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Category: Tools

Concerns with Azure Data Studio’s Deprecation

Thom Andrews raises a valid concern:

Some of you may, or may not know, Microsoft announced the deprecation of the Azure Data Studio (ADS) on 06 February, with support ending next year on 28 February. For those of using ADS Microsoft recommends migrating to VSCode and using the mssql extension.

Honestly, I’m really concerned about this. I tried the mssql extension for VSCode (mssql going forwards) some time ago, and compared to ADS it was incredibly feature lacking. A lot of stuff I want to do as a DBA was completely missing, so I went straight back to ADS and didn’t look back. I like ADS, and I’ve got good use out of it; especially as (as those who know me well) a Linux user at home, where I can’t use SSMS.

Anyway, I thought “Ok, I’ll give mssql another go, maybe it’s come a long way since I tried last”. Oh boy has it not; at least for someone like myself.

The upshot of Thom’s post is that the mssql extension is definitely not ready for prime time, and there’s going to be an uphill slog to get it, within one year, back to where Azure Data Studio is today. My hope on this is that, because the mssql extension team (who may be the same people as the Azure Data Studio team) doesn’t need to continuously fork and work around changes to Visual Studio Code, that it will allow them to re-use and re-implement relevant code quicker than otherwise. But if not, that’s a tough story to tell.

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An Overview of PostgreSQL Performance Monitoring via pgNow

Grant Fritchey announces a product:

I’ve been putting together a new PostgreSQL session called “Performance Monitoring for the Absolute Beginner.” There are several ways to get an understanding of how well your queries are running in PostgreSQL, but, frankly, all of them are a bit of a pain to someone coming from the land of Extended Events (ah, my one true love). Because of this, I saw it as an opportunity to help those just getting going in PostgreSQL. I’ll be presenting it for the first time at Postgres Conference in Orlando on March 19, 2025. Come on by.

Anyhoo, wouldn’t it be nice to maybe have a shortcut, an easier way to look at this information?

Well, there is. Redgate has been working on a completely free tool for leveraging just this sort of data called pgNow. Go here to check it out yourself, but I’ll do a quick run through here.

Click through to see how it works.

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Automating Backups with Minion Backup

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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Fabric Studio 1.0

Gerhard Brueckl makes an announcement:

I am very proud to announce the first public release of Fabric Studio v1.0 – a VSCode extension that allows you to manage and develop your Fabric workspace(s). Similar to Power BI Studio, it seamlessly integrates into VSCode for increased productivity for professional developers and admins alike.

Click through for some of the functionality available in Fabric Studio. You can download the extension from the VS Code marketplace and Gerhard includes a link to the GitHub repo in the blog post.

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CPU Monitoring in SQL Server with Datadog

Kendra Little has a recommendation:

What makes me a raving fan is the flexibility of Datadog’s notebooks and dashboards, combined with the ability to create all sorts of custom metrics and monitors. There are always things in SQL Server monitoring packs that I have strong opinions about. Datadog lets me take what I want, build what I need that isn’t contained in that, and ignore the rest. For a team that has the budget to afford Datadog paired with dedicated database staff with the time and resources to do this work, this can be a great fit.

One of the weirdest and worst parts of the Datadog SQL Server monitoring tooling, though, is how it handles wait stats. In my opinion, it’s a case of someone reinventing a wheel that didn’t need to be reinvented, and then not documenting what they did clearly (at least not in a way I can find).

Two of the most confusing Datadog “waits” are labeled “CPU” and “Waiting on CPU”. I opened a support ticket with Datadog a while back to ask what these are, because I couldn’t find any way they correspond to actual wait stats in SQL Server. I learned they aren’t wait stats at all. In fact, I think you should largely ignore them. Here’s why.

Read on for the full story.

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A Review of Stellar Repair for MSSQL

Mika Sutinen shares a product review:

Stellar Repair for MS SQL is a tool that greatly simplifies one of all time most dreaded tasks of DBAs and DBREs. Recovering a database that has, for one reason or another, become corrupt.

In this post, I go through one of the more common types of database corruption scenarios, and using Stellar Repair for MS SQL to get the database back up and running.

Click through for the review.

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Configuring SQL Server Alerts in SQLMonitor

Ajay Dwivedi has an update to SQLMonitor:

If you are responsible for managing & monitoring SQLServers, then it is mandatory to have monitoring and alerting for critical issues of your SQL Servers.

For this purpose, open source SQLMonitor now has built-in Alert Engine. With the capability of this alert engine, alerts can be sent to Slack & Email to various teams. The following are some advantages –

Read on to see some of those capabilities and how to set things up.

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The Power of pg_dump

Robert Haas talks up pg_dump:

I wrote a blog post a couple of weeks ago entitled Is pg_dump a Backup Tool?. In that post, I argued in the affirmative, but also said that it’s probably shouldn’t be your primary backup mechanism. For that, you probably shouldn’t directly use anything that is included in PostgreSQL itself, but rather a well-maintained third-party backup tool such as barman or pgbackrest. But today, I want to talk a little more about why I believe that pg_dump is both amazingly useful for solving all kinds of PostgreSQL-related problems and also just a great piece of technology.

The core value proposition of pg_dump is that the output is human-readable text. You’ll get DDL commands that you can use to recreate your database objects, and you’ll get COPY commands (or INSERTs, if you so request) that you can use to reload your table data. That is not really an advantage if you’re just trying to back up and restore an entire database cluster, because converting all of your data from PostgreSQL’s internal formats into text and back again is going to use a bunch of CPU resources. If you instead take and restore a physical backup, you can avoid all of that overhead.

Read on for scenarios in which pg_dump can be quite useful.

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Variable Types in Postman

Huyen Maithi talks variables:

Variables enable you to store and reuse values. Postman is a powerful API development tool that offers a feature known as environment variables. These variables help you work efficiently, collaborate with teammates in testing and development by allowing users to easily manage dynamic values across requests.

Click through for an overview of the types of variables you can create for Postman requests.

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