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Day: October 23, 2024

Backing up SQL Server via T-SQL

I have a new video:

In this video, I show how to perform a variety of database backup operations via T-SQL, as well as how (and why) to back up to NUL and how to back up a database to a network share.

This one is not quite as lengthy as the prior video in the series: just 20 minutes instead of 30. That said, I do cover quite a bit of content around taking backups, something that every infrastructure DBA should be familiar doing.

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Configuring Database Mail in Azure SQL MI

Andy Brownsword sends an e-mail:

SQL Agent jobs allow us to schedule and automate tasks on a SQL Server instance. Crucially, when things go wrong we need to know about them. That’s why we use notifications.

Setting up Operators and job Notifications is as expected on a Managed Instance. However, when it comes to sending the notifications we may have a challenge, as shown in the SQL Agent Error Logs:

Read on for the solution.

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Value Filter Behavior in Power BI

Jeffrey Wang digs into a new feature:

The October 2024 Power BI update introduces an inconspicuous yet significant preview feature: Value Filter Behavior. This feature is activated by setting a new model-level property, ValueFilterBehavior, to Independent. The default setting of Automatic preserves the existing behavior, at least during the public preview period. This property controls how the DAX SUMMARIZECOLUMNS function behaves, which is central to most DAX queries generated by Power BI visuals.

Don’t just take my world for it — create any Power BI visual by adding columns, filters, and measures. If you are familiar with the Performance Analyzer or other tools that capture the DAX query issued by the visual, you will see something like this:

Read on for Jeffrey’s example and a dive into what’s going on.

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The Importance of Planning before Power BI Data Modeling

Kelly Broekstra recommends against jumping right in:

Who has been told by a manager or business person to just connect to the source data and start creating a new report? Here is my tip:

DON’T DO IT

All Power BI and Fabric reports must have a semantic model, which Microsoft describes as “a logical description of an analytical domain, with metrics, business-friendly terminology, and representation, to enable deeper analysis.” – Source

Read on to learn why and what you should instead do if you want to have a better long-term experience with Power BI.

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Viewing Total Storage Consumption in Microsoft Fabric

Gilbert Quevauvilliers builds a report:

One of the things I have found when working with my customers in Microsoft Fabric is that there is currently no way to easily view the total storage for the entire tenant.

Not only that, but it would also be time consuming and quite a challenge to then find out what is consuming the storage. Could it be large files or tables or warehouse tables?

In this blog post I will show you how using a Notebook you can get details of the storage across your Microsoft Fabric Tenant.

Click through for an image of the Power BI report and how you can get there.

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