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Curated SQL Posts

Clustering with Apache NiFi

Published 2021-02-10 by Kevin Feasel

Brent Segner and Ryan O’Donnell explain how clustering works with Apache NiFi:

Although it is entirely possible to deploy NiFi in a single node configuration, this does not represent a best practice for an enterprise graded deployment and would introduce unnecessary risk into a production environment where scaling to meet demand and resiliency are paramount.  In order to get around this concern, as of release 1.0.0, NiFi provides the ability to cluster nodes together using either an embedded or external Apache Zookeeper instance as a highly reliable distributed coordinator. While a simple Google search shows there is plenty of debate around whether it is better to use an embedded or external Zookeeper service as both sides have merit, for the sake of argument and this blog, we will use the embedded flavor in the deployment. 

Click through for more information, including a walkthrough on configuration.

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More Tools of the Trade

Published 2021-02-10 by Kevin Feasel

Deepthi Goguri shares a list of useful tools for SQL Server work, presentations, and recordings:

1. OBS Studio: This is a free and open source software for video recording and live streaming. I mostly prerecord my sessions using OBS. I personally love this tool as we have pretty much good content on YouTube that teach us how to use this tool.

2. SentryOne Plan Explorer: Plan explorer is an amazing tool to analyze your execution plan and tune your queries very quickly. Its completely free.

Click through for the full list of 10.

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Comparing SSMS and Azure Data Studio

Published 2021-02-10 by Kevin Feasel

Deborah Melkin contrasts SQL Server Management Studio with Azure Data Studio:

Honestly, the vast majority of my time is split between Management Studio (SSMS) or Azure Data Studio. I’m pretty simple\straightforward this way. I started playing a lot more with Azure Data Studio over the past year, but I find I’m not able to make the switch to using it full time. It really depends on the task that I need to do.

So what tasks do I do often and which tool do I use?

The plus side for Azure Data Studio is that it’s far enough along that some of these choices are difficult to make. The minus side is that it’s still often on the losing end. I’d expect that shift to continue over the next couple of years as the product matures and becomes a good product for database developers.

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Power BI Tools

Published 2021-02-10 by Kevin Feasel

Benni De Jagere shares a list of useful tools around Power BI:

The External Tools (and the Enhanced Metadata format enabling it) allow end users of Power BI Desktop to call on custom built applications, scripts, .. to augment their developer/designer experience. These days, there’s over 40 (I stopped counting) external tools available, each with their own use case and focal area. When showing off some of the capabilities to my clients, it amazes me to see how quickly they pick up these things, and start building out their own ways of working.

Depending on the client, their IT Compliancy rules, the business and technical requirements, my actual tool belt tends to vary. Not every IT organisation allows user to freely install an application, digitally signed or not, so this is definitely an important one to take into your conversations early on.

Read on for Benni’s choices.

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Visualizing Infrastructure with Terraform Graph

Published 2021-02-10 by Kevin Feasel

Jonathan D’Aloia shows how we can visualize Terraform-based infrastructure with diagrams:

As can be seen from the image above we have every resource that is defined in the Terraform code that is to be deployed. At a first glance, it does appear that not all the information here is of such relevance, for example, the metadata referring to registry or root provider. However, if we look away from this we can begin to see how the Infrastructure model is going to look once it has been deployed.

We can see that we have one resource group called “example” which has an Azure SQL Server and also an Azure Storage account also both called “example” and that all of these resources directly link to the resource group. I would also point out that you can also see that Azure SQL database directly links to the SQL server giving a clear indication of which databases belong to which server.

Click through for an example as well as the process.

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Tools for SQL Server Specialists

Published 2021-02-10 by Kevin Feasel

Chris Yates shares a list of useful tools:

Throughout my career, I’ve worked for companies that have allowed me to utilize some pretty nice tools. Whether they are vendor or community-related there are a plethora of options for all platforms and prices.

Some of the ones that I have a special place for can be found here, but I’ll specifically name a few below:

Click through for a structured approach to tooling.

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Tools of the Trade

Published 2021-02-10 by Kevin Feasel

Mikey Bronowski shares some tool recommendations:

The main tool that I use every day is one I couldn’t live without: Todoist. For work related tasks, personal tasks, and just organizing life in general, Todoist is a to do list app that I’ve relied on to keep my sanity. If I think of something I need to do it immediately goes in the Misc category and I schedule it later. If I think of a blog post idea, it goes in the Ideas column of the Blog Topics category (and if it’s deemed a good idea will eventually go onto To Do, In Progress, and Complete). The free version has more than enough for my needs but if you want additional features or are trying to use it with a team there is a paid version available.

I’m a big fan of Todoist for reminding me what to do, as well as calendar entries for structure and making sure I limit my todo list size.

Mikey also provides great advice: create your own tools. They don’t have to be fancy, so long as they solve relevant problems.

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Time-Saving Tips for Databricks

Published 2021-02-09 by Kevin Feasel

Robert Blackburn has a few tips for us:

Adding bigger or more nodes to your cluster increases costs. There are also diminishing returns. You do not need 64 cores if you are only using 10. But you still need a minimum that matches your processing requirements. If your utilization looks like this, you must increase the size of your cluster.

Click through for several good tips.

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Technical and Productivity Tools

Published 2021-02-09 by Kevin Feasel

Steve Jones shares some tooling recommendations:

It’s blog party week for T-SQL Tuesday, and I think this is a good choice for a topic. The host this month is Mikey Bronowski, and his invitation is on tools. I work for a tools vendor, and I’ve used a lot of them in my life, so I want to share what I think in 2021. I’ll also say that Mikey has a good list in his invitation of what he uses. I especially like his use of PoSh things and Greenshot.

I’ve going to tackle this in a couple ways as I really have two parts of my job here, so I’ll look at tech tools and then productivity tools.

Read on for Steve’s list.

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