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Curated SQL Posts

Working with Active Power BI Sessions

Published 2020-09-30 by Kevin Feasel

Marc Lelijveld provides us insights:

Getting more insights in the telemetry of your Power BI dataset is always interesting. Especially if you share your Power BI dataset for self-service purposes to build new reports on top of your managed dataset, you might want to know who is actually using in and what queries are they executing against your datasets.

Besides that, there might be a whole lot of other valid use cases where you want to have more insights in currently running sessions on your dataset. An example where I recently ran into, was canceling a Power BI Dataset refresh. As there is no button in the Power BI Service to do this, I had to find a different way to do this.

Read on to see how, using DAX Studio.

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Building a Hadoop Cluster with Spark in Kubernetes

Published 2020-09-29 by Kevin Feasel

Gopal takes us through building up a Hadoop cluster via Kubernetes:

In our current scenario, we have 4 Node cluster where one is master node (HDFS Name node and YARN resource manager) and other three are slave nodes (HDFS data node and YARN Node manager)

In this cluster, we have implemented Kerberos, which makes this cluster more secure.

Kerberos services are already running in the different server which would be treated as KDC server.

In all of the nodes, we have to do a client configuration for Kerberos which I have already written in my previous blog. please go through below kerberos authentication links for more info.

kerberos authentication

Read on for the walkthrough.

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The Dangers of the securityadmin Role

Published 2020-09-29 by Kevin Feasel

Tibor Karaszi warns us to be wary of the securityadmin role:

Over the last week, I’ve seen two discussions where the securityadmin server role was suggested.

The scenario is typically that we don’t want to make this person a sysadmin, but we want this to manage logins and stuff like that.

But Tibor explains why you should watch out—my rule of thumb is to treat securityadmin as just as important as sysadmin. It’s not the same, but someone with securityadmin can do a lot of damage to a server.

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Building a Simple Date Table in Power BI

Published 2020-09-29 by Kevin Feasel

Marco Russo has a simple method for building a date dimension in Power BI:

With the recent introduction of custom format strings in Power BI, we can use a different approach that no longer requires additional columns, and that can also remove the need to use the Sort by Column feature. The basic idea is that we always store a date for a period like Year, Month, or Week. The custom format string displays the text we want to see in the user interface; however, because the underlying data is a number we automatically get the right sort order and the ability to use the Continuous Type in the X-Axis of a line chart.

Read the whole thing.

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Five Methods to Take Backups

Published 2020-09-29 by Kevin Feasel

Lee Markum gives us five different methods for taking backups in SQL Server:

For those readers who like the SSMS GUI, there is good news.  SQL Server Management Studio offers a fairly straightforward method for backing up a database. Once you connect to the SQL Server instance containing the database you want to back up, left click on the “+” sign next to the Databases folder.  Then right click the name of the database you want to backup, choose Tasks, then choose the Backup option in the fly out menu.

If you are a DBA, it is really important to know how to take and restore backups using T-SQL or Powershell only. Especially restoring backups—in the highest-pressure situations, waiting for the UI to load can be painful.

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The Dynamic SQL Hammer

Published 2020-09-29 by Kevin Feasel

Erik Darling talks about dynamic SQL:

I think it was Doug Lane who coined the stages of dynamic SQL. One of them dealt with the fact that once you start using it, you just wanna use it everywhere, even places where you think you don’t need it.

Most of the time, you don’t. A parameter is good enough. But like we saw last week, sometimes parameters can backfire, and you can use dynamic SQL to save query performance.

That’s one great use, but it’s one you’re gonna have to use constantly. Most of the time when you’re using dynamic SQL, it’s not going to be to correct performance.

Click through for Erik’s thoughts.

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Using Tables for Visualization

Published 2020-09-28 by Kevin Feasel

Alex Velez takes us through one of the simplest visuals:

Tables are a common way to show data, but in my current work, I don’t create them frequently. Admittedly, when I come across a table, I often choose to visualize the data. I should clarify that I am not proposing that we never build tables. Instead, let’s understand their benefits and shortcomings so we can be thoughtful about when to use them and how to design good data tables.

Click through for some interesting thoughts around a sometimes-forgotten visual.

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Visualizing Seinfeld

Published 2020-09-28 by Kevin Feasel

Andy Kirk walks through a brand new book:

This project is a compilation of visual analysis I’ve been working on for a couple of years to pursue a curiosity I had about the rhythm and texture of Seinfeld, looking into how it was written and how it was produced.

The musicality of language is something defines the signature comedic talent of Jerry Seinfeld and, co-creator, Larry David. Like music, situation comedy has rhythm and it has texture. The rhythm is shaped by its temporal structures and pacing; textures are formed from the arrangements of characters and locations which amalgamate into the comedy. All orchestrated by the storylines and dialogue emerging from the writers.

It is an exploration of the show’s musicality that forms the purpose of this book. It presents a portfolio of visuals produced, intended for people who share my Seinfeld fanaticism. It is a body of work akin to giving the show something of a sports analytics treatment, investigating how Seinfeld and David utilised their resources – the people, places, and the dialogue – to translate their creativity from the page and onto our screens.

It’s an interesting look at the show and there will be a limited run on physical copies of the book.

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