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Month: March 2025

RIGHT OUTER JOIN and MERGE

Published 2025-03-14 by Kevin Feasel

Lukas Eder merges lanes:

It’s not unreasonable to expect these two statements to produce the same execution plan on most RDBMS, given that they’re logically equivalent. Since we’ve grown used to reading things from left to right and top to bottom, I don’t think RIGHT JOIN will become more popular any time soon.

There is, however, one place in the SQL language where RIGHT JOIN is surprisingly ubiquitous!

Read on to see how the MERGE operator includes as part of its operations the equivalent of a RIGHT OUTER JOIN. MERGE in SQL Server had justifiably built a bad reputation in its early years, but it’s surprisingly okay nowadays, with most of the bugs being fixed over time.

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SQL Database Default Checkbox in Microsoft Fabric Delayed

Published 2025-03-13 by Kevin Feasel

Amar Digamber Patil makes an announcement:

In our ongoing effort to enhance the visibility, accessibility, and efficiency of SQL database in Fabric, we are making a change that ensures organizations can make an informed decision before default enablement takes effect. We have changed the timeline for when SQL database will be enabled by default.

Initially, we planned to roll out the checkbox notification on February 8, 2025, and enable SQL Database in Fabric by default on March 8, 2025. However, based on the need for more flexibility, we have adjusted the timeline:

Click through for the new timeline. You can, of course, enable it on your own today if you are a Microsoft Fabric administrator with rights to change these settings.

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Alternative Means to Build a Tally Table

Published 2025-03-13 by Kevin Feasel

Steve Jones tries different methods:

We published an article recently at SQL Server Central on Tally Tables in Fabric from John Miner. In it he showed how this can be efficient. A day after he published it, he sent me an addendum to note that GENERATE_SERIES was available in Fabric and that could be used.

I ran a few tests last week, but as I read the comments on John’s article, I realized that there were 3 ways of setting up these tally tables that I’ve used and thought I’d summarize them a bit in this post. There’s a fourth way, but I haven’t used it.

My take on this is, it doesn’t really matter which technique you choose, especially if you’re using it to build a permanent tally table that you can later query from any app. In that case, it’s a one-time cost. If you’re building these on the fly often enough that the performance matters, then my first question, instead of “Which of these is fastest?” is, “Why can’t I just have a permanent tally table?”

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The Pain of Power BI in GovCloud

Published 2025-03-13 by Kevin Feasel

John Kerski notes a pain point:

“I hate to tell you this, but it’s not available for us yet.” This is an all-too-common phrase I find myself saying to customers in U.S. Sovereign Cloud tenants who come across new features in search engine results only to find they’re not available in our regions. For those unfamiliar, U.S. Sovereign Cloud regions allow U.S. government, public sector, and other highly regulated entities to use the cloud with the security, compliance, and data sovereignty required by their organizations.

If you do a search for “sovereign cloud,” you will find that most of the cloud providers have their own Sovereign Cloud if you are interested in the concept for any other cloud services you need to use. In this article, I am going to look specifically at how you extend this support to Power BI, and make a few suggestions for how I think it could work better.

I call John’s pains and raise him “We can only use Power BI Report Server here.”

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Using the Entra ID Powershell Module

Published 2025-03-13 by Kevin Feasel

Patrick Gruenauer checks out a new module:

The new PowerShell Entra ID Module is a powerful tool designed to streamline the management and automation of Microsoft Entra resources. This module is part of the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK and offers a range of functionalities to enhance administrative tasks.

One of the key benefits of the Microsoft Entra PowerShell module is its focus on usability. Unlike MS Graph, the module is more user-friendly to operate. Let’s dive in.

Click through for a demonstration of what you can do with it.

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Vacuuming Delta Tables in Microsoft Fabric

Published 2025-03-13 by Kevin Feasel

Kenneth Omorodion explains why you sometimes need to bust out the VACUUM:

Efficient data management in Microsoft Fabric is a necessity in maintaining large-scale partitioned Delta tables. In dynamic datasets with frequently generated new files, the need to ensure the removal of stale files becomes very important to prevent storage bloating. In settings with partitioned tables, where data is in a hierarchical structure (e.g., by year, month, day), this can be particularly challenging, and files must be cleaned without disrupting active data. Learn how the VACUUM operation can help optimize delta tables.

Read on to learn more.

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The Order of Data Conversion and Aggregation Functions

Published 2025-03-12 by Kevin Feasel

I have a new video:

In this video, I demonstrate how order of operations matters when it comes to casting or converting a data type and performing an aggregation on that result. I’ll use the specific example of converting binary data to a number and show where the fast version might lead you astray.

This is something pretty easy to miss, especially when the code returns fast enough. But over a large enough number of calls, these sorts of things add up, as I note in the video.

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Working with Where-Object in Powershell

Published 2025-03-12 by Kevin Feasel

Mike Robbins performs some filtering:

PowerShell 3.0 introduced several notable improvements to its cmdlet library, with one of the most useful features in this release being the simplified syntax for the Where-Object cmdlet. This enhancement made filtering objects more efficient and user-friendly by introducing Property and Value parameters and a switch parameter for every comparison operator. This article explores how these changes work, their usefulness, and how to leverage them in your scripts.

Read on for a bit of history, as well as the options available to you now.

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Getting Started with GitHub Actions

Published 2025-03-12 by Kevin Feasel

Kathi Kellenberger takes action:

Shortly before Microsoft acquired GitHub in late 2018, GitHub Actions was released. GitHub Actions is a powerful CI/CD platform that can be used to automate code integration and deployment.

This article series will teach you what you need to know to take advantage of GitHub Actions, especially for deploying database code.

Read on for the first article in the series, which acts as a primer on GitHub Actions.

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