A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
Barney Lawrence fixes a problem in Azure Data Studio:
This is a solution to a bug I’ve encountered in Azure Data Studio when trying to create new connections. that leads to an error message of cannot create property ‘groupid’ on string ‘.File this post under “things I couldn’t find a neat answer to in Google so I figure I’d best create a page for it”.
Read on for Barney’s answer as I lament how far downhill Google has gone as a search engine.
Comments closedSteve Jones explains that Git isn’t just for developers:
Git has become a fantastic tool for me, and many other technologists, over the last ten years. It’s almost ubiquitous in most of my clients, and so many people are comfortable with it. Many others aren’t, which is why I started a Git series for DBAs (and other Ops people) on my blog.
Quite a few people asked me why I recommend git over a file share for storing code that a team of Ops people or DBAs might use. Why isn’t a global file share a better choice in an organization? I think I have a few good reasons, but if you disagree, let me know in the discussion for this piece.
There are some annoyances around Git but good UI tools minimize a fair amount of the pain and the benefits are huge.
Comments closedMarco Russo and Alberto Ferrari skip the slow stuff:
Calculations that use the DAX time intelligence functions mostly retrieve data at the day level, performing the required aggregations in the formula engine. By avoiding time intelligence DAX functions, you can force DAX to produce more optimized queries for your specific calculations.
DirectQuery over SQL and VertiPaq require the same patterns to optimize time intelligence calculations, even though the reasons are different. In VertiPaq, we try to stay away from DAX time intelligence functions to avoid large materialization at the day level. With SQL, materialization does not always happen because Tabular tries to push the grouping down to SQL. Still, time intelligence calculations often result in complex queries, and it is better to avoid the complexity by using simpler DAX code.
Check out the performance difference.
2 CommentsThe chances are that you have other systems monitoring your SQL servers already, so this task isn’t required at all. However, sometimes a quick ‘knock on the door of SQL’ to confirm a response isn’t a bad thing as a sanity check.
So, building on that, we’re going to use the same technique to essentially perform a sweep of our estate (with a few bells and whistles added) to give us a colour coded quick view of service status like below, with a little bit of additional info.
Click through for the script and explanation.
Comments closedAaron Bertrand has an admission:
Before looking at the code path, the query, or the execution plan, I didn’t even believe the application would regularly perform a hard delete. Teams typically soft delete “expensive” things that are ever-growing (e.g., change an
IsActivecolumn from1to0). Deleting a user is bound to be expensive, because there are usually many inbound foreign keys that have to be validated for the delete to succeed. Also, every index has to be updated as part of the operation. On top of that, there are often triggers that fire on delete.While I know that we do sometimes soft delete users, the engineer assured me that the application does, in some cases, hard delete users.
Click through for the full story and a minor bout of self-petard-hosting. I’m as guilty as anyone else of jumping to conclusions, and this is a good reminder to go through the process even when you think you know the answer.
Comments closedShane O’Neill applies the Sgt. Schultz defense:
I don’t like posting about issues unless I fundamentally understand the root cause. That’s not the case here. A lot of the explanation here will be hand-waving while spouting “here be dragons, and giants, and three-headed dogs”, but I know enough to give you the gist of the issue.
Click through for a fun story about Kerberos and behavioral changes after absolutely nothing happened.
Comments closed