A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
Michael Mayer announces a new Python package:
LightSHAP is here – a new, lightweight SHAP implementation for tabular data. While heavily inspired from the famous shap package, it has no dependency on it. LightSHAP simplifies working with dataframes (pandas, polars) and categorical data.
Read on to see how it works. Version 0.1.12 is the current version as of this post and it’s available via PyPi.
Leave a CommentUmair Shahid explains the value of huge pages when running PostgreSQL:
Huge pages are a Linux kernel feature that allocates larger memory pages (typically 2 MB or 1 GB instead of the normal 4 KB). PostgreSQL’s shared buffer pool and dynamic shared memory segments are often tens of gigabytes, and using huge pages reduces the number of pages the processor must manage. Fewer page‑table entries mean fewer translation‑lookaside‑buffer (TLB) misses and fewer page table walks, which reduces CPU overhead and improves query throughput and parallel query performance. The PostgreSQL documentation notes that huge pages “reduce overhead … resulting in smaller page tables and less CPU time spent on memory management”
One thing I found interesting here was the advice for PostgreSQL is to disable Transparent Huge Pages whereas in SQL Server on Linux, Microsoft’s recommendation is to keep THP enabled.
Leave a CommentSanthosh Kumar Ravindran announces a new feature:
- Enabled (Default): When enabled, a single Spark job can leverage the full burst limit, consuming up to 3× CUs. This is ideal for demanding ETL processes or large analytical tasks that benefit from maximum immediate compute power.
- Disabled: If you disable this switch, individual Spark jobs will be capped at the base capacity allocation. This prevents a single job from monopolizing the burst capacity, thereby preserving concurrency and improving the experience for multi-user, interactive scenarios.
Read on for the list of caveats and the note that it will cost extra money to flip that switch.
Leave a CommentAleksey Vitsko goes through the list:
SQL Server and Azure SQL offer many options for high availability and disaster recovery. In this article, we look at various options for SQL Server high availability and SQL Server disaster recovery.
Read on to see the list of options and some information about each.
Leave a CommentBrent Ozar tries out a new feature of SQL Server Management Studio:
The maximum tuning time defaults to 300 seconds, but I tacked on a couple zeroes because my slow query already took ~20 seconds to run on its own, and I wanted to give the wizard time to wave his little wand around. The tool actually runs your query repeatedly with different hints, so if you have a 5-minute query, you’ll need to give the tool more time.
Click Start, and it begins running your query with different hints. A couple minutes later, I got:
Brent’s review is quite positive, in a “This is way better than the alternative of doing nothing” sense.
Leave a CommentFollowing on from my blog post a few months ago about cool stuff in the Fabric Toolbox, there is now another really useful solution available there that anyone with Fabric capacities should check out: Fabric Cost Analysis (or FCA). If you have Fabric capacities it’s important to be able to monitor your Azure costs relating to them, so why not monitor your Fabric costs using a solution built using Fabric itself? This is what the folks behind FCA (who include Romain Casteres, author of this very useful blog post on FinOps for Fabric, plus Cédric Dupui, Manel Omani and Antoine Richet) decided to build and share freely with the community.
Click through to see how it works, and check out the FCA link in the graf above to get the code.
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