup\database.BKP';
SELECT @rc

I know some folks out there have done some pretty cool things scripting with LiteSpeed.  If anyone has any scripts they’d like to share, we’d love to take a look!!

Today we went RTM with our latest version of LiteSpeed for SQL Server (5.2) and we’ll be going GA with this at the PASS show in Seattle, WA the week of Nov. 2.

We’re really excited about this release as it beefs up our already strong Fast Compression functionality. Fast Compression further reduces the size of backups by only backing up changed data. This improves backup times and lowers storage requirements by 70% or more over and above your current backup and compression strategy.

Again, we look forward to making it generally available during the PASS show and if you’re headed there, please stop by the booth to say hello and see a demo.  See you there!

Andy

Many of you who venture into this area of the website are already familiar with Spotlight. Whether you have experience with the SQL Server flavors of the product, or other editions like those for Active Directory, DB2, Exchange, MySQL, Oracle or Sybase, Spotlight is a very successful and very compelling product for many reasons. Starting roughly a year ago, I embarked on a journey with one of Quest’s best development labs to try to extend that success to our Foglight product line via a product that is now dubbed Foglight for SQL Server. By leveraging the lessons we’ve learned from Spotlight, and after extensive conversations with customers and prospects, we’ve arrived at the dawn of a new era for Foglight, where a download and go product based on the Foglight framework is ready to change the way database diagnosis and monitoring can be achieved in an end-to-end monitoring product. With a wizard-driven installation, automated instance discovery, built-in dashboards, workflows and alarms, and dramatically simplified administration, Foglight for SQL Server is ushering in the age of the special purpose monitor. A product that is designed to focus on a specific domain, for a specific user, but that can later be expanded to encompass a wide range of domains and data. We’ll be showcasing our new technology at the PASS conference in Seattle when we GA on November 3rd, and will be posting a wealth of information to quest.com very shortly. Stay tuned!

Hello! As the new PM for LiteSpeed for SQL Server, I’m extremely happy to be here on this blog. While I catch up on all things backup and recovery for SQL Server, one thing has become clear. DBA’s don’t seem to like doing differential backups. From what I gather from numerous customer calls, it seems that the current process for establishing a backup process that includes diff’s and then ensuring these diff’s work according to the predefined schedule and escalation rules is a huge pain in the a**. Well, that’s actually great to hear, believe it or not. Why? Because our advanced compression technology for managing differentials fully automates the process of performing diff’s and enforces contingencies for the differential process so that both size and dates of diff’s have an impact on when the next full will take place. We’ll be providing much more around this advanced compression as we just released 5.1.1 and are hard at work on 5.2.
Thanks! Andy Grant

Welcome to the Inside Quest: SQL Server blog.  Here, you’ll find video tutorials, user tips, and inside information about Quest Software’s database management products like LiteSpeed for SQL Server, Toad for SQL Server, Capacity Manager, Change Director, and more.