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Category: Tools

Markdown Tools for VS Code

Published 2022-02-01 by Kevin Feasel

I highlight a pair of useful extensions for Visual Studio Code:

The first tool of choice is a big one, Yu Zhang’s Markdown All in One. This extension provides several great features. One of my favorites is its support for creating a table of contents. After opening the Command Palette (Ctrl + Shift + P), select Markdown All In One: Create Table of Contents and it creates a ToC for you based on the heading markers you already have.

Read on for several more things I like about this tool, as well as a discussion of a second useful extension.

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Vim as an IDE

Published 2022-01-17 by Kevin Feasel

Andrew Pruski shares some settings:

Disclaimer – I like VS Code and I won’t be uninstalling it anytime soon and I’m not recommending people do.

However, I feel it can be overkill for 90% of the work that I do. So I’ve been playing around with Vim to see if it will give me what I want.

What I really want is a light weight text editor that allow me to run commands in a terminal…that’s it!

I’ve found that vim-markdown is one of those extensions Andrew mentions not having installed but being good.

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Macros in Tabular Editor 3

Published 2022-01-06 by Kevin Feasel

Matt Allington notes a key feature in Tabulor Editor 3:

Today I am talking about Macros in Tabular Editor 3. This is a new name for an old feature. In Tabular Editor 2, this feature is called Advanced Scripting (a term I actually prefer, but oh well).  I think one reason for the name change is there are now multiple types of scripting, including the new DAX scripting feature (I covered that as a key feature I love in the article linked above).

Click through to see how it works. Tabular Editor 3 is a paid product, though the free Tabular Editor 2 is still around if your employer won’t front the cash for 3.

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Troubleshooting with sp_HumanEvents

Published 2021-11-04 by Kevin Feasel

Erik Darling shows off sp_HumanEvents:

With shorter procs you can probably just collect actual execution plans and slam F5 like a tall glass of gin at 6am.

But you don’t wanna do that with the larger procs, for a few practical reasons:

– Lots of little queries run quickly, and we don’t care about those

– Navigating through lots of plans in SSMS is tedious

– There’s no differentiation when other procedures, etc. are invoked

– You introduce a lot of overhead retrieving and rendering all those plans

– The full query text might not be captured, which is a limitation in many places

Let’s save the day with sp_HumanEvents, my stored procedure that makes using Extended Events really easy.

Read on to see how this all works.

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Visual Studio Code, Markdown, and Snippets

Published 2021-10-15 by Kevin Feasel

Robert Cain takes us through Markdown and snippets in Visual Studio Code:

Seriously though, I do find this documentation language very useful, and easy to use. With just a few commands I can produce a nicely formatted document that can be displayed in my code editor, as well as on platforms like GitHub. I’ve even begun authoring these blog posts in Markdown.

A big reason for me is the ability to integrate it into my projects. VSCode, as well as the full blow Visual Studio, support Markdown (with of course the proper extensions installed). When I create a new PowerShell project in VSCode, I can store the projects documentation in Markdown format right alongside the PowerShell code.

By the way, two VS Code extensions I can highly recommend for their Markdown support are Markdown All in One and markdownlint.

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SSMS Tools Pack 5.7

Published 2021-10-12 by Kevin Feasel

Mladen Prajdic announces SSMS Tools Pack 5.7.0.0:

Run script on multiple targets
Improved: Show databases that are not in normal state and are not accessible.
SQL History
Improved: Enable showing confirmation dialog when restoring the last session.
Search Results in Grid Mode
Improved: Added warning that searching through large result sets will block SSMS.

These are the improvements; click through for the list of what’s new.

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QDS Cache Cleanup in QDS Toolbox

Published 2021-09-21 by Kevin Feasel

Jared Poche continues a series on the QDS Toolbox:

When configuring Query Store, we have a few options for deciding how it retains data but little control over how it cleans up that data. We can set the max size of our query store, the max number of plans to keep per query, and how long to keep query statistics.

The QDS Cache Cleanup component of the QDS Toolbox gives us a number of other options for what data to remove:

Read on for that list and a good example of where it was useful.

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Azure Monitor Logs in Azure Data Studio

Published 2021-09-17 by Kevin Feasel

Julie Koesmarno has a new extension for us:

The Azure Monitor Logs extension in Azure Data Studio is now available in preview. The extension is supported in Azure Data Studio August 2021 release, v1.32.0.

Administrators can enable platform logging and metrics to one of their Azure services such as Azure SQL and set the destination to Log Analytics workspace. By installing native Azure Monitor Logs extension in Azure Data Studio, users can connect, browse, and query against Log Analytics workspace. Data professionals who are using Azure SQL, Azure PostgreSQL, or Azure Data Explorer in Azure Data Studio can access the data in the Log Analytics workspace for diagnosis or auditing in that same development environment. This native Azure Monitor Logs extension allows Azure service customers to also author notebooks with Log Analytics kernel, all equipped with Intellisense.

Click through for examples of how to use this.

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Fixing Remote Desktop Resolution to Match Screen Size

Published 2021-09-10 by Kevin Feasel

Kenneth Fisher fixes a problem:

One of the things I hate most about using remote desktop is when the resolution for the remote server is way off what the size of my window is. You end up with the scroll bars on the side and bottom of the screen and spend half your time moving the screen around so that you can find what you need. Open Notepad, scroll to the top of the screen so you can save it, then scroll to the bottom of the screen so you can switch to the Excel spreadsheet that’s hidden by the Notepad window, etc.

It turns out there is an easy setting that forces the resolution to match the window size. Even if you end up with really weird window sizes.

My fix historically was to use mRemoteNg, which did this for you.

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