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Category: Administration

pg_statviz 0.8 Released

Published 2025-11-07 by Kevin Feasel

Jimmy Angelakos announces a new version of the pg_statviz extension:

I’m happy to announce release 0.8 of pg_statviz, the minimalist extension and utility pair for time series analysis and visualization of PostgreSQL internal statistics.

This release adds support for PostgreSQL 18, adapting to significant catalog view changes introduced in this release:

Read on to see what’s new. pg_statviz is a lightweight extension for observing internal PostgreSQL performance data, such as wait stats and I/O time.

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Deleting Default Semantic Models in Microsoft Fabric

Published 2025-11-06 by Kevin Feasel

Pradeep Srikakolapu says good riddance:

In our earlier announcement, we shared that newly created data warehouses, lakehouses and other items in Microsoft Fabric would no longer automatically generate default semantic models. This change allows customers to have more control over their modeling experience and to explicitly choose when and how to create semantic models.

Starting November 20, 2025, Power BI *default* semantic models are disconnected from their item and become independent semantic models.

Click through for an overview of those changes and how you can get rid of the default models you may still have hanging around.

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Breaking Changes in SQL Server 2025

Published 2025-10-24 by Kevin Feasel

Rebecca Lewis goes over the list:

Every new SQL Server release comes with shiny features — but SQL Server 2025 brings more than just enhancements. It’s important to know that there are several breaking changes under the hood that could futz your upgrade if you’re not paying attention.

On the whole, it’s a pretty small list but there are a few things on here that could affect any given environment.

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Linux Huge Pages and PostgreSQL

Published 2025-10-20 by Kevin Feasel

Umair Shahid explains the value of huge pages when running PostgreSQL:

Huge pages are a Linux kernel feature that allocates larger memory pages (typically 2 MB or 1 GB instead of the normal 4 KB). PostgreSQL’s shared buffer pool and dynamic shared memory segments are often tens of gigabytes, and using huge pages reduces the number of pages the processor must manage. Fewer page‑table entries mean fewer translation‑lookaside‑buffer (TLB) misses and fewer page table walks, which reduces CPU overhead and improves query throughput and parallel query performance. The PostgreSQL documentation notes that huge pages “reduce overhead … resulting in smaller page tables and less CPU time spent on memory management”

One thing I found interesting here was the advice for PostgreSQL is to disable Transparent Huge Pages whereas in SQL Server on Linux, Microsoft’s recommendation is to keep THP enabled.

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Diagnosing a Partition Job Failure after Migration to an AG

Published 2025-10-13 by Kevin Feasel

Mike Lynn describes a customer issue:

Quick Summary

A client noticed one of their reporting tables wasn’t logging any new information after the first of the new month.

Context

This environment ran on SQL Server 2019 in an Always On Availability Group configuration hosted on AWS EC2 servers. This is roughly 30-45 days after the servers were migrated from a SQL Server Failover Cluster Instance in AWS on EC2 to the new AG setup.

Read on for the problem, the discovery process, and the solution. I like reading this sort of report specifically to focus on the process. One of the best skills you can develop in any technical field is the practice of methodical behavior: review and understand the error message (perhaps with the assistance of a search engine or tool of choice), then work logically through possible issues until you discover the cause. It sounds obvious when I describe it that way, but far too often, people flail about and try a variety of arbitrary things because they don’t really understand the issue and hope that doing this one thing will fix whatever problem is happening.

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Postgres Migration via Logical Replication

Published 2025-10-06 by Kevin Feasel

Elizabeth Christensen makes a move:

Moving a Postgres database isn’t a small task. Typically for Postgres users this is one of the biggest projects you’ll undertake. If you’re migrating for a new Postgres major version or moving to an entirely new platform or host, you have a couple options:

Read on for those three options, when logical replication can possibly work, and the process for upgrade. It’s definitely a bit more fiddly than other options, but it’s hard to beat with respect to downtime.

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Creating Database Snapshots with sp_snapshot

Published 2025-10-03 by Kevin Feasel

David Fowler announces a tool update:

Presenting you with an updated version of our sp_snapshot procedure, allowing you to easily create database snapshots.

This new version fixes a bug that we’ve found in version 2 where snapshots will fail for databases with multiple data files.

We’ve also added the @STMTOnly parameter, allowing you to generate the scripts for creating the required snapshots without actually doing so.

Click through for more information, as well as where you can go to download the script.

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RCSI Scenarios

Published 2025-10-03 by Kevin Feasel

Haripriya Naidu digs into a few scenarios:

When RCSI is enabled, I’d like to discuss three scenarios:

  1. UPDATE is in progress, and SELECT starts to run.
    Where does SELECT read from?
  2. SELECT runs, and there are no concurrent operations or uncommitted transactions. Where does SELECT read from?
  3. SELECT is running, and now an UPDATE starts to run concurrently. What happens to SELECT that is in progress? What about the UPDATE that started? Does it wait for SELECT to finish?

Click through to see what happens during each of these scenarios.

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Tracking Memory Consumption in Fabric SQL Database

Published 2025-10-02 by Kevin Feasel

Lance Wright tracks memory utilization:

SQL Database in Fabric continues its commitment to providing you with robust tools for database management, performance monitoring, and optimization. Earlier this year, we released a performance dashboard to help you monitor and improve the performance of your SQL Database in Fabric. We’ve improved upon those performance monitoring capabilities with the ability to track memory consumption. This new capability delivers real-time, actionable data regarding the memory utilization of all database queries to help you make more informed decisions and manage SQL Database resources more efficiently.

Read on to see what you can do with this.

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