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Category: Versions

Datetime Conversion Change

Published 2016-10-03 by Kevin Feasel

Dan Guzman notes a change in behavior in how datetime fields are upconverted:

SQL Server 2016 and Azure SQL Database V12 use the raw datetime internal value without rounding during conversion to another temporal type. The value is rounded only once during conversion, to the target type precision. The end result will be the same as before SQL Server 2016 when the target type precision is 3 or less. However, the converted value will be different when the target type precision is greater than 3 and the internal time unit interval is not evenly divisible by 3 (i.e. rounded source datetime millisecond value is 3 or 7). Note the non-zero microseconds and nanoseconds in the script results below and that rounding is based on the target type precision rather than the source.

This is a good thing on net, but be aware of this if you try to compare datetime versus datetime2 values.

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SQL Server 2016 CU2 And Spinlocks

Published 2016-09-30 by Kevin Feasel

Arvind Shyamsundar has a nice post on SQL Server 2016’s Cumulative Update 2 and how it reduces spinlock contention:

The developers then took a long hard look at how to make this more efficient on such large systems. As described before, since operations on the cache are read-intensive, there was a thought to leverage reader-writer primitives to optimize locking. However, any changes to this spinlock had to be validated extensively before releasing publicly as they may have a drastic impact if incorrectly implemented.

The implementation of the reader / writer version of this spinlock was an intricate effort and was done carefully to ensure that we do not accidentally affect any other functionality. We are glad to say that the final outcome, of what started as a late night investigation in the SQLCAT lab, has finally landed as an improvement which you can use! If you download and install Cumulative Update 2 for SQL Server 2016 RTM, you will observe two new spinlocks in the sys.dm_os_spinlock_stats view:

  • LOCK_RW_CMED_HASH_SET
  • LOCK_RW_SECURITY_CACHE

These are improved reader/writer versions of the original spinlocks. For example, LOCK_RW_CMED_HASH_SET is basically the replacement for CMED_HASH_SET, the spinlock which was the bottleneck in the above case.

Click through for the full story.

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Finding Cumulative Updates

Published 2016-09-14 by Kevin Feasel

Jonathan Kehayias shows where to find older cumulative updates:

However, to my dismay that link took me to the download link for SQL Server 2014 SP1 CU8 and not to CU7 as I was expecting. So I tried other SP1 CU links and they all redirect to the CU8 download page. Slightly irritated I decided to send a Skype IM to Glenn (@GlennAlanBerry|Blog) what was going on because he keeps up with every update Microsoft publishes for SQL Server. Glenn told me that Microsoft’s recommendation and preference is for people to install the latest CU so the KB articles now link to the latest CU download page. That doesn’t really help me with adding a failed FCI node back into a FCI that is on CU7, so Glenn offered to share the CU7 file with me by Dropbox.

It turns out that I didn’t need Glenn to share the file with me, I needed to read the information on the KB article closer and pay attention.

Read on to find out where you can find the CU archives.

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Hortonworks HDP 2.5 Available

Published 2016-08-31 by Kevin Feasel

Hortonworks has a new version of their data platform, 2.5:

We are very pleased to announce that the Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP) Version 2.5 is now generally available for download. As part of a Open and Connected Data Platforms offering from Hortonworks, HDP 2.5 brings a variety of enhancements across all elements of the platform spanning data science, data access to security to governance.

At Hadoop Summit 2016 San Jose on 06/28/2016, we unveiled the latest innovation package within Hortonworks Data Platform 2.5.

The top points of interest:  Spark 2, Kafka 0.10.0, Ambari 2.4, and Storm 1.0.1.  These are four big projects with major improvements.  Looks like I’ve got something to do this weekend…

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Powershell Step Type Bug

Published 2016-07-29 by Kevin Feasel

Derik Hammer notes that there is a bug in 2016 with SQL Agent jobs which have Powershell step types:

When executed through the SQL Agent, the SQLPS.exe mini-shell is called and the current working directory is switched to the SQLSERVER:\ provider. When you call a cmdlet that uses the FILESYSTEM provider under the context of the SQLSERVER provider the cmdlet will fail.

