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Category: Tools

Three Years of PSBlitz

Published 2025-07-31 by Kevin Feasel

Vlad Drumea looks back:

In 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.

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Updates to sp_CheckBackup

Published 2025-07-29 by Kevin Feasel

Jeff 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.

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Fabric Studio 2.0 Released

Published 2025-07-29 by Kevin Feasel

Gerhard 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.

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Installing SQL Server CUs via dbatools

Published 2025-07-18 by Kevin Feasel

David 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.

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LakeBench Now Available

Published 2025-07-14 by Kevin Feasel

Miles 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 light mode.

Click through to see how it works and grab a copy if you’re interested.

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Microsoft Fabric Extension for VS Code Update

Published 2025-06-27 by Kevin Feasel

Sunitha Muthukrishna has an update:

Microsoft Fabric Extension for VS Code enables users to manage Fabric items efficiently from within VS Code. We are announcing two new features for Microsoft Fabric Extension for VS Code that allow you to manage Fabric items directly within your workspace. These enhancements are based on customer feedback, and we welcome further input to improve this product.

Click through to see what’s new in the product.

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Building Entity-Relationship Diagrams with DBeaver

Published 2025-06-26 by Kevin Feasel

Dave Stokes builds a diagram:

Even the most experienced database professionals are known to feel a little anxious when peering into an unfamiliar database. Hopefully, they inspect to see how the data is normalized and how the various tables are combined to answer complex queries.  Entity Relationship Maps (ERM) provide a visual overview of how tables are related and can document the structure of the data.

Read on to see how you can do this with the DBeaver database access client.

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The FabricTools Powershell Module

Published 2025-06-23 by Kevin Feasel

Kamil Nowinski has a module for us:

In the world of Microsoft Fabric, DevOps is still maturing. Unlike Azure Data Factory (ADF), which has been around long enough to have established tooling – like the #ADFTools I developed 5 years ago – Fabric is new, broad, and complex, in a very positive way!

Microsoft Fabric integrates data engineering, warehousing, real-time analytics, and BI. With this scale, the need for solid DevOps tooling is more critical than ever.

Click through to read a little bit of the history behind the project, as well as what’s currently available. And it’s all free and open-source.

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SQL Server Performance Troubleshooting Script Updates

Published 2025-06-10 by Kevin Feasel

Erik Darling has been busy (plus raking in changes from contributors like he’s farming in an AFK game):

It’s been a busy few months working on scripts in my GitHub repo, including adding two new members to the family.

  • sp_IndexCleanup: Easily deduplicate indexes — scripts all the changes out for you!
  • sp_PerfCheck: A high-level review of performance-related settings and configurations!

Read on to see which other scripts have updates and where you can download all of Erik’s scripts.

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Debugging Fabric UDFs in Visual Studio Code

Published 2025-06-10 by Kevin Feasel

Sunitha Muthukrishna takes us through a debugging exercise:

Debugging your code is important to identify issues and mitigate them when you’re working with user data functions in Microsoft Fabric. You want to make sure everything works as it should and that’s where local debugging lets you catch problems in your code without messing with the live environment. In this blog post, I will walk you through the steps to make local debugging easier and faster.

Click through to see what you’ll need, as well as the process to debug a function locally.

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