A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
Kevin Chant talks about a recent issue:
Recently I have been helping others get up to speed with Microsoft Fabric. Which includes going through some Power BI topics.
One issue that came up was how to show them the DAX used for a measure within a Power BI report that had been published to Microsoft Fabric. To link working with measures in Power BI Desktop with working in Microsoft Fabric.
Kevin shows the normal way of doing this, as well as an alternative using the SemPy library.
Comments closedIn this video, we will build out two availability groups for SQL Server on Linux.
This one’s a pretty lengthy video, as I describe some of the mechanisms around availability groups and we build two AGs across three instances from scratch in SQL Server on Linux.
Comments closedMikey Bronowski fixed a problem:
Regular execution of DBCC CHECKDB is a cornerstone practice for DBAs, ensuring that databases are free from corruption. However, this routine maintenance can sometimes feel more like a Herculean task, especially when DBCC CHECKDB runs slower than a snail in molasses, or worse, gets terminated because it runs too slow.
Read on to see what Mikey did to fix the issue. This is a good reminder that sometimes, there is no single silver bullet, but a whole magazine of lead can still get you to the same location.
Comments closedIn fact, I just fixed a stored procedure that had its performance change due to an upgrade to SQL Server 2022 last week. We were doing internal testing in our test environment and one proc suddenly took significantly longer than it should have. But it was also a proc that had not changed in months so it was very clear that the reason it became a problem was due to the upgrade.
Click through for some detail on how Deborah figured it out.
Comments closedUmair Shahid gives us the rundown on one mechanism to scale out Postgres:
As databases scale and user demands intensify, the challenge of maintaining performance increases. While PostgreSQL was originally designed (40 years ago!) to scale up, but increasing demands on the database have created the need to enable it to scale horizontally. PL/Proxy is a database partitioning system designed to simplify the process of distributing database loads across multiple servers. It acts as a transparent layer between the application and the database, enabling queries to be directed to the appropriate shard or partition based on predefined rules.
This article will dive into PL/Proxy, taking a look at its benefits, use cases, and best practices to enhance PostgreSQL’s performance through effective scaling.
Click through to learn more about this product.
Comments closedAndy Mallon troubleshoots an issue:
In January, one of our Staff Engineers sent the following message to the DBRE help channel in Slack:
Morning folks, we had a pretty significant wait spike on the [database]. Circuit breakers closed and reopened quickly. Is anyone immediately aware of a reason why this could’ve happened?
Read on for Andy’s quick analysis and then the root cause and solution.
Comments closedAndy Brownsword describes working in the data mines:
Here’s the situation: a ticket was raised due to figures on different areas of the site not aligning. The ticket was to understand what was returning different data, why this was the case and investigate how we can resolve it.
Read on for an overview of the problem, what Andy did, and the root cause.
Comments closedNow that I’ve got my hands on the source of the cake dataset I knew I had to attempt to bake the cake too. Here, the emphasis is on attempt, as there’s no way I would be able to actually replicate the elaborate and cake-scientifically rigorous recipe that Cook followed in her thesis. Skipping things like beating the eggs exactly “125 strokes with a rotary beater” or wrapping the grated chocolate “in waxed paper, while white wrapping paper was used for the other ingredients”, here’s my version of Cook’s Recipe C, the highest rated cake recipe in the thesis:
Click through for the ingredients and instructions, as well as Rasmus’s results in the test that counts the most: the taste test. H/T R-Bloggers.
Comments closedDian M Fay has fun building a map:
Squaria is a continent of highly unstable geography defined by a single SQL query (with, as we’ll see, many, many CTEs). Its only consistent properties at the moment are its boxy shape and the two unnervingly straight mountain ranges that cross its breadth and meet on its lower eastern edge. Those mountains are impossible, but today’s topic is fluviation, that is, rivers and riverine lakes; we’ll see about plausible plate tectonics some other time, maybe.
The ever-shifting border of Squaria is defined by a Voronoi diagram within a 100-unit envelope, similar to Paul Ramsey’s random polygon generation. Other shapes are of course easily achievable, and I’m probably going to steal his circular envelope outright in the future, but squares are easy to demo.
Read on to see how Squaria got its geographic features.
Comments closedLast week, I was attending and speaking at the first ever Fabric February, a great in-person conference dedicated to Microsoft Fabric taking place in Oslo – Norway. (I recommend attending future editions of this event!) During the conference, someone walked up to me and asked if I knew a way to programmatically refresh Power BI Datamarts. Cause I shared many PowerShell or API related blog posts in the past, this person (apologies, I don’t remember your name) asked if I knew a way to automate Datamarts as well.
Read on to see what Marc tried along the way.
Comments closed