Survey says… SQL table/row drops take too much time

We’ve increasingly heard from our customers that SQL table/row drops take too much time. A granular search and restoration tool, for all too common requests to restore individual Microsoft SQL table drops, would be a great time saver for a frequent ticket or task.

So, we’ve been doing our homework. Starting with the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS), we conducted conversations with and surveyed hundreds of DBAs about their unmet needs with respect SQL. From there, we held live corporate DBA focus groups about the pain points DBAs face in their everyday use of SQL. And, a few weeks ago, I kicked off a poll to gather data from DBAs about the frequency and time associated with table restorations.

The results are in, and mirror the research that we’ve conducted thus far. Granular or table level restores are indeed a common occurrence in organizations. Thirty-nine percent of the more than70 DBAs surveyed report between one and five SQL restore requests a month, which are the result of dropped tables or missing row or column data. A further 20 percent cite more than 6 restore requests per month.

As we all know, database sizes vary dramatically by organization typically driven by industry segment and application. The survey went on to show that many organizations are struggling with restores from databases that are “larger” in size. Forty-seven percent note the size of the typical SQL Server database they are restoring is 11GB - 200GB. But, a further 28 percent cite 201GB - 999GB is the typical database size and eight percent report a SQL database of more than 1TB.

The frequency of restore requests combined with size of the database make SQL table restore requests a time-consuming task, which often results in dozens of hours of your time as well as organization downtime. When asked how long it typically takes to restore a table from your SQL Server database, 52 percent report more than an hour.

So, the task before us is to find a better way—todramatically reduce the time it takes to find the backup with the table you want to restore and restore it to the desired environment.The answer is coming.If you are interested in seeing a demonstration of the prototype solution, please provide your name, title, company and email address as a comment.