A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
Tom Collins just wants the entire list:
Question: How can I list all Foreign Keys referencing tables and columns within SQL Server tables?
Click through for the script. In addition, it’s easy to modify this script to filter down based on a given table or referenced table, which will probably be more common scenarios than getting all of the key constraints at once.
Comments closedWant to display visual-left hint to perplexed users that explains what your visual is supposed to reveal? Like me, you have missed the handy Power BI help tooltips feature that allows you to pop up some helpful text for each visual.
This works best for blocks of information a person needs to see once. Rather than it showing up every time you visit the page, make it available via a tooltip. You’ll want to make sure the tooltip is readily visible for people new to the report but not so overwhelming that it annoys people who already know how this thing works. That, however, is a completely different challenge.
Comments closedI constantly see customers with so many managed disks which are unattached and orphaned. Recommendation here would be to delete these if you know you can. Else (from a VM within Azure in the same region where the disks are (to save on egress costs)) use Azure Storage Explorer, download the managed disks as VHD disks, then copy to an Azure Storage account and mark the storage account as Archive (tape storage backend).
Archive storage is estimated less than 10% the cost of managed disk storage. Note, VHDs can be brought back and imported again as managed disks at any time if they are needed.
Pricing can be confirmed by using the Azure Pricing Calculator
There’s a lot of solid guidance in here.
Comments closedOver the years I’ve seen a few examples of how issues with an organisation’s corporate network can affect Power BI report performance. I’ve never blogged about them because, to be honest, I know next to nothing about networks and I’m not sure I could describe them properly. However, recently, I have seen a few instances of what I think could be a widespread but little-diagnosed problem – so I would like you to check if it’s happening to you and tell me what the cause is, if you can find out.
Some time ago I wrote a post about how Power BI report performance could be worse in Internet Explorer 11 and older Windows operating systems because some report performance optimisations we do are only available with HTTP/2.
Read on for one potential issue which could add several seconds to report calls. There’s also a good comment which adds more helpful information.
Comments closedArun Sirpal is looking for a query plan:
Whatever your database background is you will have heard of an execution / explain plan. Snowflake is no different. Coming from a MS SQL background I was used to reading plans from right to left. Now it is bottom to the top!
Read on to see how you can find the query plan for an operation.
Comments closedJamie Owen continues a series on building a package around an API:
Part 1 of this series laid out some ideas for how one might structure a {plumber} application as an R package, inspired by solutions such as {golem} and {leprechaun} for {shiny}. In this installment of the series we look at adding some functions to our package that will take care of logging as our application runs. If you haven’t already, we recommend reading the first installment of this series as the example package created for that post will form the basis of the starting point for this one.
Read the whole thing.
Comments closedThomas Williams wants to improve the user experience:
Recently I needed to reload a parameter, without reloading the page. The parameter was bound to a data frame, where end-users selected a value and then I looked up other fields in the data frame further down the page (for example, a name was selected, but I wanted the identifier from the same record). It wasn’t exactly intuitive, so here’s how I did it.
Click through for code and explanation.
Comments closedAndy Levy just wants to get things done:
We need to have these meetings. They’re where consensus is reached on cross-team projects and decisions are made about timelines. They’re where we communicate to people outside our teams what’s happening. And sometimes, they’re critical for transferring knowledge to others. These are all part of the job. For better or worse, they are a nontrivial portion of The Work.
Read on for some of Andy’s tips around scheduling meetings.
Comments closedNicky van Vroenhoven asks, what’s in a name?
But I think it’s much broader than using only programming naming conventions these days.
In the context of Power BI, you can use naming conventions in (literally) all things that need a name, like gateways, workspaces, apps, etc.
Read on to understand why, as well as some thoughts on what makes sense for naming different Power BI-related objects.
Comments closedSarath Sasidharan clones an Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool:
There are many scenarios where you want to create a new Synapse dedicated SQL pool environment based on an existing Synapse dedicated SQL pool environment. This may be required when you need to create a development or test environment based on your production environment by copying complete schemas and without copying data.
Note that this process won’t move the data itself—given that you’re starting with terabytes for an effective dedicated SQL pool, trying to create a bacpac would be an exercise in misery.
Comments closed