Here is a look at the best tools available today, as well as a quick introduction to what an SQL database actually is for the uninitiated.

Spotlight Cloud makes it easy for teams to solve complex SQL Server performance issues and reduce IT costs, and as a SaaS platform, enables reduced human labor on managing the monitoring tool itself.

dbForge tools for SQL Server now offer full support for SQL Server 2025, enabling smooth and reliable database operations - all while maintaining high performance and productivity.

Depending on the other services installed, you may also have access to a variety of performance counters for that service, including SQL Server and SQL Server Analysis Services. PerfMon also allows ...

What the SQL Server performance tools do better than Activity Monitor is aggregating data and highlighting outlier behavior.

Microsoft has released the first release candidate for SQL Server 2025, touting AI capabilities and experimental features ...

As a heavy user of other RDBMS data platforms, I have long appreciated the extra effort that Microsoft put into their data management and administration tool, the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS).

While the query store is a fantastic tool for monitoring query performance, it has also become the center of a number of features around automatic tuning in SQL Server (more on this below).