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Category: Tools

Walking through the Azure Log Analytics User Interface

Published 2022-04-12 by Kevin Feasel

Robert Cain starts a new series on KQL:

The area in the upper half is where you enter the query you want to run. The lower half is where the results are displayed. We’ll see an example of this in action later in this post.

Just above the query area is a toolbar. The Run button will execute the query you’ve entered. Note too, you can use the keyboard command SHIFT+ENTER to run a query. I’m a keyboard guy, so this is what I use most often to run queries, which you’ll see if you take either of my KQL courses on Pluralsight (I’ve linked to them in the Conclusion of this post).

Read on for a walkthrough of the product. Robert also mentions his Pluralsight course, which I thoroughly enjoyed and used as research materials for a talk I put together.

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The Basics of Azure Storage Explorer

Published 2022-04-11 by Kevin Feasel

Manvendra Singh takes us through Azure Storage Explorer:

This article will explain Azure storage explorer, its installations, and details of how to start working with this application to access Azure storage services. Azure storage provides a flexible solution to store various types of data at a massive scale in the cloud environment. If you have many storage accounts in Azure storage, then it will be difficult to manage them. Microsoft has recognized this problem and developed a desktop application Azure storage explorer to manage Azure storage accounts easily. It can be installed on Windows, Linux, and macOS operating systems.

This is a rather useful tool.

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Azure ML and the Python SDK in VS Code

Published 2022-02-08 by Kevin Feasel

I continue a series on getting beyond the basics with Azure ML. First up, we get up close and personal in development:

Notebooks are great for ad hoc work or simple data analysis but we will want more robust tools if we wish to perform proper code development, testing, and deployment. This is where Visual Studio Code comes into play, particularly the Azure Machine Learning extension.

Then, I get into the Python SDK:

Over the past two posts, we have started using the Azure Machine Learning SDK for Python but I’ve only touched on the topic. In this post, we are going to dive into the topic.

Read on for more info on each.

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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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