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Category: Tools

Contoso Data Generator v2

Published 2024-07-26 by Kevin Feasel

Marco Russo announces an updated product:

I am proud to announce the second version of the Contoso Data Generator!

In January 2022, we released the first version of an open-source project to create a sample relational database for semantic models in Power BI and Analysis Services. That version focused on creating a SQL Server database as a starting point for the semantic model.

We invested in a new version to support more scenarios and products! Yes, Power BI is our primary focus, but 90% of our work could have been helpful for other platforms and architectures, so… why not?

Read on to see how you can use this and generate as much data as you want.

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Unit Testing a Database

Published 2024-07-17 by Kevin Feasel

Olivier Van Steenlandt builds some tests:

In the past few years, I learned much about collaborative data warehouse development and deployment automatization by using Database Projects (SSDT) and Azure DevOps (and other tools).

I had my fair share of learning curves, making mistakes, and having great learning opportunities. Lately, I started my next journey to learn about Unit Testing for data warehousing/database development.

In this data cookbook (blog post series), we will discover the wonderful world and different flavors of unit testing from a data perspective. In the coming weeks/months, new data recipes (blog posts) will be released bi-weekly.

This first post provides an overview of the topic and includes links to three tools, though SQL Test is an implementation of tSQLt. Of the three, Visual Studio tests are the best of the bunch, though they’re more integration tests than unit tests.

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Tips to Identify Poorly-Performing Code

Published 2024-07-16 by Kevin Feasel

Rich Benner shares a few tricks:

So, you have a database or block of code. You’ve been told to “make it fast” but you’re not sure where to start. I’ve got you. We’re going to create a process to follow to ensure we can tune effectively and prove that we’ve made things faster. It’s all about having a structure when performance tuning.

Read on for Rich’s recommendations on how to identify poorly-performing code.

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Statistics TIME and IO Analysis and Statistics Reporter

Published 2024-07-16 by Kevin Feasel

Rod Edwards does a bit of analysis:

Again, this is another one of those little bits of functionality that has been present since year dot. Unfortunately, it seems to be forgotten by many in the great game of query investigation.

Being able to see the IO patterns of a query that we’re running to help us see where the heavy lifting is occurring is really useful in allowing us to get the bottom of problems quickly, or see the benefits of our tuning efforts (or otherwise!).

One neat thing I did not know about before was a product called Statistics Reporter, an extension for SQL Server Management Studio that parses the results from time and I/O statistics results. I like Richie Rump’s Statistics Parser website, but the idea of having something built-in is pretty nice.

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Modifying Column Return Order in sp_QuickieStore

Published 2024-07-05 by Kevin Feasel

Josephine Bush demands order:

I love QuickieStore, but I wanted some columns to be at the front end of the results returned. Namely, I wanted top_waits, query_sql_text, and query_plan right after database name. This way I don’t have to scroll over to see those values.

Unfortunately, it would appear that there’s no advanced functionality for column ordering like we have for sp_whoisactive. But that didn’t deter Josephine, and you can grab a copy of an updated script that includes columns in this different arrangement.

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Exporting Multiple Databases Concurrently via SqlPackage

Published 2024-06-18 by Kevin Feasel

Jose Manuel Jurado Diaz has a script for us:

This week, I’ve been working on a service request case where we need to export multiple databases using SqlPackage. Following, I would like to share my lesson learned to export  simultaneous several databases, saving the export files to the F:\sql folder and the logs of the operations to the F:\sql\log folder.

Few recommendations when performing these exports:

Click through for those recommendations and the script. The cynic in me would add a third tip: make sure your databases are small, or else SqlPackage won’t work so well.

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Task Scheduling in PostgreSQL with pg_cron and pg_timetable

Published 2024-06-17 by Kevin Feasel

Radim Marek compares two extensions:

Working with PostgreSQL, and virtually any database system, extends far beyond merely inserting and retrieving data. Many application and business processes, maintenance tasks, reporting, and orchestration tasks require the integration of a job scheduler. While third-party tools can drive automation, you can also automate the execution of predefined tasks directly within the database environment. Although system-level cron might be a starting point, the power of the database system lies in its ability to store all the necessary information alongside your data/schema. In this article, we will explore pg_cron and pg_timetable as two distinct PostgreSQL-specific tools for scheduled task automation.

Read on to learn more about each.

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Granting Developers Query Store Access

Published 2024-06-04 by Kevin Feasel

Josephine Bush wants to allow developers to solve their own problems:

Let’s have devs look at their own query performance. Yes, please, sign me up for that! Sometimes, it’s hard for me to know the best course of action, especially when they are using Entity Framework, but it’s a great start for them to use Query Store to see how impactful their queries are. I’m happy to help them decipher results if they are confused, but I really like performance tuning being a team sport. I was giving them a list of queries with, for example, high CPU usage, but it was even better when they could go in there and use Query Store for themselves on a regular basis.

The actual granting of rights takes a couple lines of T-SQL, and Josephine also provides an overview of Query Store along the way. Erik Darling’s sp_QuickieStore plays a prominent role in this post and I agree that it’s extremely helpful. I’d also be remiss not bringing up QDS Toolbox as well, as it’s a rather good solution in its own right.

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Power BI Studio 2.0 Released

Published 2024-05-29 by Kevin Feasel

Gerhard Brueckl moves fast and doesn’t break things:

Due to the great feedback I have received for the first version of my VSCode extension to mange Power BI objects from within VSCode I decided to continue working on it and am finally happy to share that I am releasing a new version – v2.0!

If you already had the previous version installed in VSCode, you do not have to do anything as it will update automatically. If you are a new user, you can install it from the gallery or search for “Power BI Studio” in the VSCode extensions tab.

Click through for the list of updates, as well as how you can install the Visual Studio Code extension.

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Building an ERD for Existing Databases

Published 2024-05-24 by Kevin Feasel

Josephine Bush creates a diagram:

There are several tools out there to make your life easier by creating an ERD for your existing db. Everything works pretty well when you have a small number of tables with FKs mapped, but when the number gets bigger, the diagram naturally gets a lot messier. Here are some of the ones I tried.

Click through to see the full list. I haven’t found any that are particularly good at the job, especially not in the free or relatively inexpensive tiers. My problem is that the tools tend to get goofy when you update an existing model based on database changes: all that time you spent reorganizing entity locations so you don’t have a spaghetti mess of lines criss-crossing all of your entities gets wasted the next time you perform an update, because the tools tend to shuffle things around once again.

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