Brad’s Sure Guide to SQL Server Maintenance Plans- P13: SQL Server has a reputation as being a simple database application to install, configure, and maintain. This is a little misleading. SQL Server is a powerful relational database that can handle the needs of the largest organizations and, as such, its proper maintenance almost certainly requires the attention of an experienced DBA. | Chapter 3 Getting Started with the Maintenance Plan Wizard Figure The Define Database Check Integrity task configuration screen. The basic layout of this screen is more or less the same for every task. Database Selection - a drop-down box to choose the database s on which the task will execute. This step is common to most tasks. Task-specific configuration options - a set of configuration options specific to a given task. Task Scheduling - an option to schedule the task. This step is common to every task assuming that you chose Separate schedules for each task when you first started the Wizard. Although this screen looks simple it is hiding a lot of detail. Let s take a look at each of the three sections although we ll save a lot of these details for later chapters. 61 Chapter 3 Getting Started with the Maintenance Plan Wizard Database Selection As you might expect the first step when configuring most tasks is to specify the database or databases on which the maintenance task to act. The Databases drop-down box appears on the configuration screen for all tasks that can be configured through the Wizard with the exception of the Execute SQL Server Agent Job Chapter 10 History CleanUp Chapter 11 and Maintenance Cleanup Chapter 15 tasks where database selection is not necessary. In other cases the database selection process for a task for example the Rebuild Index task see Chapter 7 is slightly more complex as you will be offered the chance to narrow the scope of the task to specific objects within a selected database. However most often you will want a task to act on the database as a whole. For all tasks where database selection is relevant most of the other options on the screen will be grayed out until you select at least one database. Figure The database selection drop-down box. So let s take a close look at how you use this option as a lot of it is hidden away from us at the moment. To select which databases you want to run this task against click on the
