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Curated SQL Posts

Visualizing a SQL Server Kubernetes Statefulset

Published 2025-02-07 by Kevin Feasel

Andrew Pruski builds a diagram:

The other day I came across an interesting repo on github, KubeDiagrams.

What this repo does is generate Kubernetes architecture diagrams from Kubernetes manifest files…nice!

Deploying applications to Kubernetes can get complicated fast…especially with stateful applications such as SQL Server.

So having the ability to easily generate diagrams is really helpful…because we all should be documenting everything, right?

Click through for instructions and a couple of gotchas Andrew ran into along the way.

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SQL Server Availability Groups in Docker Containers

Published 2025-02-06 by Kevin Feasel

Yvonne Vanslageren builds a high availability solution for containerized SQL Server instances:

For enterprise SQL Server DBAs, high availability is essential for maintaining seamless database operations—particularly in scenarios involving Change Data Capture (CDC) or other mission-critical functionalities. Docker containers can streamline the setup and management of development or testing environments for Always On Availability Groups (AOAG). By bundling configuration files, scripts, and dependencies into containers, teams gain a reproducible, portable, and efficient deployment mechanism.

This guide explains how to build an Always On environment inside Docker containers using Docker Desktop, Docker Compose, and a series of setup scripts. It walks through the creation of two containers (primary and secondary) configured in a clusterless Always On Availability Group scenario.

Click through for the process.

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Moving SQL Server Database Files

Published 2025-02-06 by Kevin Feasel

Vlad Drumea makes a move:

This post demos a script I put together to help move SQL Server database files to another drive and folder by generating PowerShell and T-SQL commands.

I’ve decided to make this script for situations where installing the dbatools PowerShell module wouldn’t be possible.
Otherwise, I highly recommend using dbatools’ Move-DbaDbFile command.

Click through for the script, and I second Vlad’s recommendation of dbatools for this kind of effort.

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SQL Server Migration via Distributed AG

Published 2025-02-06 by Kevin Feasel

David Fowler makes a move:

Because it doesn’t require a common cluster, a distributed availability group allows us to link servers in situations were a cluster isn’t possible. Servers could be in remote locations, members or different domains, different OS levels or even different operating systems (yes, we can link Windows and Linux based AGs).

The ability to link servers in this way gives us a very nice and easy way to replicate data between servers when thinking about a migration.

David’s scenario involves a SQL Server upgrade. I’ve seen this work really well in practice for a 2017 to 2019 upgrade. With applications pointing to the listener agent and everything in place, you can have as little as a few seconds of downtime for that upgrade, which is amazing when you think about how we’ve historically migrated to new versions of SQL Server.

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Controlling Execution Flow in Fabric Data Pipelines

Published 2025-02-06 by Kevin Feasel

Reza Rad has everything under control:

In Microsoft Fabric, the Data Factory is the workload for ETL and data integration, and the Data Pipeline is a component in that workload for orchestrating the execution flow. There are activities in the pipeline, and you can define in which order you want the activities to run. In this article and video, you will learn about the execution order and output states in Data Pipeline and how they can be used in real-world scenarios of data integration.

The mechanisms here are fundamentally similar to what we’ve had in Azure Data Factory (obviously) and SQL Server Integration Services.

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COALESCE() in T-SQL

Published 2025-02-06 by Kevin Feasel

Rajendra Gupta has a backup plan in case of NULL:

NULL is a special marker that indicates a missing or undefined value in a column. It is different from zero or an empty string. Handling NULL values is essential for accurate data analysis, data integrity, and error avoidance. This tip explores how to handle NULL values in SQL Server using the COALESCE() function using various queries and reviewing the results.

Click through for a primer on the COALESCE() function, a few use cases for COALESCE(), and how it differs from ISNULL().

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Preventing Skew in Teradata

Published 2025-02-05 by Kevin Feasel

Sudheer Kumar Lagisetty shares some performance tuning advice:

Teradata performance optimization and database tuning are crucial for modern enterprise data warehouses. Effective data distribution strategies and data placement mechanisms are key to maintaining fast query responses and system performance, especially when handling petabyte-scale data and real-time analytics. 

Understanding data distribution mechanisms, workload management, and data warehouse management directly affects query optimization, system throughput, and database performance optimization. These database management techniques enable organizations to enhance their data processing capabilities and maintain competitive advantages in enterprise data analytics.

Click through for some tips around data distribution. This idea becomes important in an MPP architecture.

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Top 6 Things Microsoft Ever Did to SQL Server

Published 2025-02-05 by Kevin Feasel

Brent Ozar has a list:

This entire blog post is driven by the #1 feature in this list. I think about the #1 feature a lot, like at least once a week. I think about it so much that I had to stop and think about what other similar great things Microsoft has done over the years, and be thankful for what a nice platform this is to work with. Let’s go through 6 of my favorite Microsoft decisions.

I have to warn you: some of my takes are weird.

English Query was definitely an idea before its time. It was a great idea that I’m sure demoed well (though that was before I got into SQL Server, so can’t tell you from personal experience), but it was dog slow.

Read on for the rest of the list. Admittedly, sometimes I wish Microsoft had gone through on its deprecation notice around statements not ending in a semi-colon, just to watch the world burn.

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