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Category: T-SQL Tuesday

Two Query Store Stories

Published 2020-03-10 by Kevin Feasel

Mark Wilkinson gives us two separate takes on Query Store:

When the Query Data Store (QDS) feature was announced for SQL Server 2016, we were excited about the prospect of being able to have deep insight on any query running in our environment. I work for a company that deals heavily in the e-commerce space, and we have a large SQL Server footprint. Our environment is unique in that is essentially a multi-tenant system, but all the tenants could have wildly different workloads. It’s really the kind of query execution scenario QDS was built for. We had the pleasure of working with the Microsoft SQLCAT team to get 2016 and QDS up and running in our production environment before it was GA.

In this post I’m going to share two stories about our QDS experience (from pre and post GA of the feature). One from the perspective of the Database Developer, and one from the Database Administrator. For the most part this is not a technical post full of queries and code samples. It’s just me talking about some things I have experienced using QDS in production.

CentralQDS, by the way, is really cool. Hopefully we’re able to show that to the world someday (and note how I say “we” even though I did absolutely nothing with it except for being in the same company as the people who developed it).

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Azure Data Studio and Query Store

Published 2020-03-10 by Kevin Feasel

Rob Farley explains why Azure Data Studio can’t be a 100% thing right now:

But the big thing with this new laptop is that I’ve made a conscious decision about what to install on it. And particularly, what things to NOT install.

For example, I’ve only installed SQL inside docker, not directly on Windows. I’m running the Linux version just because I can.

But today I feel like I’ve compromised.

Today I’ve installed SSMS, instead of persisting with just Azure Data Studio. It only took a week for me to cave, and the reason is Query Store.

Read on to understand why. I ended up having to cave on Docker-only for SQL Server because of PolyBase components that I needed and which aren’t (yet?) supported in the Linux version.

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T-SQL Tuesday Life Hacks

Published 2020-02-18 by Kevin Feasel

Jess Pomfret wraps up a T-SQL Tuesday on life hacks:

A lot of people had more than one life hack so I recommend reading all of the posts linked to below. For this summary post I’ve tried to pick one or two hacks from each post and group them into logical buckets.

There are several hacks shared that I plan on integrating into my life, and I hope this post will serve as a good reference for us all going forward.

There were some interesting entries in here.

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SSMS Tips

Published 2020-02-13 by Kevin Feasel

Taiob Ali has a few tips for us around using SQL Server Management Studio:

Opening SSMS as a different user

I have two Active Directory Accounts. Once I use to login to my workstation and everything except working inside Databases. For that, I needed to open the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) with my admin account. I created an instance of runas application on my desktop to do that. Saves me a few clicks and type in my user name and password every time I launch SSMS. Text of the target.

Click through to see how that works. This is quite useful when you’re working in multiple environments or across multiple domains, especially if you slap on the /netonly parameter.

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SQL Server Life Hacks

Published 2020-02-12 by Kevin Feasel

Kevin Hill has a few life hacks for us:

Since I am an independent consultant here under the Dallas DBAs name, I am frequently asked to come in and quickly find out why the server is so slow. Sometimes by existing customers, sometimes out of nowhere. Many of these times I cannot make any “permanent” or “lasting” changes, so my go-to is to run sp_whoisactive as a temporary stored procedure (code in link). Works the same, nothing left behind, no corporate policies violated.

Read on for another useful tip.

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Solving Groups of Groups Problems with Window Functions

Published 2020-02-12 by Kevin Feasel

James McGillivray shows off some of the power of window functions:

Windowing functions are an underused feature in SQL Server, with myriad uses. The most common problems we solve are running totals, seeing group totals on the same line as individual lines from the group (allowing calculations like subtotal %). I don’t know if there are better solutions, but before Windowing Functions, I used to solve these kind of problems with self joins, or nested queries. The performance of Windowing Functions is significantly better than this approach, and that alone has made my life considerably better.

The more I learn about Windowing Functions, the more often I see use cases where they are useful.

I love talking about, and teaching people to use, Windowing functions to make their lives better, so I’m quite excited to be able to use them as the topic for today’s post.

Specifically, James looks at groups of groups problems and aggregates of aggregates problems.

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T-SQL Tuesday Roundup

Published 2019-12-16 by Kevin Feasel

Mala Mahadevan rounds up T-SQL Tuesday #121:

7 people out of 18 people talk of their new dream jobs. This should give all of us hope that there are good gigs out there, if we are stuck in a bad place. No gig is perfect, of course, but it helps to have a dream and a direction to get to a better place. Almost everyone mentions their involvement with community/#sqlfamily as a huge reward. If you are reading this and not an active part of community yet – please consider doing so. It helps to be among supportive, uplifting people who care for you and have similar goals as you do.

To conclude – I really liked these lines from Shane O Neill’s post – ‘ I believe the best gift is the gifts that you can give back. So, here’s hoping that the next year sees us all help more than hinder, learn more than laze, and teach more than troll.’

Click through for posts from the 18 respondents.

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T-SQL Tuesday 120 Round-Up

Published 2019-11-21 by Kevin Feasel

Wayne Sheffield summarizes T-SQL Tuesday #120:

The end of the first 10 years of T-SQL Tuesday blogging occurred this month, with me hosting T-SQL Tuesday #120. The theme this month was to talk about something you’ve seen that made you think “What were you thinking?” (you can read the invitation here). We had several bloggers jump in and post their thoughts. So let’s just jump into a quick recap of who posted what (for each blogger, I also include a link to their Twitter account, their main blog, and the link to their T-SQL Tuesday #120 post).

Click through for the recap.

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T-SQL Tuesday 118 Roundup

Published 2019-09-16 by Kevin Feasel

Kevin Chant played Santa Claus this month:

I hope they had as much fun contributing their posts as I had reading them afterwards. For those who missed the invitation you can read about it here.

For some reason I thought it’d be a good idea to do it on my birthday month when I first given choices about which month to host. However, now I cannot remember why.

Read on for 23 separate blog posts covering quite a few peoples’ desires for new features, bugfixes, or changes in functionality.

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