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Month: February 2022

Overloading Methods in Powershell

Published 2022-02-15 by Kevin Feasel

Robert Cain continues a series on classes in Powershell:

This is the next installment in our series of advanced techniques for PowerShell classes. In the previous installment we saw how to implement static properties and methods. In this one, we’ll see how to overload your methods.

We’ll take a deeper look at overloading in a moment, but first let me mention that for all of the examples we’ll display the code, then under it the result of our code when applicable. In this article I’ll be using PowerShell Core, 7.2.1, and VSCode. The examples should work in PowerShell 5.1 in the PowerShell IDE, although they’ve not been tested there.

Read on to see how overloading works in .NET.

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Guidance on SUMMARIZE() and ADDCOLUMNS() in DAX

Published 2022-02-14 by Kevin Feasel

Marco Russo has some advice for us:

Everyone using DAX is probably used to SQL query language. Because of the similarities between Tabular data modeling and relational data modeling, there is the expectation that you can perform the same operations as those allowed in SQL. However, in its current implementation DAX does not permit all the operations that you can perform in SQL. This article describes how to use ADDCOLUMNS and SUMMARIZE, which can be used in any DAX expression, including measures. For DAX queries, you should consider using SUMMARIZECOLUMNS, starting with the Introducing SUMMARIZECOLUMNS article. You can also read the All the secrets of Summarize article for more insights about inner workings of SUMMARIZE.

Read on to see how it all works.

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Using CHAR

Published 2022-02-14 by Kevin Feasel

Steve Jones wants to know if people are still using CHAR:

I ran across an article, titled When to use CHAR, VARCHAR, or VARCHAR(MAX), which struck me as something I never do. I mean, I do use varchar (and nvarchar), but I can’t remember the last time I actually created a char column. The article is worth a read, and it sets the stage for you to think about your database design process and the choices you make.

It’s Friday, and if you take a few minutes and think about the last few times you’ve added columns to a table have you used CHAR as a data type? Or do you default to varchar of any size as a general rule?

Yeah, using CHAR (or NCHAR, which you’d probably want to use instead) is pretty rare. This is a consequence of storage becoming much less of a constraint over the past couple decades, as well as considerable gains in efficiency for data platform products. (N)CHAR might be a little faster than (N)VARCHAR for certain operations and may be a bit more efficient for single-character columns, but I agree with Steve’s premise.

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Static Properties and Methods in Powershell Classes

Published 2022-02-14 by Kevin Feasel

Robert Cain continues a series on Powershell classes:

Over the last few articles we’ve been covering PowerShell objects. The first article in the series, Fun With PowerShell Classes – The Basics, covered the basics of using of the PowerShell class construct introduced in PowerShell version 5.

If you’ve not read it I’d suggest you do so now as we’ll be building on it in this article, as well as in the next two, as we explore the advanced capabilities of PowerShell classes. In this post we’ll cover the concept of static properties and methods.

Read on to see what’s special about static methods and properties. My well-founded biases: static methods are fine, great even (but remember that I’m very biased toward functional programming and away from object-oriented programming). Static properties are usually a bad idea, especially in multi-user applications.

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Server Variables with Azure DB for MySQL

Published 2022-02-14 by Kevin Feasel

Arun Sirpal shows how to see and set server variables in Azure’s MySQL offering:

If you have used MySQL before you will know about the system server variables, you know such commands as SHOW VARIABLES; You can access most of them via the Azure portal or connect to MySQL and issues the commands you come to know about.

Let’s see a quick example.

Click through for that quick example, including one minor difference from standard MySQL implementations.

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Apache Flink and Delta Lake

Published 2022-02-11 by Kevin Feasel

Max Fisher and Dylan Gessner use Flink to load data in Delta Lake:

As with all parts of our platform, we are constantly raising the bar and adding new features to enhance developers’ abilities to build the applications that will make their Lakehouse a reality. Building real-time applications on Databricks is no exception. Features like asynchronous checkpointing, session windows, and Delta Live Tables allow organizations to build even more powerful, real-time pipelines on Databricks using Delta Lake as the foundation for all the data that flows through the Lakehouse.

However, for organizations that leverage Flink for real-time transformations, it might appear that they are unable to take advantage of some of the great Delta Lake and Databricks features, but that is not the case. In this blog we will explore how Flink developers can build pipelines to integrate their Flink applications into the broader Lakehouse architecture.

Click through for two methods of doing so.

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