Derik has a Connect ticket open for this bug as well.

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Visual C++ Runtime Update

Published 2016-07-29 by Kevin Feasel

Arvind Shyamsundar reminds us that there’s a critical Visual C++ Runtime update which affects SQL Server 2016:

At this time, we want to remind you of a critical Microsoft Visual C++ 2013 runtime pre-requisite update that may be* required on machines where SQL Server 2016 will be, or has been, installed. Installing this, via either of the two methods described below, will update the Microsoft Visual C++ 2013 runtime to avoid a potential stability issue affecting SQL Server 2016 RTM.

* You can determine if an update is required on a machine via one of the two methods below:

  1. Select View Installed Updates in the Control Panel and check for the existence of either KB3164398 or KB3138367. If either is present, you already have the update installed and no further action is necessary.

  2. Check if the version of %SystemRoot%\system32\msvcr120.dll is 12.0.40649.5 or later. If it is, you already have the update installed and no further action is necessary. (To check the file version, open Windows Explorer, locate and then right-click the %SystemRoot%\system32\msvcr120.dll file, click Properties, and then click the Details tab.)

If you’re running 2016, please make sure that your systems are up to date.  This post includes an easy T-SQL query you can run to see if you’re up to date already.

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Spark 2.0 Out

Published 2016-07-29 by Kevin Feasel

Apache Spark 2.0 has officially been released.  Vinay Shukla gives us some highlights:

Performance
Project Tungsten has completed another major phase and with new completely new stage code generation, significant performance improvements have been delivered. Parquet and ORC file processing have also delivered performance improvements.

Databricks Community Edition offers (tiny) free clusters with Spark 2.0 on top of Scala 2.10 and Scala 2.11.

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SQL Server 2016 CU1 Bugfixes

Published 2016-07-27 by Kevin Feasel

Andrew Pruski notes an important bugfix in SQL Server 2016 CU1:

SQL Server 2016 CU1 has been released and one thing I noticed was: –

FIX: Canceling a backup task crashes SQL Server 2014 or 2016

That’s pretty nasty, when I originally clicked on the link I was expecting to see detailed a pretty precise set of circumstances in which that bug can occur but no no, apparently not. Cancelling any backup task can lead to this happening.

Andrew then argues in favor of waiting for SPs before deploying new versions of software, having been burned on it in the past.  I don’t agree with that philosophy; regardless, I recommend reading his post.

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Listing Enterprise-Only Features

Published 2016-07-21 by Kevin Feasel

Patrick LeBlanc has an embedded report which shows Enterprise Edition-only features:

Someone recently asked me if there was a list of all the SQL Server “Enterprise Only” features available on the web.  I pointed them to the Features Supported by the Editions of SQL Server web page and thought I was done.  He stated that this site was good, but did not provide a simple list of enterprise only features.  I thought for a second, and my thoughts went straight to Power BI.  Why?  Simple, there are tables on the web page, and Power BI can easily extract that data into a data model.  I am not going to go into all those details in this blog post.  Maybe one day, but for now take a look at this interactive Power BI report and let me know what you think.

I think this layout is a bit easier to read and follow than the features website, although I’d love to be able to click on an item and get more information on the feature.

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R 3.3.1 Available

Published 2016-06-23 by Kevin Feasel

David Smith reports that a new version of R is now available, 3.3.1:

This minor update, codenamed “Bug in Your Hair”, makes a few small fixes to the R 3.3.0 release. Bugs fixed include mostly rarely-encountered cases like generating Gamma random numbers with zero or infinite rate parameters, and correctly matching text (with the matchfunction) that only differed in the encoding.

There are no new features in this update, and all R code and packages should work with R 3.3.1 just as they did with R 3.3.0. For a complete list of the fixes in R 3.3.1, follow the link below.

Even though this is a small update, it might be useful to check out.

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