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Author: Kevin Feasel

Column Encryption in SQL Server

Published 2024-12-18 by Kevin Feasel

Rick Dobson encrypts a column:

I was recently assigned to work on a team who will implement column-level encryption and decryption solutions in SQL Server. Please introduce the basics of SQL Server encryption and decryption features. Also, provide a series of T-SQL samples for encrypting and decrypting data within the columns of a SQL Server table.

Always Encrypted can be better for the job, but sometimes, development or product limitations require using old-school column-level (or “cell-level” as people have called it) encryption. And it still works fine for the purpose of encrypting important data at rest.

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Automating Backups with Minion Backup

Published 2024-12-18 by Kevin Feasel

I have a new video:

In this video, we will learn how to use Minion Backup to automate backup operations, including setting backup frequency, dynamic backup tuning, and scripting out database restorations.

This video wraps up a series on backup and recovery in SQL Server. Now I have to come up with some new videos.

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Data Professional Annual Survey

Published 2024-12-18 by Kevin Feasel

Brent Ozar is canvassing for survey participants:

Every year, I run a salary survey to help folks have better discussions with their managers about salaries, benefits, and career progression.

Take the survey now here.

The anonymous survey closes Sunday, January 12th. On Tuesday the 14th, I’ll publish the overall responses on the blog in Excel format so you can do slicing & dicing.

Please do fill out the survey. There are enough years of data at this point that we can do some interesting historical trending with it.

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Linked Servers into Azure

Published 2024-12-18 by Kevin Feasel

Andy Brownsword goes old-school:

Connecting different versions of SQL Server can allow us to combine or transfer data between environments. This can become a challenge when the versions are really different.

Have you tried to connect SQL Server 2008 to a SQL database in Azure? – it can throw up a few curve balls.

In this post we’ll look at how to solve 3 of the issues you might come up against.

When reading the title, my first response was, “But why not use PolyBase?” Then Andy threw the SQL Server 2008 bit at me, and then my response was, “But why not use a product that isn’t nearly old enough to vote?”

Nonetheless, Andy does a great job of demonstrating how this would work, and it can work for later versions of SQL Server as well.

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Using Perspectives in Power BI

Published 2024-12-18 by Kevin Feasel

Koen Verbeeck turns his head just slightly:

Since the days of Analysis Services Multidimensional, we could create perspectives on our cubes. A perspective provides the opportunity to show only a selection of items (facts, dimensions, or measures) to a user. In Analysis Services Tabular, the same functionality is also available, and it helps to make complex models more digestible for end users. Right now, we have a big model in Power BI that covers different domains of our organization. We would like to create perspectives too, but is this even possible in Power BI?

Click through for the answer, as well as an important note that perspectives are for usability, not security.

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Azure AI and Content Safety

Published 2024-12-17 by Kevin Feasel

Tomaz Kastrun continues a series on Azure AI, this time focusing on content safety functionality. First up is an overview of the product:

Content safety Azure AI service detects harmful user-generated and AI-generated content in applications and services. It includes text and image APIs that allow you to detect harmful or inappropriate material. This service is , as all other services, easy to integrate to your app.

After that is how to access items via the SDK:

The Python SDK contains several functions to analyze text, images, and manage blocklists in text moderation. With the SDK you can cover the following scenarios:

  • Text moderation: Detect hate speech, sexual, selfharm, violence content in text.
  • Image moderation: Detect hate speech, sexual, selfharm, violence content in images.

Coming back to example we covered yesterday – moderating the text content – we can alternate the filtering to suit your needs. 

Click through to see how it works.

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Building and Deploying a Streamlit Data App

Published 2024-12-17 by Kevin Feasel

Ivan Palomares Carrascosa deploys an app:

This article will navigate you through the deployment of a simple machine learning (ML) for regression using Streamlit. This novel platform streamlines and simplifies deploying artifacts like ML systems as Web services.

I’ll leave aside my aside that linear regression isn’t machine learning. Click through to see how you can build a simple application in approximately 60 lines of code. This example shows off some of the simplicity in Streamlit’s design.

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The Posit Package Manager and diffify

Published 2024-12-17 by Kevin Feasel

Colin Gillespie and Myles Mitchell share some updates:

The latest release of Posit Package Manager introduces several enhancements, including:

  • Python Git Builders: Build Python packages (wheels) directly from Git.
  • Blocklists: Easily block specific packages or versions.
  • Improved Documentation: Clearer and more accessible information.

Read on for one more big change to Posit Package Manager, as well as how diffify fits into the mix.

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Re-Using Visual Formatting between Power BI Reports

Published 2024-12-17 by Kevin Feasel

Kurt Buhler does a bit of recycling:

If you build Power BI reports, then you know how much time it costs to format visuals so that they work and look the way that you want them to. This applies not only when you make new reports, but also when you need to maintain or make changes to existing ones. When a report gets fancy in its design (sometimes unnecessarily so, if we are frank), then, often, this is accompanied by a need for many formatting tweaks and changes. Inevitably, this formatting becomes time consuming (and sometimes frustrating) to deal with when there is a problem to fix or a modification to make. How can we make formatting and maintaining Power BI reports both more convenient and more efficient?

Read on for the answer.

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