A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
Alan Yu announces a new version of Azure Data Studio:
The key highlights to cover this month include:
– SandDance integration—A new way to interact with data
– Notebook improvements
– SQL Server Dacpac extension can support Azure Active Directory
– SQL Server 2019 extension
– Visual Studio Code merge 1.37
– Bug fixes
Being able to add a new cell inline is nice, especially when you’re dealing with larger notebooks.
Comments closedDinakar Nethi announces SQL Server Management Studio version 18.2:
We are excited to announce the release of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 18.2. For this update, while we added some features, our focus was dedicated to fundamentals such as stability, reliability, performance, etc.
You can download SQL Server Management Studio 18.2 today.
Some of the new features in SQL Server Management Studio include:– Intellisense/editor: Added support for data classification
– Query execution: Added a completion time in the messages to track when a given query completed its execution.
– ShowPlan: Added new attribute in query plan when the inline scalar UDF feature is enabled.
There are several bugfixes in there as well.
Comments closedAsad Khan announces the release of SQL Server 2019 CTP 3.2:
With this release of SQL Server 2019 community technology preview 3.2, we are announcing the public preview of Big Data Clusters for SQL Server 2019. Big Data Clusters for SQL Server enables big data analytics within SQL Server. It brings HDFS and Apache Spark™ into SQL Server for scale out compute and storage.
Big data clusters allow you to deploy scalable clusters of SQL Server, Apache Spark™, and HDFS running on Kubernetes. It provides all the tools and systems to ingest, store, and prepare data for analysis as well as to train and operationalize machine learning models. It allows you to query external data sources through data virtualization and combine and analyze your high-value relational data with high-volume big data. You will be also be able to build and deploy scalable and productive data-driven applications in big data clusters.
There’s a good bit in this release and because we’re in the 3.x range, you should be able to upgrade directly.
Comments closedTravis Wright announces support for Azul Systems’ Java distribution in SQL Server 2019:
In September 2018, Microsoft announced a new partnership with Azul Systems, a leading Java open source contributor and distributor. This partnership allows for all Azure customers to use Azul’s Zulu for Azure – Enterprise distribution of Java for free with support jointly provided by Microsoft and Azul. That’s right – supported for free.
Today, we are announcing that we have extended that partnership to cover SQL Server. Starting in the SQL Server 2019 community technology preview (CTP) 3.2 that was released today, we are including Azul System’s Zulu Embedded right out of the box for all scenarios where Java is used in SQL Server – in PolyBase, Apache Spark, Java extensibility, and more. There is no additional cost beyond what you pay for SQL Server.
This is interesting. We’ll have to see if the CTP 3.2 installation doesn’t ask for JDK 1.8 anymore and just installs the Azul Systems version.
Comments closedDavid Smith notes a new version of R is available:
On July 5, the R Core Group released the source code for the latest update to R, R 3.6.1, and binaries are now available to download for Windows, Linux and Mac from your local CRAN mirror.
R 3.6.1 is a minor update to R that fixes a few bugs. As usual with a minor release, this version is backwards-compatible with R 3.6.0 and remains compatible with your installed packages.
Click through for the changes. There is one nice addition around writeClipboard but otherwise it’s a release where you probably update if you’re bothered by a bug it fixes and otherwise skip.
Anshul Rampal announces CTP 3.1 of SQL Server 2019:
The big data clusters feature continues to add key capabilities for its initial release in SQL Server 2019. This month, the release extends the Apache Spark™ functionality for the feature by supporting the ability to read and write to data pool external tables directly as well as a mechanism to scale compute separately from storage for compute-intensive workloads. Both enhancements should make it easier to integrate Apache Spark™ workloads into your SQL Server environment and leverage each of their strengths. Beyond Apache Spark™, this month’s release also includes machine learning extensions with MLeap where you can train a model in Apache Spark™ and then deploy it for use in SQL Server through the recently released Java extensibility functionality in SQL Server CTP 3.0. This should make it easier for data scientists to write models in Apache Spark™ and then deploy them into production SQL Server environments for both periodic training and full production against the trained model in a single environment.
Click through to learn more about what has changed.
Comments closedChrissy LeMaire and a cast of thousands have officially released dbatools 1.0:
We are so super excited to announce that after 5 long years, dbatools 1.0 is publicly available!
Our team had some lofty goals and met a vast majority of them . In the end, my personal goal for dbatools 1.0 was to have a tool that is not only useful and fun to use but trusted and stable as well. Mission accomplished: over the years, hundreds of thousands of people have used dbatools and dbatools is even recommended by Microsoft.
Go forth and update.
Comments closedIn those versions, flipping compatibility level uses the new Cardinality Estimator (CE). That new Cardinality Estimator is real hit or miss.
The worst part is that there’s practically no gain to be realized for using higher compatibility levels — that changes with SQL Server 2019.
Read on to see what those new features are. As far as the compatibility level switch goes, there comes a time when you just need to bite the bullet and use the new cardinality estimator. Erik has a few tips to help with that too.
Comments closedDinakar Nethi takes us through some changes in SQL Server Management Studio version 18.1:
We’re excited to announce the release of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 18.1. It’s been just over a month since we released SSMS 18.0. While we brought in many fantastic capabilities, we also regressed some functionality for some of our users. We are happy to share that we’ve fixed those and are also bringing in some new features along with bug fixes.
The big thing for a lot of people is that database diagrams have returned. I was never the biggest fan of those, but there was enough of an uproar to bring them back.
Comments closedKevin Chant gives you business cases for why you should upgrade to SQL Server 2019:
1. Polybase
Currently, you might import large amounts of data from another relational database system like Oracle or MongoDB into your SQL Server database. If so, you can use Polybase instead.Polybase has certainly been improved in SQL Server 2019. For instance, more data sources are now available. Plus, you can even install Polybase on SQL Server 2019 on Linux as well.
Instead of importing the data from the source you can use Polybase to connect to it remotely. Which means that you can run your queries against the source directly instead.
Read on for more in this vein. Here it’s less about the technical capabilities and more about making life easier for other people in the business.
Comments closed