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Day: November 7, 2023

Reasons to Prefer apply() over For Loops in R

Published 2023-11-07 by Kevin Feasel

Hugo Gruson draws some comparisons:

The debate regarding the use of for loops versus the apply() function family (apply(), lapply(), vapply(), etc., along with their purrr counterparts: map(), map2(), map_lgl(), map_chr(), etc.), has been a longstanding one in the R community.

While you may occasionally hear that for loops are slower, this notion has already been debunked in other posts. When utilized correctly, a for loop can achieve performance on par with apply() functions.

However, there are still lesser-known reasons to prefer apply() functions over for loops, which we will explore in this post.

Read on for an important caveat, and then several reasons to prefer apply() (or purrr’s counterparts). H/T R-Bloggers.

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The Query that Wouldn’t Go Parallel

Published 2023-11-07 by Kevin Feasel

Reitse Eskens was living in a black-and-white world, smoking at a dilapidated desk in a run-down office in a beat-up city, when she came through the door:

So what’s up this time. Our client has moved to Azure in classic lift and shift scenario. Well, almost. They’ve deployed new VM’s and installed SQL Server 2019 Standard in nice DTAP setting. The VM’s are standard E16-4as-v4 SKU. 4 vcpus and 128 GB memory. The disks are Premium SSD LRS ones with 2300 Max IOPS.

Their on-premises environment was a SQL Server 2016 standard edition running on a virtualisation layer with 128 GB of memory and 8 cores.

In both cases there are 2 numa nodes dividing the amount of cores between them.

Read on to learn more about the problem and what Reitse & co did to resolve it. Also check out the comments—Daniel Hutmacher, in particular, I think has the reason nailed.

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Calculating Current-Period Month, Quarter, and Year-to-Date in Power BI

Published 2023-11-07 by Kevin Feasel

Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari show off their intelligence:

Time intelligence functions such as month-to-date (MTD), quarter-to-date (QTD), and year-to-date (YTD) in DAX operate relative to the current filter context. Their outcome depends on the filter applied, making them both adaptable for various periods and useful for comparisons. But, if you wish to showcase the most recent data – for the “current” period – there is a complication: without the proper filter, you may not get the data you aim for.

Read on to see what they mean and how you can avoid this issue.

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Bring-Your-Own-Key in Azure SQL Database

Published 2023-11-07 by Kevin Feasel

Rod Edwards shares some hard-earned guidance:

Some organisations are more strict on security than others. Thats just the way of the world, whether it be local policy, industry policy, paranoia or worryingly…just not considering it a priority.

This is why Microsoft have to offer BYOK, no, not the famous Icelandic singer from the 90’s and beyond either. I’m (very) tenuously referring to “Bring Your Own Key” which allows customers to let the encryption key to be handled by Microsoft for their encryption purposes, but create and use one of their own.

Read on to learn more about how it works, as well as a couple of important warnings you should keep in mind.

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