sql-server-samples/samples/manage/sql-assessment-api/release-notes.md

# Release notes for SQL Assessment API

This article provides details about updates, improvements, and bug fixes for the current and previous versions of SQL Assessment API. SQL Assessment API is part of the SQL Server Management Objects (SMO) and the SQL Server PowerShell module. Install one of them or both to start working with the API.

Download: [Download SqlServer module](https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/SqlServer)

Download: [SMO NuGet Package](https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.SqlServer.SqlManagementObjects)

You can use GitHub issues to provide feedback to the product team.

## July 2020 - 21.1.18226

Version: SqlServer module 21.1.18226, SqlManagementObjects (SMO) package wasn't updated

### What's new

- Added support for CmdShell, PowerShell, Registry and WMI probes. 
- Enable/disable database checks for particular SQL Server instances (by instance names).
- Minimal permissions to run SQL assessment are 'View Server state' and 'View Database state'.
- Added rule 'Ad Hoc Distributed Queries are enabled'
- Added rule 'Affinity Mask and Affinity I/O Mask overlapping'
- Added rule 'Auto Soft NUMA should be enabled'
- Added rule 'Blocking chains'
- Added rule 'Blocked Process Threshold is set to recommended value'
- Added rule 'Option 'cross db ownership chaining' should be disabled'
- Added rule 'Default trace enabled'
- Added rule 'Disk Partition alignment'
- Added rule 'Full-text search option 'load_os_resources' set to default'
- Added rule 'Full-text search option 'verify_signature' set to default'
- Added rule 'HP Logical Processor issue'
- Added rule 'Option 'index create memory' value should be greater 'min memory per query''
- Added rule 'Lightweight pooling option disabled'
- Added rule 'Option 'locks' should be set to default'
- Added rule 'Option 'min memory per query' set to default'
- Added rule 'Option 'network packet size' set to default'
- Added rule 'NTFS block size in volumes that hold database files <> 64KB'
- Added rule 'Option 'Ole Automation Procedures' set to default'
- Added rule 'Page file is not automatically managed'
- Added rule 'Page file is not automatically managed'
- Added rule 'Insufficient page file free space'
- Added rule 'Page file configured'
- Added rule 'Memory paged out'
- Added rule 'Power plan is High Performance'
- Added rule 'Option 'priority boost' set to default'
- Added rule 'Option 'query wait' set to default'
- Added rule 'Option 'recovery interval' set to default'
- Added rule 'Remote admin connections enabled on cluster (DAC)'
- Added rule 'Option 'remote query timeout' set to default'
- Added rule 'Option 'scan for startup procs' disabled on replication servers'
- Added rule 'Worker thread exhaustion on CPU-bound system'
- Added rule 'Possible worker thread exhaustion on a not-CPU-bound system'
- Added rule 'Option 'cost threshold for parallelism' set to default'
- Added rule 'Option 'max worker threads' set to recommended value on x64 system'
- Added rule 'Option 'max worker threads' set to recommended value on x86 system'
- Added rule 'Option 'xp_cmdshell' is disabled'

## March 2020 - 21.1.18221

Version: SqlServer module 21.1.18221, SqlManagementObjects (SMO) package wasn't updated

### What's new

- Platform, Name, and engineEdition fields can now contain usual comma-separated lists ("platform": \["Windows", "Linux"\]), not only regular expressions ("platform": "/Windows|Linux/")
- Added rule "Database files have a growth ratio set in percentage"
- Added rule "STRelate and STAsBinary functions unexpected results due to TF 6533 enabled"
- Added rule "Database Integrity Checks"
- Added rule "Direct Catalog Updates"
- Added rule "Data Purity Check"
- Added rule "MaxDOP should be less or equal number of CPUs"
- Added rule "MaxDOP should equal number of CPUs for single NUMA node"
- Added rule "MaxDOP should be less 8 for single NUMA node"
- Added rule "MaxDOP should be according to processor count ratio"
- Added rule "Pending disk I/O requests"
- Added rule "Index Fragmentation"
- Added rule "Untrusted Constraints"
- Added rule "Statistics need to be updated"

### Bug fixes

- Wrong help link in XTPHashAvgChainBuckets rule
- Occasional error "There is already an open DataReader associated with this Command which must be closed first" on PowerShell 7

## December 2019 - 21.1.18218

Version: SqlServer module 21.1.18206, SqlManagementObjects (SMO) package wasn't updated

### What's new

- Added .DLL with types to get rid of recompilation of CLR probes assemblies every time when new version of solution is released
- Updated Deprecated Features rules and Index rules to not run them against system DBs
- Updated rules High CPU Usage: kept only one, added overridable threshold
- Updated some rules to not run them against SQL Server 2008
- Added timestamp property to rule object

### Bug fixes

- Error "Missing data item 'FilterDefinition'" when overriding Exclusion DB List
- Probe of rule Missed Indexes returns nothing
- FullBackup rule has threshold in days but gets backup age in hours
- When database can't be accessed and it's disabled for assessment, it throws access errors when performing assessment

## GA - November 2019 - 21.1.18206

Version: SqlServer module 21.1.18206, SqlManagementObjects (SMO) package 150.208.0

### What's new

- Added 50 assessment rules
- Added base math expressions and comparisons to rules conditions
- Added support for RegisteredServer object
- Updated way how rules are stored in the JSON format and also updated the mechanism of applying overrides/customizations
- Updated rules to support SQL on Linux
- Updated the ruleset JSON format and added SCHEMA version
- Updated cmdlets output to improve readability of recommendations

### Bug fixes

- Rules were revised and some were fixed
- Broken order of recommendations
- Error messages are not clear

### Known issues

- Invoke-SqlAssessment may crash with message "Missing data item 'FilterDefinition'" on some databases. If you face this issue, create a customization to disable the RedundantIndexes rule to disable it. See README.md to learn how to disable rules. We'll fix this issue with the next release.

- Assemblies providing methods for CLR probes should be recompiled for each new release of SQL Assessment API.