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Author: Kevin Feasel

Testing Database Backups with dbatools

Published 2025-06-26 by Kevin Feasel

David Seis performs a test:

In this blog post, we will audit the dbatools command Test-DbaLastBackup. I will test, review, and evaluate the script based on a series of identical steps. Our goal is to provide insights, warnings, and recommendations to help you use this script effectively and safely. Test-DbaLastBackup is a powerful tool to automate the validation of a backup. Backup testing should be a regular part of SQL Server maintenance and this command works well in automating this task.

Click through for a dive into the cmdlet. I’m a big fan of this cmdlet because it drastically simplifies the process of ensuring that your backups are good.

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Moving tempdb to a Temporary Disk in a Cloud

Published 2025-06-26 by Kevin Feasel

Jeff Horner doesn’t need permanence:

One of the simplest yet most impactful performance optimizations for SQL Server is relocating the tempdb system database to a fast, dedicated disk—especially if that disk is temporary or ephemeral. This is a common practice in cloud environments and high-performance database systems where tempdb churn is high and doesn’t require persistence across reboots.

Click through for more information on how this can work well for you, as well as how to do it safely and things to keep in mind. One thing I would add is, I vaguely recall that on Azure at least, the temporary D: drive might not be mapped at startup, and it may take a few seconds after startup for the mapping to occur. Thus, it may be a good idea to have the SQL Server service start on a delay to ensure that you don’t run into an issue due to task ordering on startup.

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Checking Disk Free Space on Mount Points in SQL Server

Published 2025-06-26 by Kevin Feasel

Tom Collins doesn’t need drive letters:

I have some SQL Servers and the  file system is organised with mount points. SQL Server is configured to distribute the system files , data , transaction log and tempdb files on those mountpints. As these are Production systems – the DBA does not have permanent access to the Disak Manager without a request for elevated privileges. But they do have privileges to execute administration type of queries. 

Do you have a query that allows the DBA to excute a query to determine the Total Size , Available Size and Space Free on the mountpoints 

Read on for the answer, as well as a link to an older article from Tom on the topic.

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Writeback Options in Power BI

Published 2025-06-25 by Kevin Feasel

Jon Vöge comes continues looking at Power BI writeback:

This blog has previously covered the basics of native Microsoft Fabric / Power BI write-back with Translytical Task Flows.

In my first post on the subject, we created a simple Comment/Annotation solution, allowing the user to input free text comments on Data Points directly in Power BI.

However, Translytical Task Flows do not only support Free Text as an input type for the users of your reports. All of the new & updated Power BI Slicer visuals work with Translytical Task Flows, and we can use List and Button slicers for users to add categorical data to our task flows too.

Read on to see these other options in action.

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PostgreSQL Query Tuning for the Oracle DBA

Published 2025-06-25 by Kevin Feasel

Kellyn Gorman continues a series on PostgreSQL for Oracle DBAs:

As an Oracle DBA venturing into the world of PostgreSQL, one of the most important areas to get comfortable with is performance tuning. While Oracle’s Cost-Based Optimizer (CBO) is a well-known powerhouse that many DBAs have learned to both respect and wrestle with, PostgreSQL offers its own sophisticated query planner that behaves differently.  Understanding these differences is key to becoming proficient with PostgreSQL as we step into tuning.

Read on to gain an overview of what options are available on the PostgreSQL side and how they differ from what’s available in Oracle.

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OneLake Security Updates

Published 2025-06-25 by Kevin Feasel

Aaron Merrill shares some news:

It’s been almost 3 months since we announced OneLake security at FabCon 2025 in Las Vegas, and while the interest has not slowed down, we’ve also been working behind the scenes to improve the feature and address your feedback. In this blog post, we’ll go through some of the latest updates on OneLake security including further support for OneLake shortcuts, improved RLS authoring, and updated permissions to manage OneLake security.

Read on to see what has changed.

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PBKDF2 in SQL Server 2025

Published 2025-06-25 by Kevin Feasel

Vlad Drumea has my interest:

I’ve written previously about auditing or cracking SQL Server login passwords either online (inside the instance itself) or offline (exporting the hashes and using a specialized cracking tool).

Last week, Microsoft’s Pieter Vanhove published a blog post that covers What’s new in SQL Server 2025 security.

This is one of the few instances in which I’d prefer things be slower in the database.

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Building State Transitions as SQL Constraints

Published 2025-06-24 by Kevin Feasel

Joe Celko makes a change:

About two decades ago, I introduced the concept of transition constraints to show Data Validation in a database is a lot more complex than seeing if a string parameter really is an integer. In October of 2008, I did an article called Constraint Yourself! on how to use DDL constraints to assure data integrity. One of the topics in that piece was a look at state transition constraints via an auxiliary table.

Read on for an interesting dive into the topic.

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