Press "Enter" to skip to content

Curated SQL Posts

Building a Windows Lab Environment on Linux

Published 2026-10-26 by Kevin Feasel

Lee Markum builds an environment:

First of all, this will be a blog post series. There is simply too much to cover in one blog post and expect people to read it. This blog post is going to be about how I laid the foundation for what I was planning to build.

At the end of the process, I had a fully functional, four machine lab that looks like the below. I used Windows Server 2025 OS Evaluation Edition. I created a Windows Cluster and set up an Availability Group.

Lee points out some of the difficulties along the way, and I agree that it looks pretty frustrating.

Leave a Comment

Microsoft Fabric Tenant Settings and the Govern Tab

Published 2026-10-26 by Kevin Feasel

Heidi Hasting sees something new:

Hiya!

“Ooh, what’s this?”

That was me this week, poking around the OneLake catalog. It keeps getting better and better, and I spotted something that made my admin heart very happy. The Govern tab now has Configurations > Tenant settings, right there in the catalog.

Click through to see what’s there. It’s still not ideal for non-admin users, as Heidi points out, but it is a marginal improvement over what was there before.

Leave a Comment

Report Bursting with Fabric Dataflows Gen2

Published 2026-10-26 by Kevin Feasel

Chris Webb tries something out:

When the new Send Email action was announced for Fabric Dataflows Gen2 – which allows you to send an email from a dataflow when it refreshes – I was curious to know if you could use it to send multiple emails to multiple different people, and therefore do report bursting or something like it. There are already several different ways to do this in Power BI/Fabric, for example using Power BI report subscriptions or paginated reports, but there might some cases where using a dataflow is easier or more convenient. It turns out that is is possible but only in combination with another relatively new feature: Parameterised Dataflows.

Click through for an example that sends a batch of e-mails. Not all of the functionality is fully baked yet, but it does have the potential to be interesting.

Leave a Comment

Capturing Failed Logins in Microsoft SQL

Published 2026-10-23 by Kevin Feasel

Aleksey Vitsko keeps a list:

Our requirement is to record unsuccessful login attempts i.e. failed logins for security and compliance reasons. The database estate includes SQL Servers, Azure SQL Databases, and Azure SQL Managed Instances. How can I configure auditing for failed logins for each of these database environments?

Read on for the answer in SQL Server, Azure SQL Database, and Azure SQL Managed Instance.

Leave a Comment

Power BI for Nonprofits

Published 2026-10-23 by Kevin Feasel

Stephanie Bruno breaks out the green visor:

Your nonprofit is ready to escape spreadsheet chaos and move into Power BI. Then you open the licensing page. Pro? Premium Per User? Fabric capacity? F2, F64, F-what?! If you’re a nonprofit trying to make every dollar count, figuring out what to buy can feel like reading a spellbook in a language you don’t speak. We get this question a lot, so here’s our plain-language guide.

Prices below are in USD and current as of October 2026. Microsoft changes licensing pretty often, so always double-check the official nonprofit offers page before you buy.

Read on for several tips on how to get the most out of Power BI if you do work for a non-profit organization.

Leave a Comment

ROLLUP, CUBE, and GROUPING SETS in T-SQL

Published 2026-10-23 by Kevin Feasel

Louis Davidson works with three amigos:

To get the total, there are a few ways, which I will demonstrate in the next sections on the aggregation functions, ROLLUP, CUBE, and then GROUPING SETS. Grouping sets are the most flexible, in that they let you do what the other two can do, but with more control. But knowing the others is important because it is how most ad hoc queries will be written.

It’s uncommon that I use GROUPING SETS() in my code, but every time I do, I’m thankful that it exists.

Leave a Comment

Choosing a Path for Data Warehouse Migrations

Published 2026-10-23 by Kevin Feasel

James Serra offers up some alternatives:

If you are migrating a data warehouse, there is a question worth asking before you start: should you recreate the existing solution on the new platform, or use the move to make it better? This applies whether you are moving from an on-premises Netezza system to Microsoft Fabric or from Azure Synapse Analytics to Fabric. My preference is to modernize during the migration when the business case and timeline support it. Even a conservative migration takes substantial work, so it is worth considering which additional improvements would make that investment more valuable for years to come.

Click through for pros and cons on four approaches, as well as James’s recommendations.

Leave a Comment

Choosing a Chunking Strategy for RAG Applications

Published 2026-10-22 by Kevin Feasel

Bala Priya C puts together a decision tree:

In this article, you will learn how to choose the right chunking strategy for a retrieval-augmented generation system by working through a structured decision tree tied to the properties of your documents and retrieval task.

Topics we will cover include:

  • What each major chunking strategy assumes about your documents, and when those assumptions hold.
  • A six-question decision tree that maps concrete document and retrieval conditions to specific chunking strategies.
  • The failure signals that indicate a chosen strategy is not working, and the fixes that tend to resolve them.

Click through for the list of strategies and when to include each.

Comments closed

Using a Continuous Axis for Date Tables in Power BI

Published 2026-10-22 by Kevin Feasel

Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari gussy up a visual:

In a previous article, Creating a simpler and chart-friendly Date table in Power BI, we showed you how to create a Date table you can use in a line chart with a continuous X-axis instead of a categorical one, even when the granularity is the month rather than the day. That technique stores every level as a DateTime column and relies on custom format strings to display the month name.

The auto date/time feature in Power BI provides the same user experience using a different technique. Its hidden date table uses text columns for quarters and months, sorted by a numeric column. However, the line chart still offers a continuous X-axis when you drill down to the month level. We keep saying that auto date/time is not a best practice, but this behavior is useful. Can we obtain it with our own Date table? Yes, we can.

If you have a Date table in your model (as you should!), this article explains how to enable the continuous X-axis in your report when the user groups dates by year, quarter, month, or week.

Click through to see how it looks, as well as how it works.

Comments closed