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Category: Tools

SQL Server Trends Worth Watching

Published 2019-11-13 by Kevin Feasel

Grant Fritchey follows up on a Kevin Hill tweet:

There are a million things to learn about in our rapidly shifting technological landscape, but I think this assessment, especially the way it was put, “no longer justify ignoring” really nails some of the fundamentals.

Let’s talk about why you can no longer ignore Docker, Git and DBATools either.

If you’re a DBA and aren’t familiar with Docker, Git, or DBATools, that’s a pretty good trio of things to spend some time learning. You can survive without them, but you’re more likely to thrive if you know them.

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The State of SQL Server Tools

Published 2019-11-11 by Kevin Feasel

Vicky Harp provides us a general update on things related to SQL Server tooling:

This week we’re announcing the general availability of SQL Server 2019, a significant milestone for Azure Data and for SQL Server customers. This presents a good moment to give an update on the state of tooling for SQL Server.

Since SQL Server 2016, the tools for SQL Server have been released independently “out of box” from the server product. This allows us to be more agile to the needs of our users, get both features and bug fixes shipped more quickly, stay aligned with the more continuous release cycle of Azure SQL, and in general allows the tools team to innovate in exciting ways. However, one side effect is that it can be difficult to understand what’s happening across the tools landscape, as things change quickly in multiple products that are releasing as frequently as every month.

Azure Data Studio has gotten a lot better. SSMS has gotten a little better. We’ve also seen work around several other tools, including command-line options. It’s a good time to be in SQL Server.

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Visual Studio 2019 and SQL Server Extensions

Published 2019-11-04 by Kevin Feasel

Tomaz Kastrun shows how you can install support for SSIS, SSAS, and SSRS with Visual Studio 2019:

Visual Studio 2019 brings new installation of SQL Server Integration services and SQL Server Analysis Services and SQL Server Reporting Services.

There is no need to download SSDT (SQL Server Data Tools for Visual Studio) as used to do with Visual Studio 2017 or previous versions.

Installation is pretty easy once you know where to look.

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Management Studio’s Staying Power

Published 2019-08-15 by Kevin Feasel

Kendra Little explains why SQL Server Management Studio isn’t going away anytime soon:

After all, SSMS is no longer the cool new kid on the block: Microsoft has shown consistent effort to develop their new tool, Azure Data Studio (the artist formerly known as SQL Operations Studio), since November 2017. Azure Data Studio is built on the modern foundation of Microsoft’s VS Code, whereas SQL Server Managed Studio is related to the legacy Visual Studio Shell.

Based on this overview, it might seem like a new SQL Server DBA or developer should primarily learn Azure Data Studio, not SSMS. And it might similarly seem like vendors should focus on developing new tooling only for Azure Data Studio.

But when you look into the details of how Azure Data Studio is being developed, it becomes clear that SSMS is still just as relevant than ever:

User base inertia is another reason, one that Kendra doesn’t mention directly. I like where Azure Data Studio is going and try to use it at least half-time. But there are a lot of people with a specific workflow they’ve developed and don’t want to change. As long as that’s a large percentage of the SQL Server population, SSMS isn’t going anywhere.

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Power Bi Dataflows and the Right Tool for the Job

Published 2019-07-24 by Kevin Feasel

Matthew Roche answers a reader question and waxes philosophical at the same time:

– Power BI dataflows and CDM folders provide capabilities for bridging the low-code/no-code world of self-service BI with managed central corporate BI in Azure.
– Power BI dataflows enable Excel-like composition of ETL processes with linked and computed entities.
– Power BI dataflows can scale beyond the desktop and leverage the power of the cloud to become part of an end-to-end BI application.

But… This is just a list of features.

Read the whole thing.

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Diagnosing Analysis Services with SSASDiag

Published 2019-07-22 by Kevin Feasel

Chris Webb discusses SSASDiag:

There are a lot of great community-developed tools out there for Analysis Services developers to use (BI Developer Extensions, DAX Studio, Tabular Editor, Analysis Services Query Analyzer to name a few) and they have saved me vast amounts of time and effort over the years. When I joined Microsoft last month I came across one which I had never seen before but which is nevertheless quite mature and feature-rich: the SSAS Diagnostics Tool or SSASDiag for short. It’s available on GitHub here:
https://github.com/ssasdiag/SSASDiag

Read on for Chris’s initial thoughts and check out the tool.

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SentryOne Plan Explorer in Azure Data Studio

Published 2019-07-15 by Kevin Feasel

Aaron Bertrand gives us the behind-the-scenes look at SentryOne’s Plan Explorer extension for Azure Data Studio:

Like the desktop application, the Plan Explorer extension is designed to provide you with richer graphical execution plans for your real-time queries against SQL Server. It is based on a modest subset of functionality; we’ve started with just the plan diagram, a basic statements grid, tooltips, and access to the XML (so you can open the plan in other tools). We will add more features to the extension over time to try to get you as close to full parity with the desktop client as possible.

I gave it a quick try this weekend and had to pop XML results into the desktop client to get what I really wanted to see, but I’m excited over what this looks like medium-term.

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Replaying Workloads with WorkloadTools

Published 2019-06-21 by Kevin Feasel

Gianluca Sartori shows an example of using the WorkloadTools application to replay a workload, including where the analytics server cannot directly access the production database:

Regardless of the method that you decided to use, at the end of the replays, you will have two distinct sets of tables containing the workload analysis data, sitting in different schemas in the same database or in completely different databases.

WorkloadViewer will let you visualize performance over time, as we have seen for a single workload analysis, but this time it will be able to show you data from both workloads, so that you can compare them.

This sort of production load testing is both important and difficult; WorkloadTools makes it easier.

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