A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
Anthony Nocentino announces a new tool:
I’m excited to announce the release of a new open-source project that fully automates HammerDB benchmarking for SQL Server using Docker. If you’ve ever needed to run TPC-C or TPC-H benchmarks multiple times, you know how time-consuming the manual setup can be. This project removes the hassle and gets you up and running a single command:
./loadtest.sh.
Click through to learn more about the project and how you can grab the code.
Leave a CommentMike Robbins introduces Markdown:
Markdown is the standard for writing technical documentation at Microsoft and many other organizations. Its simplicity, readability, and compatibility with other tools make it an ideal choice for blogging, documenting software, procedures, APIs, and more. Whether you’re authoring a user guide, README, or knowledge base article, Markdown enables you to focus on content without getting bogged down in formatting.
As a technical writer, you’re expected to deliver clear, maintainable documentation that works across platforms. Markdown helps you do exactly that, with minimal friction.
The biggest challenge I experience with Markdown is figuring out what’s actually supported in some given implementation of Markdown. Most of the basics will be the same, but as soon as you get into things like nested lists, images, etc., support varies significantly.
Leave a CommentDavid Fitzjarrell looks at two classic tools:
Change is good, and occasionally Oracle changes utilities to make them easier to implement. Over the years a tool called LOGMINER has been available for various replication tasks, such as logical standby databases and an older product called STREAMS as well as updated tools such as Golden Gate. Let’s look into this topic again, with versions from 19c onward.
Click through for a bit of history on both tools, as well as where they’re at today.
Leave a CommentJess Pomfret tries out the Data API Builder:
I’ve been hearing about the Data API Builder (dab) for a while now, but I hadn’t found a reason to play with it myself.
Well I recently found I had a SQL Server database that could use an API so I could interact with it from an Azure Function. I immediately thought about DAB and was excited to have a reason to test it out.
Let me tell you – this thing is pretty neat!
Jess has started a new series and the first post involves installing and trying out the service.
Leave a CommentHaroon Ashraf gives us a somewhat unwieldy process:
As a SQL/BI developer, I want to run and store my SQL scripts and documentation efficiently in a Notebook as an alternative to using Azure Data Studio SQL Notebooks since Azure Data Studio is retiring soon. Read on to learn more about Visual Studio Code Polyglot Notebooks.
I liked the simplicity of having a SQL kernel in Azure Data Studio. Haroon shows how to work around it and get to roughly the same spot, but I do hope the SQL Server tools team is able to migrate that SQL kernel over to VS Code prior to Azure Data Studio’s ultimate demise.
Leave a CommentIn case you’re not familiar with it, PSBlitz is a PowerShell script that outputs SQL Server health and performance diagnostics data to either Excel or HTML, and saves execution plans and deadlock graphs as .sqlplan and .xdl files.
It’s based on modified non-stored procedure versions of Brent Ozar’s SQL Server First Responder Kit and Erik Darling’s sp_QuickieStore.
Along with some other custom scripts I’ve put together.You can get more details about its capabilities and usage from my PSBlitz GitHub repo.
Read on to learn about the origin story of PSBlitz, some of the major changes that have taken place over the past three years, and a bit more on the tool.
Comments closedJeff Iannucci announces some updates to a free tool:
Since we introduced sp_CheckBackup last year we’ve gotten some great feedback on ways to improve this tool that helps you quickly and easily review the backup history for your SQL Server databases. We’ve even noticed a few things ourselves that we wanted to change as we used it more internally here at Straight Path Solutions.
Today we’re announcing a new version that includes some additions, corrections, and a few other adjustments that should be helpful. Here’s what new!
Read on for that changelog.
Comments closedGerhard Brueckl has an update:
7 months after the first official release of Fabric Studio, I am very happy to share the I just released the next major version with a lot of new features that make working with Microsoft Fabric from VSCode better and more intuitive than ever! The release includes some new capabilities that I wanted to get into the tool since the very beginning but back then the APIs just weren’t there yet. Finally they are and I integrated them into Fabric Studio v2.0!
Click through for a quick changelog, a link to the full changelog, and where you can grab a copy of the Visual Studio Code extension.
Comments closedDavid Seis updates an instance or thirty:
Keeping your SQL Server instance up to date with the latest service packs and cumulative updates is one of the key components of SQL Server security. In this blog post, we will audit the dbatools command Update-DbaInstance, which can save you hours every month and help keep your environment more secure.
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. Update-DbaInstance is powerful tool to automate the update of one or many SQL server instances without needing to log in.
Click through for David’s thoughts on the cmdlet.
Comments closedMiles Cole makes an announcement:
I’m excited to formally announce LakeBench, now in version v0.3, the first Python-based multi-modal benchmarking library that supports multiple data processing engines on multiple benchmarks. You can find it on GitHub and PyPi.
Traditional benchmarks like TPC-DS and TPC-H focus heavily on analytical queries, but they miss the reality of modern data engineering: building complex ELT pipelines. LakeBench bridges this gap by introducing novel benchmarks that measure not just query performance, but also data loading, transformation, incremental processing, and maintenance operations. The first of such benchmarks is called ELTBench and is initially available in
lightmode.
Click through to see how it works and grab a copy if you’re interested.
Comments closed