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Month: May 2017

Grid Features In SQL Prompt

Published 2017-05-09 by Kevin Feasel

Derik Hammer shows off some of the grid functionality in Red Gate’s SQL Prompt:

Even more common than scripting out INSERT statements, I may need to copy a set of values and format them for an IN clause. Normally I would use a text editor such as Notepad++ to reformat the multiple lines of values. SSMS can also be used but I find Notepad++’s find/replace features better.

Now I do not have to worry about copying/pasting the values and making changes. SQL Prompt delivers a direct conversion from values to IN clause.

Click through for some animated GIFs showing how to use this functionality.

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Foreign Key Check Options

Published 2017-05-09 by Kevin Feasel

Louis Davidson shows how to create a foreign key constraint which is enabled or disabled, trusted or untrusted:

I am in the middle of building a utility (for work, and for my next SQLBLOG post), that will help when you need to drop the foreign key constraints on a table if you want to truncate the tables, but holds the script in a table to replace the script.  The first thing though, is to make sure I have all of the scripting possibilities understood.

When I started hunting around to remember how to create a disabled constraint, I couldn’t easily find anything, so I figures I would make this a two-parter. (My blogging rule is if I look for something and find a good article about it, reference it, then tweet the article out. If it is too hard to find, blog about it!) So today I will review how to create a FOREIGN KEY constraint in three ways:

  • Enabled, and Trusted – Just as you would normally create one

  • Enabled, Not Trusted – The “quick” way, not checking data to see if any wrong data already exists, but not allowing new, bad data in

  • Disabled, Not Trusted – The constraint is basically documentation of the relationship, but you are on your own to make sure the data matches the constraint

In an ideal world, all of your constraints are enabled and trusted, but when you’re building a general-purpose script, you can’t always assume that will be the case.  Click through for examples on how to create foreign key constraints fitting each of these scenarios.

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Dynamic Markdown YAML

Published 2017-05-09 by Kevin Feasel

Steph Locke shows how to use the params section of a YAML header to enable parameter reuse:

You may already know the trick about making the date dynamic to whatever date the report gets rendered on by using the inline R execution mode of rmarkdown to insert a value.

---
title: "My report"
date: "`r Sys.Date()`"
output: pdf_document
---

What you may not already know is that YAML fields get evaluated sequentially so you can use a value created further up in the params section, to use it later in the block.

Click through to see how it’s done.

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Power BI On-Prem Details

Published 2017-05-09 by Kevin Feasel

Ginger Grant explains what’s going on with Power BI Premium and the on-prem offering:

It is not possible to run Power BI reports locally right now, but sometime before the 1st of July 2016,  users who have SQL Server 2016 Enterprise Edition per-core and active Software Assurance [SA] can deploy Power BI Report Server.  This means that no one is going to have to wait for SQL Server 2017 for Power BI on premise as that will be available sometime in June.  The functionality in SQL Server 2017 SQL Server Reporting Server [SSRS]. Community Technology Preview edition is going to be available in Power BI Report Server, with the addition of the ability to include custom visuals, which the CTP version did not do. The Power BI Server includes all of the functionality of SSRS This means that users will not need an SSRS Server and a Power BI Server, as the Power BI Server will be able to both.  If you want to migrate all of the reports created in SSRS from 2008 R2, and SSRS Mobile Reports, you can migrate these reports to the new Power BI Report Server, provided of course you have SQL Server 2016 Enterprise per-core edition with SA. The Power BI Report Server will be a separate install with separate release schedules.  Microsoft has announced that they are planning on doing updates at a greater frequency than SQL Server. Power BI Report Server will also be able to publish reports to mobile devices as well. If the reports uses data in the cloud, you can employ a Data Gateway as the Power BI Reporting Server can use the gateway to access cloud data. Of course if all of the data in the report is located on-premises, no gateway will be required.

I’m a bit disappointed that the on-prem installation will not allow you to create dashboards, but perhaps that will come in time.

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Attaching A SQL Server Database To A Docker Container

Published 2017-05-09 by Kevin Feasel

Mat Hayward-Hill shows how to attach an existing MDF file to a SQL Server on Linux instance in Docker:

Now we are ready to attach the database using the TSQL below. For this demo, I used Management Studio from my Laptop, to connect to SQL Server.

In the TSQL we need to use the FOR ATTACH_REBUILD_LOG argument as we have no log file to attach. It will create a 1MB log file in the default log file directory.

It’s better to restore a full backup, but there’s more than one way to connect a database.

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Azure SQL Data Warehouse Security

Published 2017-05-09 by Kevin Feasel

Grant Fritchey looks at what security measures are available within Azure SQL Data Warehouse:

Login Security

You have two core choices on logins. First, you have to create a SQL login at the server level for both Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Data Warehouse. You can’t remove this or disable it (to my knowledge, and I’ve tried), so make the password a good one (and don’t lose it). You can then create other SQL logins, but this is not a recommended best practice. In fact, I wouldn’t do it at all unless I was forced because of some third party product (few of which currently support Azure anyway).

