Press "Enter" to skip to content

Day: September 24, 2024

Vector Search in Oracle

Published 2024-09-24 by Kevin Feasel

Brendan Tierney shows a few queries:

It can be very straightforward to use Vectors using SQL. It’s just a simple SQL query, with some additional Vector related requirements. The examples given below are a collection of some simple examples. These aren’t my examples, but they come from either documentation or from other examples people have come up with. I’ve tried to include references back to the original sources for these, and if I’ve missed any or referred to the wrong people, just let me know and I’ll correct the links.

In my next post on Vector Databases, I’ll explore a slightly more complex data set. I’ll use the Wine dataset used in a previous post and Vector Search to see if I can find a suitable wine. Some years ago, I had posts and presentations on machine learning to recommend wine. Using Vector Search should give us better recommendations (hopefully)!

Click through for those queries.

Comments closed

Tips for Navigating the Support Ticket Process

Published 2024-09-24 by Kevin Feasel

Kendra Little shares several tips:

Asking Microsoft for support for SQL Server or Azure SQL is a lousy experience these days. This is true whether you are using a cheaper service tier or the more expensive support tier formerly known as “Premiere Support.” Either way, I’ve found the same issues: as the person requesting support, I must know a whole lot about the root cause of my problem and how to solve it, or my request will be dismissed with misinformation. I need to have data and metrics that back up my claims in order to get the ticket escalated to someone who can help, and I will need to provide those receipts three or four times. Once something is escalated to the Product Group, I may get a helpful response, but it will generally take a while. If I’m not engaged directly with the Product Group and the answer is being relayed through a lower support tier, it often won’t make much sense.

These issues don’t happen due to bad work ethics or personal failings of support workers. These are good humans, who are trying their best! The problem is worse, because it’s systemic.

Kendra’s specific advice is around Microsoft and the Azure SQL family of products (SQL Server, Azure SQL DB, Azure SQL Managed Instance) but the advice is sound for much more than that. This advice will help you out when dealing with the support organization for pretty much any large company.

Comments closed

Creating Custom Visuals in Power BI with DAX

Published 2024-09-24 by Kevin Feasel

Kurt Buhler shows one way to customize Power BI visuals:

When creating reports in Power BI, you regularly come across scenarios where you want to show data in a certain way that is not straightforward in the standard “core visuals”. Sometimes, the visualization needs to reflect particularities about an organization’s business processes or its data. Other times, you simply want a more creative design to visualize the data in the most effective way. In this article, we discuss what to do in these scenarios, describing one method where you can make custom visualizations by using a single DAX measure, and the caveats and limitations of this particular approach.

In this article, our objective is to produce a matrix visual with the Timeline SVG, like in the following diagram.

Read on for several methods to handle when Power BI doesn’t do something out of the box, and a focus on creating a custom visual via DAX measure with an SVG. But do read the whole thing, as Kurt explains why this isn’t necessarily a great method.

Comments closed

Tracking Procedure Execution Paths with sp_statement_completed

Published 2024-09-24 by Kevin Feasel

Grant Fritchey shows off an interesting use case for Extended Events:

Another discussion in Gothenburg (such a great group of people) around Extended Events lead to a (admittedly, tiny) idea for an additional use for sp_statement_completed.

The basics for sp_statement_completed are pretty straight forward. If you want to capture a procedure’s behavior, you use rpc_completed. If you want to know about the individual statements within the procedure, you use sp_statement_completed. Now, I don’t recommend turning this on across the board or without some good filtering in place because, it’s likely to generate quite a bit of data. However, it can be useful, including in the following manner.

Click through for a silly but clarifying example from Grant.

Comments closed

Parsing SQL Server Query Stats in Powershell

Published 2024-09-24 by Kevin Feasel

Andy Levy builds a cmdlet:

A couple weeks ago, DrData asked

With SET STATISTICS IO ON, is there really no way to show the TOTALS at the bottom? There are some nice tools like StatisticsParser but it sure would be nice to see the totals of all values right at the bottom, especially when there are many tables.

The task at hand in the office was a need to do the same thing, but with SET STATISTICS TIME ON. So I got to thinking…I can PowerShell my way through this, right?

Andy, being The Man, shows us exactly how to do this.

Comments closed

Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization and Memory Grant Feedback

Published 2024-09-24 by Kevin Feasel

Deborah Melkin has a video for us:

I’m doing something new – instead of a full post with lots of text, I’m doing a video! While it’s not as polished as others in the community, I didn’t want making it perfect get in the way of getting this done. I’m hoping to do more of these so I will definitely be upping in my game in the production department in the future.

But it’s really the content that I wanted to focus on. It’s a quick look at Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization and Memory Grant Feedback and what they can do. This is just an introduction to seeing them in action and understanding how we can use that to help tune our queries long term.

Click through for the video.

Comments closed