SQL Noob..please be gentle!

Hi there,

I've been reading through the forum looking for some answers....I've found lots of great stuff, but because I'm a total SQL noob, I still need some help!

I'm disabled, heading 3 years into a personal injury case - this means I have little money to spend....just in case you are reading this and wonder why I don't just hire someone to take care of these things.

My goal is to have an e commerce site that will replace the income of my shop where I can no longer work (sounds ideal for pretty much anyone right?)...

My site is up, running and making sales! Yay! I learned through lots of reading that it was not a good practice to use an Access database for an ecommerce site, so I bit the bullet, and signed up for MSSQL 2005 here at DASP -

Everything is working smoothly, except I know there is maintenance that needs to be performed on the database. I saw that SQL Server Management has a maintenance plan wizard - but the price of the software is **crazy**
I have downloaded the free Express version, and have successfully logged onto my server - but I haven't the foggiest on how to use this to maintain my db. Well, actually I think I do it through writing TSQL statements but that's about it.

I gather from the reading I've done that I am supposed to index, and check for fragmentation - etc.... Can anyone point me in the direction of a simple to use program or some tutorial videos that will teach me what I need to accomplish this? I've seen some great ones on Marks site - and he seems to be a guru with this stuff - but not yet one that has me on my way to a regular maintenance routine to make sure my site is quick and efficient.

Thank you!!!

 

Thanks I'm off to do more reading at the link you gave....

I don't have SQL 2005 Express on my local computer as of yet, and at least I already have the database design as it was provided with my shopping cart software. Everything is up and running -

My current goals are to

1) Learn to manage (optimize) the database
2) Learn to setup my local computer to access the SQL database so I can use it as a testing server so I can further design the visual aspects of my site and see what they will look like in real time. My shopping cart software is written in ASP with lots of include files - so I believe that without a local testing server I have no way of seeing what my changes do without uploading them to the live site - which in my case as someone who is learning would not be such a good idea.

Definitely open to more comments and suggestions! Thanks again!

 

Once you have SQL Express along with it's Management Studio installed locally, you should be able to use to connect to your DASP hosted database. There is a KB article about how to do that here: http://kb.discountasp.net/KB/a192/how-to-connect-to-sql-server-2005-using-sql-server.aspx

You will also be able to obtain a copy of your live database by making a backup on the server and then downloading it for local testing purposes.

 

Thanks for the tips Crystal,

I have downloaded both applications -
I have successfully connected to my DASP server -
and I have backed up my DASP database and FTP'd to my local computer.

Now, I am off to see how I restore it locally...oh, an I ordered the recommended book above!

Thanks!

 

I'm so happy today! I have everything loaded up on my local server and after serveral tries, I can choose between the local site talking to either my DASP database or a restored copy of the db on my local computer (so if I need to make a change in the db, I can make it in my Dev. enviroment). I was so excited I stayed up until almost 4:00AM working on it! (Guess I should get used to that)

Thank you so much for all your help! This forum and it's users are A+++

 

I think that's normal