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CHAPTER
20
Policy Based Management
IN THIS CHAPTER
Exploring Policy-Based ManagementUsing Management FacetsDefi ning PoliciesEvaluating PoliciesW
ith the release of SQL Server 2008, database administrators everywhere were handed an
absolute gift of power in the form of the Policy-Based Management feature. Do you think
that statement is a little over the top? Consider this: In the past, IT departments every-
where spent a great deal of time and money creating offi cial data policies and procedures. After
going through all that time and effort, those policies were then placed into a document somewhere
and more than likely ignored or forgotten ... that is until an auditor arrives and starts asking those
questions everyone loves to answer.Policy-Based Management (PBM) is a feature that enables those paper policies to fi nally be put into
action with ease. With a few simple clicks, you can check the recovery model of all your databases.
Want to see if a particular feature is enabled across your enterprise? You can create a policy for
that. Would you like to enforce naming standards on new items created in your databases, such as
stored procedures? You can do that! PBM is a powerful and fl exible tool that should be part of every
DBA’s Toolbox.So, with that introduction, what is PBM?Traditionally, applying and enforcing server and database settings and confi gurations across mul-
tiple SQL Servers has been a mash-up of log books, checklists, jobs, DDL triggers, scripts, and good
ideas on the white board that never actually were implemented.PBM, changes all that by making policies declarative — during its early life, PBM was actually called
Declarative Management Framework.SQL is a declarative language, meaning that SQL commands don’t state how the query should be
solved. SQL describes the question, and the query optimizer fi gures out how to solve the query.c20.indd 531c20.indd 531 7/30/2012 5:45:04 PM7/30/2012 5:45:04 PM
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