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Month: July 2021

Reasons to Use Tidymodels

Published 2021-07-08 by Kevin Feasel

Roel Hogervorst explains when we may or may not want to use tidymodels versus rolling our own models in R:

When not

– you are always using GLM models. (they are very flexible!) it makes no sense to me to go for the extra {parsnip} layer if you are always using the same models. You could still consider using recipes to feature engineer.

– If you are familiar with the kind of data and what models will work on that data. Basically you are an expert on this field and have worked on it for many years. There is no need to experiment.

Read on for concrete examples of when it does make sense. H/T R-Bloggers.

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UI Patterns which Clash with Database Patterns

Published 2021-07-08 by Kevin Feasel

Michael J. Swart explains why we can’t have nice things:

I spend a large amount of time translating software requirements into schema and queries. These requirements are sometimes easy to implement but are often difficult. I want to talk about UI design choices that lead to data access patterns that are awkward to implement using SQL Server.

Read on for three such examples, including sorting, paging, and search.

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Enabling Trace Flags in SQL Server

Published 2021-07-08 by Kevin Feasel

Robert Sheldon performs some level-setting:

SQL Server includes a set of configurable options known as trace flags. You can use trace flags to set server characteristics and control different types of operations. SQL Server offers a wide range of trace flags that let you modify the platform’s default behavior to meet specific requirements. Trace flags can help you when performing such tasks as testing stored procedures, diagnosing performance issues, or debugging complex computer systems. Microsoft Support might also recommend using certain trace flags to address behavior that’s impacting specific workloads. This article explains how to enable SQL Server trace flags.

Click through for the article.

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The Power BI Adoption Roadmap

Published 2021-07-08 by Kevin Feasel

Melissa Coates has a new document:

For the most part it’s targeted to orgs who have Power BI deployed to a certain extent, yet know there’s room for improvement. We focus mostly on the harder things that are more difficult to manage than the technology itself.

Although I did the writing and diagram creation, I did so with Matthew Roche’s direction, advice, and guidance. That man is a wealth of knowledge. If you’re reading this post, then you’re probably familiar with his series on building a data culture. If you haven’t reviewed that series thoroughly, please do. You’ll recognize a lot of common themes from his content in this new adoption roadmap.

Click through for some Q&A and information on where you can get the roadmap.

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Using DBCC INPUTBUFFER

Published 2021-07-08 by Kevin Feasel

Monica Rathbun shows us how to use DBCC INPUTBUFFER:

A command I like to use when performance tuning is DBCC INPUTBUFFER. If you have ever run sp_whoisactive or sp_who2 to find out what sessions are executing when CPU is high for instance this can be a real quick life saver. At times, for me, those two options do not return enough information for what I’m looking for which is the associated stored procedure or object. Using this little helper along with the session id can easily get you that information.

Let’s take a look.

Let’s.

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Having Fun with the QDS Toolbox

Published 2021-07-07 by Kevin Feasel

Jared Poche shares a few queries with us:

The QDS Toolbox is set of tools that can help you review and store the performance related data in Query Store. This was released by ChannelAdvisor last September thanks to the hard work of a number of my coworkers.

If you aren’t experienced with Query Store, this can provide a good starting point for getting familiar with data that is available and what you can do with it. If you are experienced with Query Store, this may give you an easy way to set up customizable reports that help you find issues and see trends.

The QDS Toolbox has several components, and I intend to post about each in turn. Two new components were added to this recently by @sqlozano (https://www.sqlozano.com/), bringing the current total to eight.

Click through for a deeper dive into the Server Top Queries report.

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Notes on Temporal Tables

Published 2021-07-07 by Kevin Feasel

Hugo Kornelis wraps up a discussion of temporal tables with miscellany:

Of course, it will be a quite common requirement to query products and their suppliers. When querying the present, you can just access the Suppliers and Products table without the “FOR SYSTEM_TIME” keyword, and the execution plan will unsurprisingly show that a regular join of the two “current” tables is used, with no reference to the history table. Nothing special. We already saw in the earlier parts that querying the present simply ignores the history table; joining does not make that different.

But what if, for instance, we want to show all data as it was valid on June 3 at noon? Well, that is also simple. We already know that we can use FOR SYSTEM_TIME AS OF” to get the rows from a single temporal table as they were at a specific time. We can use that syntax for both tables, to get the data we need:

Read on as Hugo dives into some messy problems. Temporal table queries can expand out in complexity very quickly, as this post shows.

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Introducing the Display-Object Cmdlet

Published 2021-07-07 by Kevin Feasel

Phil Factor has a bit of Powershell for us:

How do you list all the objects and values within a PowerShell object, investigate an object or explore its structure? There must be a simple way. I used to use ConvertTo-JSON. This is fine up to a point but what if you just wish to search for strings or look for objects with a cartain name or value? What if you need their path so you can reference them? It isn’t plain-sailing. In the ISE, the intellisense will help you a lot but I want more and I want to do it in script rather than the IDE

Read on to check it out and get a copy of the cmdlet.

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Migrating Historical Data from Azure Analysis Services to Power BI Premium Per User

Published 2021-07-07 by Kevin Feasel

Gilbert Quevauvilliers continues a series on moving to Power BI Premium Per User:

In this blog post I am looking at how to load or reload historical data in AAS and PPU and compare the differences.

It should already be noted that I am only going to compare tables where I have partitions created and enabled. The reason being for dimension tables it is typically quick and easy to reload the data by re-processing the data for the table.

Read on for the details.

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Required Permissions for Forcing Query Store Plans

Published 2021-07-07 by Kevin Feasel

Grant Fritchey reviews minimum requirements:

I was recently asked what permissions were needed to force plans in query store. I’m sure I knew at one point, but at the moment I was asked, I couldn’t remember to save my life. So, I went and looked it up. In the interest of sharing, especially for the poor person who I left hanging, here’s what I found.

Click through for the disappointing answer.

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