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Category: Tools

Checking Query Settings

Published 2017-03-17 by Kevin Feasel

Angela Henry had a query which worked fine in Management Studio but not in Powershell:

After I dusted off my PowerShell 2.0 documentation, I got my script written and started testing.  I processed several folders and their files before I received the following error while running my PowerShell script:

Invoke-Sqlcmd : String or binary data would be truncated.
The statement has been terminated.
At line:127 char:36
+ … MyResults = Invoke-Sqlcmd -ServerInstance $ServerName `
+                 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo          : InvalidOperation: (:) [Invoke-Sqlcmd], SqlPowerShellSqlExecutionException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : SqlError,Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.PowerShell.GetScriptCommand

Interesting.  I added some Write-Host statements for troubleshooting and found the offending entry.  Like any good programmer, I tested my stored procedure call in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) to make sure it really was a SQL Server error and guess what?  It worked just fine!  No errors what so ever.  WTH?!  This is where my tunnel vision sets in.  If it works in SSMS but not in PowerShell, then PowerShell must be the problem, right?  Well, sort of.

Read on for the solution.

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Mastering Tools

Published 2016-12-28 by Kevin Feasel

The folks at Sharp Sight Labs explain that future obsolescence of a tool does not mean you should not master it:

The heart of his critique is this: data science is changing very fast, and any tool that you learn will eventually become obsolete.

This is absolutely true.

Every tool has a shelf life.

Every. single. one.

Moreover, it’s possible that tools are going to become obsolete more rapidly than in the past, because the world has just entered a period of rapid technological change. We can’t be certain, but if we’re in a period of rapid technological change, it seems plausible that toolset-changes will become more frequent.

The thing I would tie it to is George Stigler’s paper on information theory.  There’s a cost of knowing—which the commenter notes—but there’s also a cost to search, given the assumption that you know where to look.  Being effective in any role, be it data scientist or anything else, involves understanding the marginal benefit of pieces of information.  This blog post gives you a concrete example of that in the realm of data science.

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SQL Server For Linux Tools

Published 2016-12-02 by Kevin Feasel

Sanjay Nagamangalam looks at different tools you can use to connect to SQL Server:

  • New SQL command line tools for Linux: We’ve created Linux-native versions of your favorite SQL command line tools such as sqlcmdand bcp and sqlpackage and also added the new mssql-conf tool that lets you configure various properties for the SQL Server instance on Linux (e.g., SA password, TCP port and collation).

  • New versions of SSMS, SSDT and SQL PowerShell: We have released updated versions (v17.0 RC1) of our flagship SQL Server tools including SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), Visual Studio SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) and SQL PowerShell with support for the SQL Server v.Next on Windows and Linux.

They also have a plugin for Visual Studio Code, which can be helpful if you’re running on Linux.

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Building Your 2016 VM

Published 2016-11-14 by Kevin Feasel

James Serra looks at putting together a VM for 2016:

With Windows Server 2016 just been released, now is the perfect time to build an Azure VM with SQL Server 2016 on Windows Server 2016.  In a matter of minutes you can be playing and learning both platforms.  Below I will document the steps I took to build the VM along with the additional software I installed.  This is a fully-loaded VM that I use for demo’s and to build small projects:

(Software updates as of 11/4/2016)

There’s a lot of good software here.  And Java.

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Bugfixes To SQLCover

Published 2016-10-03 by Kevin Feasel

Ed Elliott notes that there is a new version of SQLCover out:

There have been a couple of fixes in SQLCover this week, kindly submitted by John Mclusky (https://github.com/jmclusky):

Code coverage not reported correctly for CTEs at the end of a stored procedure if the ‘with’ is immediately preceded with a semicolon

and

DeclareTableVariableStatement statements cannot be covered, so report falsely as missing coverage

Go check out SQLCover.

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Evaluating Monitoring Tools

Published 2016-09-15 by Kevin Feasel

Richard Douglas has a great post on things to think about when evaluating a monitoring tool:

A question that often comes up in meetings is, “What would success look like?” To me, it’s my favourite football team Spurs winning the English Premier League! This is never a popular answer to the person asking the question in the meeting, but generally raises a few smiles and lightens the mood. However, you’re more likely interested in monitoring software and what success means in that scenario. As I see it, success means finding an outcome that is beyond doubt. Now success could mean that the software you are evaluating is not as good as the current incumbent. That is a successful outcome. You have decided that you already own the best solution for you. Congratulations! It can also mean that a particular solution meets all of the criteria needed by your business in order for it to solve technical issues and to grow.

The advice is vendor-agnostic and is worth reading if you plan to evaluate monitoring tools anytime soon.

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Blitz Scripts Open Sourced

Published 2016-06-22 by Kevin Feasel

Brent Ozar announces that the sp_Blitz series of scripts is now open source:

Our prior copyright license said you couldn’t install this on servers you don’t own. We’d had a ton of problems with consultants and software vendors handing out outdated or broken versions of our scripts, and then coming to us for support.

Now, it’s a free-for-all! If you find the scripts useful, go ahead and use ’em. Include sp_Blitz, sp_BlitzCache, sp_BlitzIndex, etc as part of your deployments for easier troubleshooting.

This is very good news.

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Tools For Cortana Intelligence Suite Development

Published 2016-06-20 by Kevin Feasel

Melissa Coates has a list of tools she uses when working with Cortana Intelligence Suite:

4. Azure SDK

The Azure SDK sets up lots of libraries; the main features we are looking for from the Azure SDK right away are (a) the ability to use the Cloud Explorer within Visual Studio, and (b) the ability to create ARM template projects for automated deployment purposes. In addition to the Server Explorer we get from Visual Studio, the Cloud Explorer from the SDK gives us another way to interact with our resources in Azure.

This is a nice tools checklist to compare against what you’re using.

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Removing Snippet Line Numbers

Published 2016-05-13 by Kevin Feasel

Jens Vestergaard grabs some code and is left with line numbers he wants to remove:

Only too often I find myself searching the web for pieces of code, that I need for some odd solution. And almost every time, I come across a web page, where the code sample is displayed with line numbers. It’s always annoying to have to sit and delete those manually. No longer I say! Yes, you heard me right. Actually Visual Studio has a neat trick to help you get this done in a jiff.

This is useful for a lot more than just removing line numbers.

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SQLCover Updated

Published 2016-05-09 by Kevin Feasel

Ed Elliott has an update to SQLCover, his code coverage tool:

This includes a few minor fixes but also support for SQL Azure so if you run your test in a v12 database or higher you can now get an idea of code coverage from that.

If you are interested in using this but don’t know where to start, there is a powershell script in the download (https://the.agilesql.club/SQLCover/download.php) and if you also get reportgenerator (https://github.com/danielpalme/ReportGenerator/releases/tag/v2.4.5.0):

Check out the tool and add a few database tests…or any database tests…

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