Press "Enter" to skip to content

Day: December 18, 2020

Building an Azure Function in R

David Smith has a demo for us:

It’s important to note that the model prediction is not being generated by the Shiny app: rather, it’s being generated by an Azure Function running R in the cloud. That means you could integrate the model estimate into any application written in any language: a mobile app, or an IoT service, or anything that can call an HTTP endpoint. Furthermore, you don’t need to worry how many apps are running or how often estimates will be requested by the app: Azure Functions will automatically scale to meet the demand as needed.

Read the whole thing. Given that R isn’t naturally supported by Azure Functions, I think this is quite interesting.

Comments closed

December 2020 SQL Tools Releases

Drew Skwiers-Koballa gives us an update on where SQL Server tooling is at:

The December releases of Azure Data Studio 1.25 and SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 18.8 are now generally available.  Additionally, the mssql extension for Visual Studio Code has recently been updated to version 1.10.0. Read on to learn more about each of these updates and grab the latest versions of SSMS, Azure Data Studio, or the mssql extension for VS Code.

Read on to learn more.

Comments closed

ADF Switch Activities

Nick Edwards shows off the Switch activity in Azure Data Factory:

Prior to the switch statement I could achieve this using 4 ‘IF’ activities connected to a lookup activity as shown in the snip below using my ‘Wait’ example pipeline.

However a neater solution is to use the ‘Switch’ activity to do this work instead. I’ll now jump straight into a worked example to show you how I achieved this.

Click through for the demo.

Comments closed

Power BI Composite Model Update

Matt Allington is excited:

The December 2020 version of Power BI desktop has just been released, and it is undoubtably the most important release since the first version way back in 2015. The super feature that has been released is an update to composite models using direct query of online datasets. The implications of this release are massive. Anyone with Power BI Desktop can now build their own, local version of a data model and enhance it with their own additional data without the need to have edit access to original data model. Oh, and it is a Pro feature, not a Premium feature!

Read on to see this in action.

Comments closed

MAX Type Variables in WHERE Clauses and Recompile

Erik Darling puts on his lab coat and goggles:

After blogging recently (maybe?) about filters, there was a Stack Exchange question about a performance issue when a variable was declared with a max type.

After looking at it for a minute, I realized that I had never actually checked to see if a recompile hint would allow the optimizer more freedom when dealing with them.

Read on for Erik’s findings.

Comments closed

PASS Dissolving

From the PASS board:

We are saddened to tell you that, due to the impact of COVID-19, PASS is ceasing all regular operations, effective January 15, 2021. 

Also check out their final meeting minutes (PDF):

Tim presented a recap of the non-reconciled PASS Virtual 2020 Summit numbers, showing that only $1,973,031 was brought in falling short by $1,642,39 of the budgeted Summit revenue of $3,615,427. He went on to show that with the Summit shortfall and no prospect of funding support from Microsoft, that even if all other revenue was achieved, it puts PASS is a deficit of potentially $3.22M. the non reconciled breakdown of registration and sales and the potential deficit of $3.22M if the remaining budgeted revenue is met.

H/T Brent Ozar for the minutes.

I’m sure I’ll have more to say in other venues, but my brief thoughts are as follows:

  • PASS was an excellent institution, nearly unique among its kind by being community-driven rather than a community effort owned by a parent company.
  • Another example of such an institution that I’m familiar with was INETA. Emphasis on “was” there.
  • I appreciate everything that PASS has done. I think that they certainly fulfilled their mission and although I hate to see them go, I am grateful that they were there.
  • .NET user groups certainly didn’t die with the passing of INETA, and SQL Server user groups won’t either. At the user group level, my expectation is that it’ll be status quo. This is an advantage of the decentralized user group model.
  • I hope that the SQL Saturday property will be spun off and saved. Yes, the community could make a new SQL Saturday, but my biggest concern is getting the sponsors sorted out. I think there’s some time to do this, as virtual events are quite inexpensive, so only a limited sponsor base is required. It’s the in-person events which have biggest monetary outlays.

Comments closed