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Curated SQL Posts

Tips on a Post-NTLM Future

Published 2026-02-13 by Kevin Feasel

Rebecca Lewis wants to save you later heartache:

‘Informational message’ and ‘Further action is only required if Kerberos authentication is required’… For years, we could ignore this, but not anymore. Microsoft published a three-phase roadmap on January 28, 2026 to disable NTLM by default in upcoming Windows releases — and phase one is already live. That ‘informational message’ is about to become an action-item.

In most environments I audit, somewhere between 40 and 60 percent of Windows Authentication connections to SQL Server are running on NTLM — and nobody knew until we looked. If you have not checked yours, now is the time.

Read on to learn how you can check this, the kinds of problems that can prevent Kerberos authentication, and how you can fix them.

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Adaptive Time Series Visualization in Microsoft Fabric

Published 2026-02-13 by Kevin Feasel

Devang Shah and Slava Trofimov show off a design pattern:

This design pattern provides intuitive, interactive Fabric-native experiences for any user:

  • Intelligent time binning: Handle billions of data points by automatically grouping them into optimal intervals.
  • Time brushing: Zoom in any period with drag-and-select interactions.
  • Multi-metric comparison: View multiple time series side by side across different assets.
  • Flexible aggregation: Switch between average, min, max, and sum with a single selection.
  • Anomaly detection: KQL queries detect unusual patterns in your time series with no ML expertise required.
  • Statistical insights: View descriptive statistics and correlations.
  • Contextualization: Bring asset hierarchies, tag metadata, and definitions directly into the report for richer interpretation.

Read on to learn more about the pattern and how it works. There are a lot of moving parts to get right, but the end result looks impressive.

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Using a Microsoft Fabric Variable Library in a Dataflow

Published 2026-02-13 by Kevin Feasel

Laura Graham-Brown shows another way to use variable libraries:

One of the popular low-code tools within Microsoft Fabric is the Gen2 Dataflow. Power BI report builders already know some Power Query. So armed with this knowledge is a popular starting point to load data into Microsoft Fabric. Adding values from the Variable Library in a Dataflow is an obvious plan to make it more future proof and to work better with Deployment pipelines.

I will confess the first time I tried these I could not get them to work till I read the instructions correctly. So they do work just understand the limitations!

To be fair, following instructions is one of the most challenging things to do, it seems.

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SQL Server Performance Monitor

Published 2026-02-13 by Kevin Feasel

Erik Darling announces a new open-source product:

That is, if you survive the installation process. Active Directory. Domain accounts. Firewalls. Security policies. Additional database servers. Annoying.

Or just send everything to the cloud, somewhere.

I got real tired of dealing with that, so I built a free, open-source SQL Server performance monitoring tool that isn’t any of those things, and doesn’t suck.

This does sound pretty neat, and the Lite version in particular is very intriguing in places where you can’t (or don’t want to) touch the servers.

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Farewell, Purview Access Policies

Published 2026-02-13 by Kevin Feasel

Andreas Wolter gives us the behind-the-scenes view of things:

SQL Server 2025 was released at the end of last year. While most attention has gone to new features, this release also discontinued several existing ones—a notable first in recent SQL Server versions.

The full list is available here: Discontinued services and deprecated features

One item deserves particular attention: Purview access policies.

Read on to learn the intent behind this, the struggle that led to using Purview instead of Azure RBAC, and why there isn’t a solid alternative currently available.

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Diving into DISTINCT

Published 2026-02-13 by Kevin Feasel

Louis Davidson is one of a kind:

If there is one SQL keyword that causes more fear than any other, it’s DISTINCT. When I see it in a query, I immediately start to worry about just how much work I am in for to ensure the correctness of that query. I start scanning for comments to describe why it is there, and if none are found, I know the query is probably going to be wrong.

I have seen DISTINCT used to hide bad joins, missing grouping, and even missing WHERE clauses. I have seen developers use it as a “fix-all” for data problems.

In this blog, I will look at the proper use and distinctly dangerous uses of DISTINCT and also show how you might test your query that uses DISTINCT to see what it is actually covering up.

Louis also includes one of my “favorite” coding errors: the accidental self-join. Done that one too many times to be proud of.

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Choosing DENSE_RANK() vs RANK()

Published 2026-02-12 by Kevin Feasel

Jared Westover explains the difference:

Recently, a developer asked for my input on solving a complex SQL query problem. As we went through each step, I suggested using a ranking function at one point, specifically RANK. However, they were having trouble deciding when to use RANK versus DENSE_RANK in a query. It raises a good question: When should you use DENSE_RANK instead of RANK?

Jared’s analogies for when to use which are very similar to the ones I use: a race versus levels.

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Modifying an Azure SQL Database with Mirroring to Fabric Enabled

Published 2026-02-12 by Kevin Feasel

Olivier Van Steenlandt runs into an issue:

Over the past few weeks, I have been doing some experimenting with Azure SQL mirroring to Microsoft Fabric. In the process, I ran into a couple of issues and challenges. In this data recipe, I will be going through one of my challenges when I got Azure SQL mirroring to Microsoft Fabric setup and running.

At first, everything seemed to be working as expected, and the integration felt very smooth. At that point, I continued to develop my test database in Azure SQL to learn a bit more about mirroring. I made a couple of minor changes to my test database and tried to publish them from my SQL Database Project.

Read on for the issue, as well as the solution—that is, assuming you don’t actually want to change any of the things you’re actively moving over into Fabric.

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Manual Updates to Power BI On-Premises Gateways

Published 2026-02-12 by Kevin Feasel

Leo Li announces a new preview feature:

The On-premises Data Gateway manual update feature is now available in preview! This new capability simplifies gateway maintenance and helps you keep your environment secure and up to date with greater flexibility and control.

With this new feature, administrators can now manually trigger updates—either directly through the gateway UI or programmatically via API or script. This ensures that you can manage update timing based on your organization’s internal policies and maintenance windows while still benefiting from the latest features, performance improvements, and security patches.

Read on to see how this works, as well as where the Fabric team is going with this.

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Identifying a Query in Oracle vs PostgreSQL

Published 2026-02-12 by Kevin Feasel

Kellyn Gorman brings in the usual suspects:

“How does the database identify this query and its execution plan?”

Both Oracle and PostgreSQL answer this question, but I find they do it in very different ways, reflecting fundamentally different design philosophies around optimization, observability, and stability.  As I dive into this rabbit hole once again, I’m going to reflect on how Oracle’s SQL_ID differs from the query_id in PostgreSQL and how two terms that sound so similar (PLAN_HASH_VALUE and query_hash) could be generated so differently, as well as misinterpreted.  I’m guilty of it myself, so it’s a good place to spend some time.

Read on for the answer.

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