Voice of the DBA

Category: Blog

Monday Monitor Tips: A New Analysis Page

We have multiple teams (8) working on Redgate Monitor. Some work on the Standard Edition, a few on the Enterprise Edition, and others handling core work, like the Linux/PostgreSQL option.

We also have designers, and they regularly research how well the product works for customers, what is difficult, and they propose changes. One of them was recently release. We have a new analysis page in Redgate Monitor and this post looks at the changes.

Video walk-through of this post below.

This is part of a series of posts on Redgate Monitor. Click to see the other posts.

The New Experience

If you go to monitor.red-gate.com, you can see this at: https://monitor.red-gate.com/Analysis. This shows the new analysis graph, which is easier to see and takes up the entire screen.

If you haven’t used this, I’ve added metrics below this for certain servers. You can see in the legend that I’m looking at CPU time along with batch requests for both sides of my cluster. I can compare these to see if the number of batches is impacting CPU. A correlation I might use to research how a workload affects my system.

If I put my cursor over the graph, I can get info on the metric, the current time and the value/min/mean/max. These values are for the time period.

If I change my time period, I see the values change for the stats.

Below this, for the metrics, it’s a little cleaner as well. The interface hasn’t changed a lot, but it’s a little larger and spread out. I can see that I pick a metric for a cluster, and then for a machine. This is the same.

What has changed is the “add a metric” is now at the top on the side. If I click this, I get a new set of metrics to pick below this. Note the “same as above” for the cluster, which is very handy. I can also type in the box to search.

At the right, the explanation of the metrics and statistics are still on the far right.

This makes an interesting experience that works smoother to ensure that

The Classic Experience

If you don’t like this, there’s a link in the upper right to switch back.

Clicking this loses my metrics, but if I add them back, you can see the old view. It’s a little less appealing to me. The other thing I hated is that the “add a metric” is below the list shown below, which is annoying. I often scroll down to find it.

I also have statistics which only show one of the metrics (first one?) and not both. I’m also missing stats of the average.

Summary

This is a small change, but a nice one, IMHO. The ease with which the UX is designed can make a big difference to how users can interact with the data. This is a small one, but one that I really appreciated.

If you have feedback in general, please let us know as we value your opinions and comments on how we shape the future of Redgate Monitor.

Redgate Monitor is a world class monitoring solution for your database estate. Download a trial today and see how it can help you manage your estate more efficiently.

Video Walk-through

Video of this post below.

April 6, 2026
A Las Vegas Break

Only a little break for me. I’m actually heading to Las Vegas today for the Red Rock Rave volleyball tournament with a team of 13 year olds. We’ve been pushing them at practice for a few weeks, so hopefully they’re ready to compete and we break into the top half tomorrow.

That’s usually our goal as the teams I coach aren’t often the top athletes in Colorado. If we finish 1st or 2nd in our pool tomorrow, then we’ll be in the top half for Sunday and Monday. We did this at Crossroads in Jan and the RMR Showdown in Feb. The second day can get rough, but we’re learning and improving each time.

The tournament finished Monday and my wife and I are staying until Tues to get a little break. During tournament days, we’re very busy and it’s real work. We don’t get a lot of down time, and we are constantly searching for ways we can coach better and help the team improve. Plus the 15 year olds from our club are going and we coached 3 of those girls at 13, so we’ll stick around and watch them after we’re done playing.

It’s great to get away from technology and do something in the real world. I always like those moments when I get away from computers, and I’m looking forward to the break.

April 3, 2026
Finding Balance: Things Will Come Up

I have a presentation on finding balance in your career that got quite a few people thinking and commenting on their own experiences. I decided to write a few posts supporting the ideas in the presentation, which my wife and I have used to both drive our careers forward while enjoying our lives.

Just this week, I had an example.

This is a series of posts on finding balance in your career.

It Starts with a Picture

My daughter told me this happened Monday afternoon. This is one of our horse feeders, and as you can see, the bottom has fallen out.

This happens periodically, but it was unexpected. In this case, I’d returned from a week and a half of travel, and I needed to try and get prepped for some additional travel the following week.

In other words, I had plenty of work to do, lots of commitments in life already in place, and now something new pops into my life.

This isn’t critical, but it is something I need to get done before I leave again, which left me limited time around work, coaching commitments a few nights a week, trying to get time to exercise to maintain my health, cooking for the family while I’m here, and, of course, getting time to relax.

I decided I’d have to find time in a couple ways. First, I got up a little early, 30 minutes, the next day and started working. When my daughter texted that she was getting the tractor out, I took a break and went outside to meet her and bring the feeder back to the house.

I then evaluated what was needed and realized I needed some wood from the hardware store. Fortunately, I had a meeting scheduled that I didn’t need to speak in, so I started to town while listening to the meeting in the car.

Multi-tasking FTW.

I had almost completed my trip to town when the meeting ended. I drove back and went back to work, handling a few tasks, editing an article, etc. Once I thought I had gotten most things done for the day, I took a break.

It took about 75 minutes to cut some wood and re-attach the pieces and parts in the feeder. I’d cut into my day a bit, but fortunately work is flexible and I can work a little longer on Wednesday to make up for the time missed.

That extra work will cut into my time to relax, but this is an unexpected issue, and I have to trade time somewhere. Making adult choices, I flexed work to get something in my life done sooner, and spread that flex across two days so that I wasn’t overloaded.

Less time to relax, but that happens some weeks. Especially with horses.

April 1, 2026
Finding the Next Sequence Value: #SQLNewBlogger

I saw a question asking about the next sequence value and decided to try and answer it myself. I assumed this would be easy, and it was, but I used some AI help to make it very quick to get the value and learn something.

Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers.

Checking for Sequences

I know I’ve done some testing lately with sequences for a customer, so I decided to ask Prompt AI to help. I connected to a database and asked this question after clicking ALT+Z.

I got this response, which I executed before accepting the code. One thing I like about SQL Prompt is I can execute code and then adjust my prompt (or paste in an error). As you can see, I have 3 sequences in this database. I get a bunch of the meta data, including the current_value.

However, is that the next value or the last one? It could be interpreted multiple ways. I could look this up, but I decided to ask again. I accepted the code, then wrote a quick SQL statement to get the next value. If you’ve never done this, you might not know how sequences work, which is a different issue. In my case, a “se” tab, “ne” tab “i” got e this code. I then asked to find this.

UPDATE: From this article, the current_value has an issue. For new sequences, it shows the starting value, even if that value hasn’t been used, so the last_used_value is a better choice.

SQL Prompt AI returned this query, which gets me the current_value, but I know that. I decided to ask for an explanation rather than Google or work my way through MSLearn.

The explanation is good. It’s not the current value + 1 it’s the current value + increment, which is a subtlety that some people might miss.

Let’s test this. I wrote some code and then executed it. I get 17, which makes sense. The current value (seen above) is 15 and the increment is 2.

Problem solved. This short session likely will help me remember this detail for future code (or prompts).

SQL New Blogger

This post took me about 8 minutes to setup the code, capture the images, and write this up. I’ve done a lot of these, but I showed how to investigate a question, use AI for help, and then make sure the AI is actually giving me something good.

You could write these types of posts and show your fluency with both data engineering and AI assistance. Take a minute and start writing some blogs that showcase how your skills and career are growing.

March 30, 2026