Brad’s Sure Guide to SQL Server Maintenance Plans- P54: 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 19 Create and Modify Maintenance Plans Using the Designer Figure In this example each subplan has a single Maintenance Plan Task. If instead you selected the Single schedule for the entire plan or no schedule option in the Wizard then there will only be a single subplan containing all of the Maintenance Plan tasks as shown in Figure . Notice that the precedence arrows reflect the logical ordering you specified for the tasks within the Wizard. 266 Chapter 19 Create and Modify Maintenance Plans Using the Designer Figure Precedence was decided when you ordered the tasks from within the Maintenance Plan Wizard. 267 Chapter 19 Create and Modify Maintenance Plans Using the Designer Once you have a Wizard-created Maintenance Plan open within Designer you can modify it in any way you like just as if you were creating a Maintenance Plan from scratch. Make whatever changes you need save the plan test it and you are ready to reuse it. As I promised once you know how to use the Maintenance Plan Designer modifying Maintenance Plans created with the Wizard is easy. Summary Having reached the end of this book you should now have a good understanding of Maintenance Plans how to create them using either the Maintenance Plan Wizard or the Maintenance Plan Designer and the pros and cons of each approach. The Designer represents a steeper learning curve but the payoff is that it offers a lot more flexibility and power. It is my preferred tool when creating Maintenance Plans. What I really want to restate and re-emphasize now is the advice I gave way back in Chapter 1 neither the Maintenance Plan Wizard nor Designer can do all your work for you. The Maintenance Plans you create using these tools offer a very convenient way to perform much of your database maintenance work but they won t perform other important database maintenance tasks such as those below. Identifying and removing physical file fragmentation. Identifying missing duplicate or unused indexes. .
