A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
Sebastiao Pereira has a new way for us to look busy:
Games are by nature fit for randomness, relying on chance like to roll dice, shuffling cards, spawning enemies, and others. Is it possible to use T-SQL to accomplish the randomness needed? Let’s see how we can create a SQL Server poker game using a random numbers generator process.
Read on to see how it works.
Leave a CommentI have had a number of requests for me to update the tSqlt Test Adapter over the years so it would work with more recent versions of Visual Studio. I finally got around to doing this and I am pleased to say that the new version works with VS 2022, 2025 and should continue to work in future releases.
Between Visual Studio 2017 and 2019 the changes required were minimal but between 2017 and 2022 the changes meant a rewrite of the test adapter visual studio integration parts which meant it wasn’t a simple change.
Read on for information on how to install and use the extension.
Leave a CommentChris Webb digs into one type of DirectQuery performance slowdown:
One very common cause of Power BI performance problems is having a table with a large number of rows on your report. It’s a problem I wrote about here, and while I used an Import mode for my example in that post I also mentioned that this can be an even bigger problem in DirectQuery mode: while the DAX query for the table visual might have a TOPN filter that asks for 502 rows, the query going back to the DirectQuery data source (usually a SQL query) may not have that filter applied and could return a much larger number of rows, which could then take a long time for Power BI to read. I wrote about this in more detail here and showed how you can diagnose the problem in Performance Analyzer by looking at the Execute DirectQuery event and ActualQueryDuration, RowsRead and DataReadDuration metrics. But now I have a custom visual to display Performance Analyzer export data, what does this look like? Also, what can Execution Metrics tell us?
Read on to learn more.
Leave a CommentIf you are working with really long script files in SSMS, you might need to work on more than one part of the script at the same time. Perhaps you need to work on a function, and also on the code that calls the function.
Click through for a short-but-sweet demonstration. I rarely used split screen in SSMS, but it is nice for comparisons or viewing two parts of a file at the same time.
Leave a CommentAndy Leonard shares some thoughts:
At the outset of 2026, I live in two worlds.
I continue to support clients who use SSIS for enterprise data engineering. Some of the enterprises are small-ish by comparison. Others are huge. Some friends also continue to support these clients and clients like them. That’s World 1.
World 2 is social media. I have some friends on social media. Many I know IRL (in real life). Most, though? Most are acquaintances. Most of my interactions on social media are with people I don’t really know or don’t know that well. Conversely, many of them – of you – don’t know me that well, either. I touched on this in a recent newsletter / post titled 2025: A Number Containing Two 2’s, One 5, and a 0.
My biggest problem with SSIS is that Microsoft has almost zero real effort into it in the past decade, which makes me hesitant to use it anymore. Yeah, I have gripes about CI/CD—BIML resolved a lot of those for me, but I haven’t seen anybody talk about that topic in the past 8 or so years, either. Andy has done a lot of good stuff with his DILM suite as well, and there are some good third-party components that implement functionality Microsoft never got around to doing. But at the end of the day, how long does Microsoft continue to “support” SSIS, and at what point does this become a corporate risk?
Leave a CommentAmy Abel explains a pair of technologies:
Terraform and Ansible are often mentioned in tech conversations, but DBAs, product teams, and even support staff may not always know what they are or why they matter. Here is a simple way to understand them.
Amy uses the analogy of the crew setting up for a concert. The post doesn’t get into the details of how either technology works, but it does help explain for an outsider why they are interesting technologies to use.
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