A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
Staff writers in the Confluent writing mines perform a deletion:
Can you delete a topic in Apache Kafka®? The answer is yes—but the process depends on your Kafka configuration and the environment in which you are working (i.e., if it is self-managed, hosted in the cloud, or a fully managed Kafka service like Confluent Cloud).
Read on to see how you can do so, as well as some recommendations around deletion and topic management.
Comments closedHamza Boubou builds a dynamic report:
There was a requirement from my client that seemed simple at first but turned out to be a Trojan horse after deeper investigation. The goal was to create a Power BI Time Comparisons Top N Analysis page, giving users complete control over the Top/Bottom N products based on multiple metrics. Users needed to define the period, compare it with other periods, and adjust the N parameter dynamically.
Read on to see how Hamza was able to solve this customer request.
Comments closedMicrosoft staff used to say that Azure SQL DB is “the next version” of the boxed product, meaning that Microsoft tested, tweaked, and proved new features in the cloud while they could still rapidly iterate over code, shipping updates to make the product more reliable and scalable. In practice, that’s not entirely true: some things never leave the cloud, and some things actually ship to SQL Server long before they’re available up in Azure SQL DB.
Today, we’re going to go through documented & undocumented system objects that are available up in the cloud today (March 2025), but keep in mind that some of these may be cloud-only. I’m just dumping out the list of Azure SQL DB objects that aren’t present in SQL Server 2022 CU17.
Read on for those sets, with the caveat that not all of this may necessarily be in SQL Server 2025.
Comments closedSpatial data has become increasingly important in various fields, from urban planning and environmental monitoring to transportation and logistics. Fabric Data Warehouse offers spatial functionalities that enable you to query and analyze spatial data efficiently.
In this blog post, we will delve into the spatial capabilities in the Fabric Data Warehouse and demonstrate how to use the spatial functions in your queries.
This looks a bit like the way we perform spatial operations in SQL Server. Jovan shows off some examples of functionality, so check that out.
Comments closedIt’s not unreasonable to expect these two statements to produce the same execution plan on most RDBMS, given that they’re logically equivalent. Since we’ve grown used to reading things from left to right and top to bottom, I don’t think
RIGHT JOINwill become more popular any time soon.There is, however, one place in the SQL language where
RIGHT JOINis surprisingly ubiquitous!
Read on to see how the MERGE operator includes as part of its operations the equivalent of a RIGHT OUTER JOIN. MERGE in SQL Server had justifiably built a bad reputation in its early years, but it’s surprisingly okay nowadays, with most of the bugs being fixed over time.
Comments closedOsheen MacOscar creates a sparkline or three:
This is the second blog in a series about the {sparkline} R package for inline data visualisations. You can read the first one here. In this post I will be demonstrating how you can include sparklines inside HTML tables.
Read on for the instructions. Osheen implements box plots, bar charts, line charts, and even bullet charts in an HTML table.
Comments closedAmar Digamber Patil makes an announcement:
In our ongoing effort to enhance the visibility, accessibility, and efficiency of SQL database in Fabric, we are making a change that ensures organizations can make an informed decision before default enablement takes effect. We have changed the timeline for when SQL database will be enabled by default.
Initially, we planned to roll out the checkbox notification on February 8, 2025, and enable SQL Database in Fabric by default on March 8, 2025. However, based on the need for more flexibility, we have adjusted the timeline:
Click through for the new timeline. You can, of course, enable it on your own today if you are a Microsoft Fabric administrator with rights to change these settings.
Comments closedSteve Jones tries different methods:
We published an article recently at SQL Server Central on Tally Tables in Fabric from John Miner. In it he showed how this can be efficient. A day after he published it, he sent me an addendum to note that GENERATE_SERIES was available in Fabric and that could be used.
I ran a few tests last week, but as I read the comments on John’s article, I realized that there were 3 ways of setting up these tally tables that I’ve used and thought I’d summarize them a bit in this post. There’s a fourth way, but I haven’t used it.
My take on this is, it doesn’t really matter which technique you choose, especially if you’re using it to build a permanent tally table that you can later query from any app. In that case, it’s a one-time cost. If you’re building these on the fly often enough that the performance matters, then my first question, instead of “Which of these is fastest?” is, “Why can’t I just have a permanent tally table?”
Comments closedJohn Kerski notes a pain point:
“I hate to tell you this, but it’s not available for us yet.” This is an all-too-common phrase I find myself saying to customers in U.S. Sovereign Cloud tenants who come across new features in search engine results only to find they’re not available in our regions. For those unfamiliar, U.S. Sovereign Cloud regions allow U.S. government, public sector, and other highly regulated entities to use the cloud with the security, compliance, and data sovereignty required by their organizations.
If you do a search for “sovereign cloud,” you will find that most of the cloud providers have their own Sovereign Cloud if you are interested in the concept for any other cloud services you need to use. In this article, I am going to look specifically at how you extend this support to Power BI, and make a few suggestions for how I think it could work better.
I call John’s pains and raise him “We can only use Power BI Report Server here.”
2 CommentsPatrick Gruenauer checks out a new module:
The new PowerShell Entra ID Module is a powerful tool designed to streamline the management and automation of Microsoft Entra resources. This module is part of the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK and offers a range of functionalities to enhance administrative tasks.
One of the key benefits of the Microsoft Entra PowerShell module is its focus on usability. Unlike MS Graph, the module is more user-friendly to operate. Let’s dive in.
Click through for a demonstration of what you can do with it.
Comments closed