A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
If you’re interested in interactive data visualisation you’ve probably heard of the d3 JavaScript library, even if you’ve never used it or even know any JavaScript. Mike Bostock, the creator of d3, and colleagues followed this up with d3.express, which was quickly renamed to Observable.
Read on to see how you can build a simple Observable Framework app without spending a lot of time troubleshooting JavaScript code.
Leave a CommentEugene Meidinger calls out my favorite law of headlines:
If you know Betteridge’s Law of Headlines, then you know the answer is no. But let’s get into it anyway.
Recently there was LinkedIn post that made a bunch of great and valid points but ended on an odd one.
Number one change would be removing Power BI from Fabric completely and doubling down on making it even easier for the average business user, as I have previously covered in some posts.
It’s hard for me to take this as a serious proposal instead of wishful thinking, but I think the author is being serious, so let’s treat it as such.
Read on for a bit of history and why Eugene thinks this is a very bad idea.
Leave a CommentSean Gallardy digs into an interesting problem:
Quite the interesting problem was brought to me by a friend, in that they had a database level audit setup and were having `select` queries trigger audits that the object had updates run on them. The question became, how is this possible as a select query doesn’t update anything. Let’s start with a quick setup and original output.
Read on for the solution, as well as a much more common place in which you’d find this issue.
Leave a CommentAs we begin a new year in 2025, many of you are looking at new projects, new applications, trying to determine how to integrate AI into your business, modernizing your data estate, or considering an upgrade or a cloud migration. As you consider your options, let’s look at the state of the union in 2025 of Microsoft new releases and capabilities for SQL Server, Azure SQL, SQL database in Fabric, Copilots, tools, and developer experiences.
There’s a lot on the list, so check it out.
Leave a CommentAndy Brownsword points and clicks:
One of the benefits which comes with a Managed Instance is having backups taken care of for you. That also includes restores. Particularly useful is a one-click (ish) restore for a specific point in time.
Restoring a database is as easy as creating a new database, as its part of the same workflow.
Read on to see how it works, as well as one limitation around existing databases.
Leave a CommentHristo Hristov wants to know where the International Space Station is:
Gathering data on events as they occur in real-time is a powerful and popular technique in scientific and industrial computing. If we can query an online REST API representing the position of the International Space Station’s (ISS), how can we visualize these data in real time? How do you plot the data points as soon as they arrive and observe changes in the station’s position immediately? Let’s look at using Python for a real time plot of data.
Click through for the solution and plenty of explanation along the way.
Leave a CommentI’ve already explained that no, it doesn’t make your database server more reliable – and in fact, it’s the exact opposite. But what about performance?
The answer is going to depend on your hardware and workload, but let’s work through an example. I’ll take the first lab workload from the Mastering Server Tuning class and set it up on an AWS i3en.2xlarge VM, which has 8 cores, 64GB RAM, and two 2.5TB NVMe SSDs. (This was one of the cheapest SQL-friendly VM types with two SSDs, but of course there are any number of ways you could run a test like this, including EBS volumes.)
I would expect cloud versus on-premises answers to be quite different, because cloud services tend to throttle you hard on how much storage throughput you’re allowed to have. For that reason, the results make perfect sense in AWS (or Azure or GCP for that matter), but unless your on-prem solution has hard throttles on IOPS or throughput because your sysadmins are monsters, the limits of performance would be in how hard you can push the drives or your storage controllers.
Ultimately, the most appropriate answer is to test your systems and not rely on expectations, especially if you’re shifting from on-premises to a cloud (or vice versa).
Leave a CommentKevin Wilkie doesn’t like having four answers to the same problem:
I began reviewing the first SQL Server. Backups were done via a maintenance plan. No worries there. Many places rely on maintenance plans to do their backups each day.
On the second SQL Server, I found no maintenance plans. What I did find though, was a SSIS package creating backups each night for all of the databases on the server.
On the third SQL Server, I found an older version of Ola Hallengren’s Scripts.
And it goes on from there. Kevin makes a good point around how having a consistent solution is important, especially in troubleshooting scenarios. It’s easier to resolve problems if there’s a consistent pattern versus having to remember that, oh, yeah, this is the instance we tried using this one solution, but it didn’t work so we went with something else on another instance.
Leave a CommentPatrick Gruenauer runs a script:
PowerShell scripts can be executed locally or remotely. In this article I will show how scripts can be executed remotely. It is important whether the script is on the source computer or on the target computer. Both scenarios are possible. Let’s dive in.
Click through for two separate techniques.
Leave a CommentRob Farley gives us a roundup:
I was the host for T-SQL Tuesday this month, inviting people to write about integrity. And because I don’t believe in just providing a list of posts (although I’ve also done that at the end of the post), I have a completely fabricated story for you. And no, this wasn’t created using AI. I have more integrity than that (see what I did there?).
Read on for Rob’s summary and all of the links.
Leave a Comment