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Curated SQL Posts

Cost Optimization Tips for Azure

Published 2022-09-26 by Kevin Feasel

Marc Kean saves us money:

I constantly see customers with so many managed disks which are unattached and orphaned. Recommendation here would be to delete these if you know you can. Else (from a VM within Azure in the same region where the disks are (to save on egress costs)) use Azure Storage Explorer, download the managed disks as VHD disks, then copy to an Azure Storage account and mark the storage account as Archive (tape storage backend).

Archive storage is estimated less than 10% the cost of managed disk storage. Note, VHDs can be brought back and imported again as managed disks at any time if they are needed.

Pricing can be confirmed by using the Azure Pricing Calculator

There’s a lot of solid guidance in here.

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Corporate Networks and Power BI Performance

Published 2022-09-26 by Kevin Feasel

Chris Webb notes a problem:

Over the years I’ve seen a few examples of how issues with an organisation’s corporate network can affect Power BI report performance. I’ve never blogged about them because, to be honest, I know next to nothing about networks and I’m not sure I could describe them properly. However, recently, I have seen a few instances of what I think could be a widespread but little-diagnosed problem – so I would like you to check if it’s happening to you and tell me what the cause is, if you can find out.

Some time ago I wrote a post about how Power BI report performance could be worse in Internet Explorer 11 and older Windows operating systems because some report performance optimisations we do are only available with HTTP/2. 

Read on for one potential issue which could add several seconds to report calls. There’s also a good comment which adds more helpful information.

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Tips on Logging in R Packages

Published 2022-09-23 by Kevin Feasel

Jamie Owen continues a series on building a package around an API:

Part 1 of this series laid out some ideas for how one might structure a {plumber} application as an R package, inspired by solutions such as {golem} and {leprechaun} for {shiny}. In this installment of the series we look at adding some functions to our package that will take care of logging as our application runs. If you haven’t already, we recommend reading the first installment of this series as the example package created for that post will form the basis of the starting point for this one.

Read the whole thing.

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Parameter Reloading in RMarkdown

Published 2022-09-23 by Kevin Feasel

Thomas Williams wants to improve the user experience:

Recently I needed to reload a parameter, without reloading the page. The parameter was bound to a data frame, where end-users selected a value and then I looked up other fields in the data frame further down the page (for example, a name was selected, but I wanted the identifier from the same record). It wasn’t exactly intuitive, so here’s how I did it.

Click through for code and explanation.

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Maximizing Productivity in a Meeting-Filled World

Published 2022-09-23 by Kevin Feasel

Andy Levy just wants to get things done:

We need to have these meetings. They’re where consensus is reached on cross-team projects and decisions are made about timelines. They’re where we communicate to people outside our teams what’s happening. And sometimes, they’re critical for transferring knowledge to others. These are all part of the job. For better or worse, they are a nontrivial portion of The Work.

Read on for some of Andy’s tips around scheduling meetings.

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Power BI Naming Conventions

Published 2022-09-23 by Kevin Feasel

Nicky van Vroenhoven asks, what’s in a name?

But I think it’s much broader than using only programming naming conventions these days.

In the context of Power BI, you can use naming conventions in (literally) all things that need a name, like gateways, workspaces, apps, etc.

Read on to understand why, as well as some thoughts on what makes sense for naming different Power BI-related objects.

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Rebuilding a Dedicated SQL Pool via Azure DevOps

Published 2022-09-23 by Kevin Feasel

Sarath Sasidharan clones an Azure Synapse Analytics dedicated SQL pool:

There are many scenarios where you want to create a new Synapse dedicated SQL pool environment based on an existing Synapse dedicated SQL pool environment. This may be required when you need to create a development or test environment based on your production environment by copying complete schemas and without copying data.

Note that this process won’t move the data itself—given that you’re starting with terabytes for an effective dedicated SQL pool, trying to create a bacpac would be an exercise in misery.

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Improving SQL Server Backup Performance

Published 2022-09-23 by Kevin Feasel

Glenn Berry makes some recommendations:

Does making your SQL Server database backups twice as fast sound interesting? SQL Server 2022 has new options to help you improve SQL Server database backup performance. If you are on an older version of SQL Server, you still have options for Improving SQL Server Database Backup Performance.

In order to improve your database backup performance, you need to understand what is happening during a database backup and what your bottleneck(s) are.

Read on for an overview of the key considerations.

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Parameterizing Stored Procedures from Power Query

Published 2022-09-23 by Kevin Feasel

Soheil Bakhshi calls a stored procedure:

From time to time, Excel users require to get the data from a SQL Server stored procedure. The stored procedures usually accept some input parameters and return the results. But how can we dynamically pass values to the stored procedures from cells in Excel to SQL Server?

Read on for two approaches to the problem. Like Soheil, I think the second approach is much smoother, in part because it isn’t 30-something steps long.

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