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Day: December 11, 2025

RegEx Performance in SQL Server 2025

Published 2025-12-11 by Kevin Feasel

Brent Ozar has an update:

Back in March 2025 when Microsoft first announced that REGEX support was coming to SQL Server 2025 and Azure SQL DB, I gave it a quick test, and the performance was horrific. It was bad in 3 different ways:

  1. The CPU usage was terrible, burning 60 seconds of CPU time to check a few million rows
  2. It refused to use an index
  3. The cardinality estimation was terrible, hard-coded to 30% of the table

Read on to see what has changed. It’s obviously not perfect, but just as obviously is much better than what Brent saw in Azure SQL DB at the time.

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Accessing REST APIs from SQL Server

Published 2025-12-11 by Kevin Feasel

Aaron Bertrand calls an API:

If you’ve worked with SQL Server as long as I have, you’ve surely seen this type of request float to your inbox: “Can’t we just call {some API} from SQL Server?“

Setting aside the instinctive “no,” how have we actually handled this over the years? Are we any better off with the new solution offered in SQL Server 2025 (sys.sp_invoke_external_rest_endpoint, already described in this tip by Hristo Hristov: Invoke REST API Endpoint from SQL Server 2025)?

Read on for a quick history and some thoughts on invoking REST APIs from Azure SQL Database.

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Maintaining Microsoft Documentation

Published 2025-12-11 by Kevin Feasel

Steve Jones is a mensch:

One of the things that I like about the SQL Server docs (MS Learn Docs) is that I can fix things I find wrong. For years we had downloaded Books Online from installs, then we have BOL on a site, but those were mostly updated when a new release came.

Now we have MS Learn, and a regularly changing set of docs. If you haven’t taken advantage of these docs for SQL Server, you should. Bookmark: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/sql-server/?view=sql-server-ver17&redirectedfrom=MSDN

I help change those. It’s part of my contribution as a Microsoft MVP, but it’s also something that I enjoy because it makes my life easier. This post will look at how I do this.

Some of us sit back and complain. Some of us go and do.

I remain up in the balcony and heckle like my personal heroes, Statler and Waldorf.

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Reporting Services and Express Edition

Published 2025-12-11 by Kevin Feasel

Greg Low exposes a pain:

One surprise in the release plans for SQL Server 2025 is that SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is being discontinued as a brand. If you have a paid license for SQL Server, you are now able to install Power BI Report Server. Previously, that option required you to have an Enterprise Edition license for SQL Server or a premium level license for Power BI.

But Reporting Services was also previously available for SQL Server Express. That will no longer be supplied, and there’s no option to use Power BI Report Server.

Admittedly, I’ve never really thought about Reporting Services for Express Edition, but I can see the issue. I do wonder if SSRS 2022 will work just fine, and knowing that Microsoft has put so little effort into SSRS lately, you probably aren’t missing much by staying on 2022 SSRS and upgrading the database engine.

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The Good and Bad of Microsoft Fabric Variable Libraries

Published 2025-12-11 by Kevin Feasel

Jon Lunn digs in:

One of the big issues with Deployment Pipelines in Fabric, or as I call them Disappointment Pipelines, has been the lack of being able to parameterise connections. You do have deployment rules in the pipelines, but they are limited in functionality and don’t support pipeline parameters (boo!), so if you need to push and change items between workspaces in a typical Development, Test and Production workspaces scenario, you had to configure the connections manually, which is a massive pain. Variable Libraries should make the experience of deployment a lot easier.

Read on to see how they work, as well as some of the existing pain points around them.

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Data Replication and Columnstore

Published 2025-12-11 by Kevin Feasel

Niko Neugebauer continues a series on columnstore:

In the Columnstore Indexes space, there is a long-standing “tradition” in Microsoft to ignore the needs of the customers for data replication. It has started with with the original SQL Server 2012 release not supporting any data manipulation operations besides Partition switching. Since then it has been improved from version to version up until SQL Server 2016 where Nonclustered Columnstore Indexes has received a support for the Transactional Replication, and voila – that’s where it has stopped!

Read on for the frustration involved in moving around columnstore data.

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Workspace Identity Authentication in Power BI

Published 2025-12-11 by Kevin Feasel

Teo Lachev looks at a new way of authenticating:

What credentials do you use to refresh your Power BI semantic models from Azure SQL SKUs, such as Azure SQL Database. Probably your credentials or a designated Entra account? Both are not ideal for a variety of reasons, including requiring a password. More advanced users might be using service principals, which are more secure but require secret renewal after a maximum of 24 months, which is a hustle.

Read on to learn about a new alternative in workspace identities.

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