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Day: September 30, 2022

Oracle Machine Learning for R in Oracle Autonomous Database

Published 2022-09-30 by Kevin Feasel

Brendan Tierney notes an update to Oracle Autonomous Database:

Oracle Machine Learning for R (OML4R) is available on Oracle Autonomous Database. Finally. After waiting for way, way too long we can now run R code in the Autonomous Database (in the Cloud). It’s based on using Oracle R Distribution 4.0.5 (which is based on R 4.0.5). This product was previously called Oracle R Enterprise, which I was a fan of many few years ago, so much so I wrote a book about it.

I’m curious how well this has done compared to SQL Server ML Services—my experience is that getting ML Services adoption has been a struggle.

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Testing API Packages in R

Published 2022-09-30 by Kevin Feasel

Jamie Owen does some testing:

This blog post is a follow on to our API as a package series, which looks to expand on the topic of testing {plumber} API applications within the package structure leveraging {testthat}. As a reminder of the situation, so far we have an R package that defines functions that will be used as endpoints in a {plumber} API application. The API routes defined via {plumber} decorators in inst simply map the package functions to URLs.

Jamie covers a lot of testing ground in that post as well, so check it out.

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Calculating Compound Interest in Power BI

Published 2022-09-30 by Kevin Feasel

Koen Verbeeck does the math:

Recently I had an interesting use case where I had to a compound calculation in Power BI. You can compound an interest rate for example, where you get a certain rate on your savings. Let’s say 1% (which is at the time of writing ridiculously high, but bear with me). After 1 year, you get 1% interest on your money. If you leave that (small) amount of money on your savings account, you’ll get 1% after another year on the original amount + the interest amount of the previous year. This means you’re money grows exponentially (sounds more exciting than it is in reality).

Read on for an example of creating what-if parameters around compound interest rates.

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Finding Outdated Powershell Modules

Published 2022-09-30 by Kevin Feasel

Jeff Hill has a script for us:

In the world of PowerShell, some things move super fast while others may stay the same for years. If the module you are using does what you want with no issues, you may not think to see if a newer version is available. The PSReadline module is a good example. The version I was on worked great and it did what I wanted. I had no idea there was so much more that had been done.

Click through for a script which checks the Powershell Gallery for updates, though it does not force install those updates.

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SQL Server Backup and Restore Operations for S3

Published 2022-09-30 by Kevin Feasel

Hugo Queiroz shows off something new in SQL Server 2022:

Backup and restore to simple storage service (S3)–compatible object storage is a new feature introduced in SQL Server 2022 that grants the user the capability to back up or restore their databases using S3-compatible object storage, whether that be on-premises, or in the cloud.

There are some differences from other backup operations, so you should definitely read up on it before using it. One interesting side benefit I got to try out recently is that Pure Storage’s FlashBlade product has an S3 API, allowing you to use that interface for backup/restore operations as well as data virtualization.

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Tracking Bulk Insert Usage with Extended Events

Published 2022-09-30 by Kevin Feasel

Grant Fritchey wants to see if you’re bulking up:

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to directly monitor specific behaviors within SQL Server, like, oh, I don’t know, knowing exactly when, and how, someone is using BULK INSERT? Well, you can, thanks to Extended Events through the bulk_insert_usage event.

Click through for an overview of what this event provides, as well as what it doesn’t provide.

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High Memory Grants in SQL Server

Published 2022-09-30 by Kevin Feasel

Ajay Dwivedi tracks down memory grants:

Very often, specially on mixed workload enviroment where server deals with oltp & olap queries together, concurrent sessions allocated with High Memory Grants cause entire SQL Server workload to suffer.

To detect such a situation, I like to watch my critical metrics dashboards. For example, dashboard Monitoring – Live -All Servers of free SQLMonitor tool highlights all these metrics.

Click through for an example of the dashboard as well as a diagnostic query which helps find high-memory grant queries.

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