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Day: April 8, 2016

Keep Check Constraints Simple

Erik Darling shows performance implications around having scalar UDFs in check constraints:

Really. Every single time. It started off kind of funny. Scalar functions in queries: no parallelism. Scalar functions in computed columns: no parallelism, even if you’re not selecting the computed column. Every time I think of a place where someone could stick a scalar function into some SQL, it ends up killing parallelism. Now it’s just sad.

This is (hopefully. HOPEFULLY.) a less common scenario, since uh… I know most of you aren’t actually using any constraints. So there’s that! Developer laziness might be a saving grace here. But if you read the title, you know what’s coming. Here’s a quick example.

Yeah, UDFs in check constraints is a pretty bad idea most of the time.

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Power BI Pivoting

Reza Rad shows how to pivot and unpivot using Power BI:

So Pivot is easy and simple to do, but you have to be careful about the nature and quality of source data set. If it is normal to have a name repeated in the source data, then an aggregation needs to be set properly. if you expect each name to appear once, then setting it as Do Not Aggregate works better because you can use error handling mechanism in Power Query to handle error somehow.

This is a good sight easier than writing a bunch of SUM(CASE) statements or using the PIVOT operator in T-SQL.

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SSMS Execution Plan Improvements

Kendra Little shows Management Studio execution plan improvements in 2016:

The best features are the ones that you use all the time. SQL Server 2016 Management Studio’s bringing improvements in navigating around execution plans.

Click + Mouse Scroll: Zooming!

You can now make your plans bigger and smaller with this combo. It will zoom into the region where you have the mouse.

Click + Drag lets you move the plan

This is really handy for moving right to left.

Good for those times when SQL Sentry Plan Explorer isn’t available.

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Linear Regression In Azure ML

Ginger Grant gives a brief discussion of linear regression:

There are two types of indicators for linear correlation, positive and negative as shown on the following charts. The Y axis represents Grades, and the x axis is changed to show positive and negative correlation of the amount of X on grades. When X is the amount of study hours, there is a positive correlation and the line goes up. When X is changed to watching cat videos, there is a negative correlation. If you can’t draw a line around the points there is no correlation. If I were to create a graph where X indicated the quantity of the bags of Cheese Doodles consumed on grades, it would not be possible to draw a straight line, where the data points cluster around it. Since this is Line-ar regression, if that line doesn’t exist there is no correlation. Knowing there is no correlation is also useful.

Simple linear regression is a powerful tool and gets you to “good enough” more frequently than you’d think.

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