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Category: Versions

Extended Events in SQL Server 2022

Published 2022-05-26 by Kevin Feasel

Tom Zika checks out some extended events:

It has been announced today (2022-05-24) during the MS Build event. The blog post includes a download link. Unfortunately, the Docker container is not quite ready yet.

Anyway, because I’m a #TeamXE, I had to check out if there are any new goodies there. So, I took an XE event list from Microsoft SQL Server 2019 (RTM-CU16) and the new one from Microsoft SQL Server 2022 (CTP2.0) and compared them.

There are a lot of new events—click through to see how many.

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Contained Availability Groups in SQL Server 2022

Published 2022-05-25 by Kevin Feasel

Sean Gallardy is intrigued:

SQL server 2022 (SQL Dallas) has added what is called “Contained Availability Groups”, coming as a nice surprise to many DBAs or other admins out there (incidental DBAs, small shops, etc.) which *could* severely remove a large chunk of administrative overhead and challenges. There’s quite a lot to like about them, but like all things in life there are also some drawbacks that one needs to be aware exist, while these are a giant and amazing step forward for AGs, much like any other tool it has its place and time.

Definitely read the pros and cons of this before giving it a try in the 2022 preview.

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Azure SQL DB REST Endpoint EAP

Published 2022-05-25 by Kevin Feasel

Davide Mauri opens up a preview:

A new, exciting capability for Azure SQL Database has been announced today at //Build: Azure SQL Database has a new built-in feature that allows native integration with external REST endpoints. This means that integration of Azure SQL Database with Azure Functions, Azure Logic Apps, Cognitive Services, Event Hubs, Event Grid, Azure Containers, API Management and in general any REST or even GraphQL endpoint is just one line of code away. The feature is one of the most requested by developers and MVPs and it enormously reduces the friction to integrate Azure services with Azure SQL Database. 

Hmm, on the one hand, I can see this being useful. On the other hand, ASMX in SQL Server 2005, anybody?

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Azure Synapse Link for SQL

Published 2022-05-25 by Kevin Feasel

Chuck Heinzelman makes an announcement:

Azure Synapse Link for SQL is an automated system for replicating data from your transactional databases (both SQL Server 2022 and Azure SQL Database) into a dedicated SQL pool in Azure Synapse Analytics. The process of setting up a link from your SQL data to Azure Synapse takes just a few clicks and a matter of minutes rather than hours or days for traditional ETL processes. Once configured, your initial data is replicated into the target dedicated SQL pool. After the initial table seeding, changes made to your source data are replicated in near real-time. 

I’ll be interested in seeing how it performs and how efficient that change feed processor is.

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JSON Enhancements in Azure SQL DB and SQL Server 2022

Published 2022-05-25 by Kevin Feasel

Umchandar Jayachandran has an announcement:

Today, we are announcing the public preview of JSON enhancements in Azure SQL Database and SQL Server 2022 CTP 2.0. This preview contains an enhancement to ISJSON function and three new JSON functions – JSON_PATH_EXISTS, JSON_OBJECT and JSON_ARRAY. Currently, the ISJSON function allows you to test if a string value contains a valid JSON object or array. The new optional json_type_constraint parameter in ISJSON function can now be used to test conformance of JSON documents to the IETF RFC 8259 specification. This capability allows you to test for strings that contain a JSON value, scalar, object, or array. This functionality is like the IS JSON predicate in the ANSI SQL standard. The new JSON_PATH_EXISTS function allows you to test for the existence of a specific SQL/JSON path expression in a JSON document. This functionality is like the JSON_EXISTS predicate in the ANSI SQL standard. The new ANSI SQL compatible JSON value constructors – JSON_OBJECT and JSON_ARRAY functions allow you to construct JSON object or array from SQL data.

Even if you don’t store data in JSON format, there are good reasons why you might need to accept data in JSON format (or emit data in JSON format), especially when working with languages like R and Python.

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Installing mssql-cli on Ubuntu 22.04

Published 2022-05-18 by Kevin Feasel

Andrew Pruski runs into a problem:

I really like the mssql-cli tool. I use it pretty much everyday however it seems like it’s not being maintained anymore and as such, there are issues when trying to install it on Ubuntu 22.04.

The issue with Ubuntu 22.04 is that it has python 3.10 installed by default which the current mssql-cli is not compatible with. I did try installing previous versions of python (3.8 and 3.9) but had no luck so kept the default version.

Click through to see what Andrew did to resolve the problem. It looks like there’s already a GitHub issue for this that was opened back in October.

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Flink 1.15 Released

Published 2022-05-05 by Kevin Feasel

Joe Moser and Yun Gao announce Apache Flink 1.15:

Thanks to our well-organized and open community, Apache Flink continues to grow as a technology and remain one of the most active projects in the Apache community. With the release of Flink 1.15, we are proud to announce a number of exciting changes.

One of the main concepts that makes Apache Flink stand out is the unification of batch (aka bounded) and stream (aka unbounded) data processing, which helps reduce the complexity of development. A lot of effort went into this unification in the previous releases, and you can expect more efforts in this direction.

Apache Flink is not only growing when it comes to contributions and users, but also out of the original use cases. We are seeing a trend towards more business/analytics use cases implemented in low-/no-code. Flink SQL is the feature in the Flink ecosystem that enables such uses cases and this is why its popularity continues to grow.

Flink SQL is Feasel’s Law in action.

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Comparing R Package Versions with Diffify

Published 2022-05-02 by Kevin Feasel

Clarissa Barratt and Parisa Gregg announce an interesting tool:

You know that sinking feeling that you get when you’re months into a big project and you log in one day and nothing works? Turns out something has updated and things have been removed that you needed and now you need to spend hours-days figuring out what’s changed and your masters deadline is getting closer and … ok, apparently this took me back to a very specific event.

But I’m sure most of that sounds familiar to you if you’ve ever programmed something over a longer period of time.

Over the last few months, Jumping Rivers have been working on a tool that will make it easier to see differences between R package versions: Diffify.

Read on to see it in action. It looks quite useful for troubleshooting issues in which a package suddenly changed API functionality, something which tends to happen frequently in the R and Python worlds.

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