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Author: Kevin Feasel

Msg 7390: The Requested Operation Could Not Be Performed

Published 2020-11-20 by Kevin Feasel

Jack Vamvas fixes a problem:

 I have a SQL Server Linked Server configured , pointing to an ODBC – accessing a MongoDB driver . The test connections all work OK – and no problems running an OPENQUERY select statement using the Linked Server. 

But when I attempt to run an EXECUTE AT , and attempt to INSERT the data into a #temp table – I get an error message:

Msg 7390, Level 16, State 2, Line 6
The requested operation could not be performed because OLE DB provider “MSDASQL” for linked server “my_linked_server” does
not support the required transaction interface.

Read on to see what the problem is and how you can solve it.

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Filter Operators in a Query

Published 2020-11-20 by Kevin Feasel

Erik Darling shares some introductory thoughts on the filter operator:

When we write queries that need to filter data, we tend to want to have that filtering happen as far over to the right in a query plan as possible. Ideally, data is filtered when we access the index.

Whether it’s a seek or  a scan, or if it has a residual predicate, and if that’s all appropriate isn’t really the question.

In general, those outcomes are preferable to what happens when SQL Server is unable to do any of them for various reasons. The further over to the right in a query plan we can reduce the number of rows we need to contend with, the better.

Read on to see where Erik takes this and stay tuned for part 2.

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The ETLT Pattern

Published 2020-11-19 by Kevin Feasel

Abe Dearmer bridges the gap:

Because ETL and ELT present different strengths and weaknesses, many organizations are using a hybrid “ETLT” approach to get the best of both worlds. In this guide, we’ll help you understand the “why, what, and how” of ETLT, so you can determine if it’s right for your use-case. 

The idea can certainly be useful.

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AzureTableStor: Table Storage in R

Published 2020-11-19 by Kevin Feasel

Hong Ooi announces a new package on CRAN:

I’m pleased to announce that the AzureTableStor package, providing a simple yet powerful interface to the Azure table storage service, is now on CRAN. This is something that many people have requested since the initial release of the AzureR packages nearly two years ago.

Azure table storage is a service that stores structured NoSQL data in the cloud, providing a key/attribute store with a schemaless design. Because table storage is schemaless, it’s easy to adapt your data as the needs of your application evolve. Access to table storage data is fast and cost-effective for many types of applications, and is typically lower in cost than traditional SQL for similar volumes of data.

If that sounds like a fit for you, check out the package.

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Improving Performance Counters with Powershell

Published 2020-11-19 by Kevin Feasel

Jeffrey Hicks has an improvement to Get-Counter in Powershell:

I wanted to tell you about another addition to the latest release of the PSScriptTools module. This is something I’ve written about before but I decided to add the function to the module. I hope you find it a much easier way to work with performance counters. And it works in Windows PowerShell and PowerShell 7.x.

Click through to see what has changed.

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The Default Cardinality Estimator and Ascending Keys

Published 2020-11-19 by Kevin Feasel

Erik Darling compares cardinality estimators:

Look, I’m not saying there’s only one thing that the “Default” cardinality estimator does better than the “Legacy” cardinality estimator. All I’m saying is that this is one thing that I think it does better.

What’s that one thing? Ascending keys. In particular, when queries search for values that haven’t quite made it to the histogram yet because a stats update hasn’t occurred since they landed in the mix.

Read the whole thing.

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Database DevOps and Availability Groups

Published 2020-11-19 by Kevin Feasel

Kendra Little has some considerations for us:

One question which comes up periodically from our Microsoft Data Platform customers is whether there is anything special that they need to do when implementing version control, continuous integration, and automated deployments for a production database which is a member of a SQL Server Availability Group. 

The good news is that deployments are quite straightforward. You’ve most likely already configured a listener for your applications to connect to the Availability Group and automatically find the writeable database. To do a deployment, you simply need to connect to the listener as well.

There are a few other considerations which are helpful to think about when building your approach to database DevOps, however.

Check out the article for the details.

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Refreshing Power Query on Protected Excel Sheets

Published 2020-11-19 by Kevin Feasel

Imke Feldmann shows how to refresh Power Query results on protected sheets in Excel:

When working with Power Query in Excel you might want to refresh Power Queries on protected sheets. But this will not work by default. Using a macro to temporarily unprotect the sheet and protect it again will do the trick. But this requires the password being displayed in the VBA code. So please have in mind that this technique only works for scenarios where you want to prevent accidental changes with the password protection.

Read on for the process.

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