A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
Alan Yu has some goodies for us:
The key highlights to cover this month include:
– Announcing Redgate SQL Prompt extension
– Announcing the new machine learning extension
– Added new Python dependencies wizard
– Added support for parameterization for Always Encrypted
– Improvements to the notebook markdown toolbar
– Bug fixesFor a list of complete updates, refer to the Azure Data Studio release notes.
I’ll have to check out the ML extension.
Comments closedGlenn Berry has some thoughts on AMD’s EPYC line of processors:
Over the years, I have written many articles about the fine art of processor selection for SQL Server. This is an important topic, because it has a direct relationship to your SQL Server license costs. It also affects your performance and scalability. As new processor families are introduced, I do the required analytical work and update my recommendations. In this post, I will list my recommended AMD Processors for SQL Server.
I’m just happy that the answer isn’t a null set anymore.
Comments closedEd Hansberry gives us a second option for filtering dimension values:
I don’t like loading up a slicer with dozens or hundreds of items that have no corresponding records. The same would apply if there was no slicer, but the consumer wanted to filter using the Filter pane. So I’ll filter the customer table so it only includes what I would call “active customers” that are shown in the sales table.
The most straight forward way to do this is by doing an Inner Join between the tables, but there is another way, using the powerful List.Contains() feature of Power Query. And what makes it so powerful is not just it’s utility, but when you run it against data in a SQL Server or similar server, Power Query will fold the statement.
Let me walk you through both methods so it is clear.
Read on for the walkthrough.
Comments closedThe customer is using Power BI to report on data from Service Now via APIs. So the customer was able to quickly connect Power BI to Service Now data and begin reporting on relevant datasets very quickly. The challenge, however, is that querying multiple years of data via the API was less than desirable for a variety of reasons.
The customer was interested in exploring the incremental refresh capabilities of Power BI, but were worried about using Power BI’s native incremental refresh capability since query folding (if you’re new to query folding, read this here) is not supported by Power BI’s web connector. So the customer team reached out to me with the challenge and I worked up an example that I think will help them meet their requirement.
Click through for the solution.
Comments closedBob Rudis looks at one of the R 4.0 changes hidden in the changelog:
R 4.0.0 has been out for a while, now, and — apart from a case where
merge()was slower than dirt — it’s been really stable for at least me (I use it daily on macOS, Linux, and Windows). Sure, it came with some headline-grabbing features/upgrades, but I’ve started looking at what other useful nuggets might be in the changelog and decided to blog them as I find them.Today’s nugget is the venerable
stopifnot()function which was significantly enhanced by this PR by Neil Fultz.
Read on for a quality of life improvement with error handling in R.
Comments closedHasan Savran takes a look at the preview for a native Mongo shell in Cosmos DB:
Native Mongo Shell became available as In-Preview mode in Azure Cosmos DB on March. I had chance to check it out this week and I decided to write about it this week. Mongo Shell let you execute Mongo database commands in Cosmos DB Data Explorer! Currently, It is not available in all Azure regions. If you don’t see this option, your database might be in a region that does not support this option yet.
Click on Data Explorer to see the Mongo Shell button. If you have never used it before, you will need to activate the Mongo Shell by clicking Complete Setup button. This box will open up when you click on Open Mongo Shell.
It sounds like it’s a little bit limited at the moment, but Hasan takes you through the things you can do today.
Comments closedSimon Whiteley clarifies a Build announcement:
Today’s the day! There’s much buzz & excitement as we FINALLY get to see Azure Synapse Analytics in public preview, ready for us all to get our hands on it. There’s a raft of other announcements that come hand & hand with it too.
What’s that? You thought Azure Synapse Analytics was already available? You’ve been using all year and don’t see what the fuss is about??
I’m expecting this to be the common reaction. The marketing story for Synapse has been… interesting… to say the least. I’ve been asked several times in the last week exactly what the new story is and, given today’s news, I thought I’d clarify.
The big picture is the version of Azure Synapse Analytics I’ve been interested in for a bit, so it’s nice to see the movement here.
Comments closedGlenn Berry wanted to know how we’ve been keeping busy lately:
Back on May 5, 2020, I posted the invitation for T-SQL Tuesday #126 – Folding@Home, which was due on Tuesday, May 12, 2020. I ended up getting seventeen blog post responses that I am aware of. Thank you to everyone who participated! This post will be my T-SQL Tuesday #126 Recap.
Click through for the rundown.
Comments closedGilbert Quevauvilliers fixes a problem of overlap:
Recently a user sent me a message saying that they could no longer click on a slicer item. I tried to myself and I had no issues clicking on the slicer item.
I then had an online screen share with the user, so that I could see what was happening when they were trying to click on the Slicer item. What had happened is they were using a lower screen resolution. What this did then was to place the Visual Header Icons over multiple lines, which then did not allow the top slicer item to be clicked on.
Click through for the solution.
Comments closedBrent Ozar follows Betteridge’s Law of Headlines:
You want to check for corruption, but you don’t want to slow down your primary production server.
In this post, I’m specifically talking about offloading the corruption checking process. I’m not talking about doing corruption checking on both the primary and other servers – that’s wonderful, and if you’re doing that, you should hug yourself. You’re doing a good job. Who’s a good dog? You are! Good dog.
Now, for the rest of you – your production server is slow, and you wanna know what the drawbacks are of running CHECKDB on other servers instead. Here are the issues to consider.
Click through for the list of drawbacks.
Comments closed