The next choice, the preferred choice, is to set up Azure Active Directory. With Azure AD you get all the functionality you’re used to with your local AD. Further, you can federate Azure AD with your local AD to control and manage the logins from within your network. You also get multi-factor authentication with Azure AD. We are talking real security here. Read through the documentation on setting up authentication to get it right. You can do the whole thing using Powershell commands, so there’s no excuse on automating it.

There aren’t as many security-related toggles as in an on-prem product, but Grant demonstrates what is available.

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Installing Multiple SSRS Instances

Published 2017-05-09 by Kevin Feasel

Dave Mason explains how to set up multiple SQL Server Reporting Services installations to run against a single SQL Server instance:

Have you ever needed to install multiple instances of SSRS, with each instance “connected” to the same instance of the SQL Server database engine? (By “connected”, I mean that the pair of [ReportServer] databases for each SSRS instance would all reside on the same instance of SQL Server. And each SSRS instance would be reporting on data from one or more databases that also resided on the same instance of SQL Server.)

To my surprise, I don’t see much guidance for this scenario on the internet. TechNet has an article. It’s consistently one of the first search results I get back for variations of “Install multiple instances of SSRS”. That article (and a few others) omit a simple installation step/requirement that was a blind spot for me. (More on that towards the end.) I finally figured out what I was doing wrong and eventually succeeded with my task. Let’s walk through the steps.

I’m not quite positive what problem this best solves, but that could just be a lack of vision on my part.

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Comparing Query Store Plans

Published 2017-05-08 by Kevin Feasel

Arun Sirpal explains how to compare two plans in the Query Store:

A small but nice little feature I have been using recently can be found within Query Store.

Let’s say you have 2 Plan IDs for a query, naturally you want to view the execution plan for the different plans. In the past I did it a manual way, by that I mean by individually clicking on the Plan ID to see the plan then moving on to the next one.

It is much easier to explain with some images.

Click through to see those images.

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More With Adaptive Joins

Published 2017-05-08 by Kevin Feasel

Erik Darling continues his adaptive joins exploration with two more posts.  First, how local variables can affect the query plan:

The easiest way to look at this is to compare Adaptive Joins with literal values to the same ones using local variables. The results are a little… complicated.

Here are three queries with three literal values. In my copy of the Super User database (the largest Stack Overflow sub-site), I’ve made copies of all the tables and added Clustered ColumnStore indexes to them. That’s the only way to get Adaptive Joins at this point — Column Store has to be involved somewhere along the line.

The last day of data in this dump is from December 11. When I query the data, I’m looking at the last 11 days of data, the last day of data, and then a day where there isn’t any data.

Then Erik takes on non-SARGable queries:

The queries with non-SARGable predicates on the Users table used Adaptive Joins.

The queries with non-SARGable predicates on the Posts table did not.

Now, there is an Extended Events… er… event to track this, called adaptive_join_skipped, however it didn’t seem to log any information for the queries that didn’t get Adaptive Joins.

Bummer! But, if I had to wager a guess, it would be that this happens because there’s no alternative Index Seek plan for the Posts table with those predicates. Their non-SARGableness takes that choice away from the optimizer, and so Adaptive Joins aren’t a choice. The Users table is going to get scanned either way — that’s the nature of ColumnStore indexes, so it can withstand the misery of non-SARGable predicates in this case and use the Adaptive Join.

Two more good posts in Erik’s series, and both definitely worth reading.

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Handling Expiring Encryption Keys

Published 2017-05-08 by Kevin Feasel

Ed Leighton-Dick explains how safely to replace a SQL Server certificate which is about to expire:

So, now that we know what we need to rotate, how do we do it?

First, obtain a new certificate. SQL Server has the capability to generate its own certificates. For many purposes, that’s enough. However, if your company has to comply with auditing or regulatory requirements, you may need to obtain the new certificate from an outside source. Often, this is a third-party certificate authority. Some companies use a system called Encryption Key Management (EKM, also known as a Hardware Security Module, or HSA, after the device used to store the master key). (Obtaining an external certificate is a subject for an upcoming post.)

However you obtained the certificate, install it. Make sure to back it up securely, including the private key.

Next, add the new certificate to the symmetric key. The ALTER CERTIFICATE command has a clause that does just that – ADD ENCRYPTION BY.

Finally, remove the old certificate from the symmetric key. You’ll again use ALTER CERTIFICATE, but this time with the DROP ENCRYPTION BY clause.

Click through for instructions, including scripts.  Ed also explains how to update the certificate used with Transparent Data Encryption.

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