hi Uffe,
[quoted text, click to view]

in MSDE you can perhaps schedule a job defined to include a way to gather
that kind of data, using direct access to the sysfiles database table or via
DBCC SHOWFILESTATS..
you can then validate that data against a userdefined treshold and notify
someone via NET SEND or mail via SMPT alternative, like exploded in
http://www.karaszi.com/sqlserver/info_no_mapi.asp,
http://www.dbmaint.com/SmtpAlerter.asp , thus defining a kind of alert..
PRINT 'MSDE';
PRINT '-----------------';
USE Northwind;
PRINT 'sp_spaceused';
EXEC sp_spaceused @updateusage = 'TRUE';

PRINT '----';
PRINT 'DBCC SHOWFILESTATS';

CREATE TABLE #tmp_sfs (
fileid int,
filegroup int,
totalextents int,
usedextents int,
name varchar(1024),
filename varchar(1024)
);

INSERT INTO #tmp_sfs
EXECUTE('DBCC SHOWFILESTATS');


SELECT LEFT(DB_NAME(),10), (SUM(totalextents) * 64) / 1024 AS [totalextents
in MB], (SUM(usedextents) * 64) /1024 AS [usedextents in MB]
FROM #tmp_sfs;

DROP TABLE #tmp_sfs;

PRINT '----';
PRINT 'sysdatabase query';

SELECT LEFT(DB_NAME(),10) AS [Database], sum(convert(float,size)) * (8192.0
/1024.0) /1024.0 AS [Size in MB for Data files]
FROM dbo.sysfiles
WHERE (status & 0x40) <> 0x40;

SQLExpress does not provide the SQL Server Agent, so you can perhaps rely on
the native OS scheduler for something similar.. as regards the SMPT
integration, you have to (possibly) write your own CLR based mailer
solution.. I personally will... then, from the OS scheduler, you'll execute
SqlCmd command line tool to perform the SQLExpress connection and data
retrival...
just an idea..
--
Andrea Montanari (Microsoft MVP - SQL Server)
http://www.asql.biz/DbaMgr.shtm http://italy.mvps.org
DbaMgr2k ver 0.18.0 - DbaMgr ver 0.62.0
(my vb6+sql-dmo little try to provide MS MSDE 1.0 and MSDE 2000 a visual
interface)
--------- remove DMO to reply

Thanks to Andrea and Satya for quick answers

I will look into your suggestions and return if I find a solution.
I also looked up some Scripting options, so there are as usual more than one
road to Rome

Best regards

Uffe Bak

If you have a lot of databases whose expected growth rate cannot be easily
estimated, this can be hard to maintain. If you find that you regularly have
to change the max size b/c you had a bad estimate, you then have to update
the alert, too :) I don't know why they don't provide a % at the database
level for this in the alerts. We gather all of this data from system tables
like Andrea suggests and consolidate it into a single system. Then we use
reporting services to give us a report every morning that tells us (among
other things) if we have any databases that can only grow two more times.

[quoted text, click to view]