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Curated SQL Posts

Constraints in PostgreSQL

Published 2025-12-12 by Kevin Feasel

Gulcin Yildirim Jelinek digs into how PostgreSQL handles database constraints:

Constraints give you fine-grained control over data integrity and if any inserted or default value violates them, PostgreSQL raises an error.

In short, constraints are rules enforced by the database to keep your data valid and consistent. When constraints are not enforced, data issues start to leak in and eventually turn into bugs. Spending time understanding constraints helps prevent subtle data bugs later on.

Read on for information around constraint types in Postgres (including exclusion constraints), as well as triggers and domains. Exclusion constraints are new to me, but apparently allow for things like preventing timeframe overlaps, so that’s pretty useful.

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Performance Tuning SQL Server in KubeVirt

Published 2025-12-12 by Kevin Feasel

Andrew Pruski speeds things up:

Following on from my last post about Getting Started With KubeVirt & SQL Server, in this post I want to see if I can improve the performance from the initial test I ran.

Andrew digs into the settings and gets to about 98% of StatefulSet performance, which is considerably better than the starting point. But it does take a good bit of configuration and effort to get there.

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Backup and Recovery versus Disaster Recovery

Published 2025-12-12 by Kevin Feasel

Brendan McCaffrey draws a distinction:

It surprises me how many people treat “disaster recovery” and “backup & recovery” as interchangeable terms. But backups are not disaster recovery, and disaster recovery is not a backup strategy. Confusing the two creates a false sense of security that often becomes visible the moment something goes wrong. The goal of this post is to offer clarity on what separates these concepts, so you can design a strategy that actually protects your business, not just your data.

Read on for Brendan’s argument.

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Extension Management in Postgres

Published 2025-12-12 by Kevin Feasel

Kellyn Gorman doesn’t just install a bunch of stuff:

PostgreSQL’s true power doesn’t just come from its rock-solid relational engine, but it’s the fact that Postgres can grow with you. Extensions allow you to bolt on new capabilities, enhance performance, integrate external tools, and transform the database into something far more powerful than its default installation, which is something I’m really learning to love.

From pg_stat_statements to pgvector, logical decoding plugins, job schedulers, and custom procedural languages, Postgres extensions behave like feature packs you can enable at the database level. That also means DBAs must know how to inspect, maintain, and manage them just as carefully as any schema or server configuration.

Read on for several tips for proper extension care and feeding.

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REST API Invocation in SQL Server 2025

Published 2025-12-12 by Kevin Feasel

Tomaz Kastrun continues an advent of SQL Server 2025. First up is external REST API endpoint execution:

This new functionality, you can call to the system stored procedure sp_invoke_external_rest_endpoint, and call / get:

– Call REST/GraphQL endpoints from other Azure services
– Have data processed via an Azure Function
– Update a Power BI dashboard
– Call an on-premises REST endpoint
– Talk to Azure OpenAI services

Then, Tomaz uses this to call a language model:

After short introduction into the  sp_invoke_external_rest_endpoint we will look into creating a REST endpoint for using LLM.

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RegEx Performance in SQL Server 2025

Published 2025-12-11 by Kevin Feasel

Brent Ozar has an update:

Back in March 2025 when Microsoft first announced that REGEX support was coming to SQL Server 2025 and Azure SQL DB, I gave it a quick test, and the performance was horrific. It was bad in 3 different ways:

  1. The CPU usage was terrible, burning 60 seconds of CPU time to check a few million rows
  2. It refused to use an index
  3. The cardinality estimation was terrible, hard-coded to 30% of the table

Read on to see what has changed. It’s obviously not perfect, but just as obviously is much better than what Brent saw in Azure SQL DB at the time.

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Accessing REST APIs from SQL Server

Published 2025-12-11 by Kevin Feasel

Aaron Bertrand calls an API:

If you’ve worked with SQL Server as long as I have, you’ve surely seen this type of request float to your inbox: “Can’t we just call {some API} from SQL Server?“

Setting aside the instinctive “no,” how have we actually handled this over the years? Are we any better off with the new solution offered in SQL Server 2025 (sys.sp_invoke_external_rest_endpoint, already described in this tip by Hristo Hristov: Invoke REST API Endpoint from SQL Server 2025)?

Read on for a quick history and some thoughts on invoking REST APIs from Azure SQL Database.

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Maintaining Microsoft Documentation

Published 2025-12-11 by Kevin Feasel

Steve Jones is a mensch:

One of the things that I like about the SQL Server docs (MS Learn Docs) is that I can fix things I find wrong. For years we had downloaded Books Online from installs, then we have BOL on a site, but those were mostly updated when a new release came.

Now we have MS Learn, and a regularly changing set of docs. If you haven’t taken advantage of these docs for SQL Server, you should. Bookmark: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/sql-server/?view=sql-server-ver17&redirectedfrom=MSDN

I help change those. It’s part of my contribution as a Microsoft MVP, but it’s also something that I enjoy because it makes my life easier. This post will look at how I do this.

Some of us sit back and complain. Some of us go and do.

I remain up in the balcony and heckle like my personal heroes, Statler and Waldorf.

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Reporting Services and Express Edition

Published 2025-12-11 by Kevin Feasel

Greg Low exposes a pain:

One surprise in the release plans for SQL Server 2025 is that SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is being discontinued as a brand. If you have a paid license for SQL Server, you are now able to install Power BI Report Server. Previously, that option required you to have an Enterprise Edition license for SQL Server or a premium level license for Power BI.

But Reporting Services was also previously available for SQL Server Express. That will no longer be supplied, and there’s no option to use Power BI Report Server.

Admittedly, I’ve never really thought about Reporting Services for Express Edition, but I can see the issue. I do wonder if SSRS 2022 will work just fine, and knowing that Microsoft has put so little effort into SSRS lately, you probably aren’t missing much by staying on 2022 SSRS and upgrading the database engine.

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The Good and Bad of Microsoft Fabric Variable Libraries

Published 2025-12-11 by Kevin Feasel

Jon Lunn digs in:

One of the big issues with Deployment Pipelines in Fabric, or as I call them Disappointment Pipelines, has been the lack of being able to parameterise connections. You do have deployment rules in the pipelines, but they are limited in functionality and don’t support pipeline parameters (boo!), so if you need to push and change items between workspaces in a typical Development, Test and Production workspaces scenario, you had to configure the connections manually, which is a massive pain. Variable Libraries should make the experience of deployment a lot easier.

Read on to see how they work, as well as some of the existing pain points around them.

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