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Curated SQL Posts

Copilots, MCP Servers, and Connection Strings

Published 2025-07-24 by Kevin Feasel

Chad Baldwin shares a warning:

Well, a few days ago, I ran into the result of one of those awkward pieces when combining the MSSQL extension for VS Code, MSSQL MCP Server and Copilot.

The short of it is…I asked Copilot to change the connection used by the MSSQL extension to use a particular database. I later asked Copilot to describe a table in the database (which uses the MSSQL MCP server), only for it to claim the table didn’t exist. I realized right away it was due to competing connections between the MSSQL extension and the MSSQL MCP Server configuration. It was also at that moment where I realized this situation could potentially be SO MUCH worse than simply not finding a table…

So let’s set up a worst case scenario and see what happens.

This is basically the equivalent of “Wait, that SSMS window was production? Uh-oh.” Not that this has ever happened to me, of course. Or any of you. Nope.

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Optimizing Multi-Notebook Jobs in Microsoft Fabric and AWS Glue

Published 2025-07-24 by Kevin Feasel

Daniel Janik flips a switch:

Are your Azure Fabric pipelines with multiple notebooks running slower than you’d like? Are you paying for more Spark compute time than you should be? The culprit might be a simple setting that’s easy to miss. In this blog post, we’ll dive into the “For pipeline running multiple notebooks” setting in Azure Fabric and explain why enabling it can significantly improve your pipeline’s performance and reduce your costs.

Click through for this, as well as a comparison with AWS Glue and ways to perform something similar there.

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A Deep Dive into IDENTITY Columns

Published 2025-07-24 by Kevin Feasel

Vlad Drumea performs a deep dive:

In SQL Server, IDENTITY is a column-level property that is used to provide an auto-incremented value for every new row inserted.

All you have to do is provide a seed value and an increment value when defining said column, and SQL Server will handle it from there.

Unlike sequences, identity columns do not require additional objects like default constraints or triggers to ensure the column is populated.

I’m glad that Vlad made a demo showing how @@IDENTITY works and how it can give you unexpected outputs if you’re not aware of a trigger working with a separate identity column. That one tends to get people.

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Post-Install Configuration Tips for SQL Server

Published 2025-07-24 by Kevin Feasel

Kevin Hill shares some suggestions:

The SQL Server installer has gotten better: tempdb configuration, MAXDOP, and even max memory can now be configured during setup.

But don’t be fooled: there’s still a post-install checklist that can make or break your environment over time. If you’ve ever inherited a server that “just ran” for years and started getting slower over time you’ve likely seen what happens when this list gets ignored.

These are not in any particular order, but some do require a restart of the server or the SQL Server Engine service to take effect:

Click through for several tips. Most of them I agree without reservation. For a couple of them, like backup compression, there are specific circumstances in which I’d recommend against turning it on, namely when working with storage subsystems that deduplicate your data automatically. In that case, you might want to think harder about backup compression (or backup encryption, for that matter) before turning it on.

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Testing Plumber APIs from R

Published 2025-07-23 by Kevin Feasel

Jakub Sobolewski builds some tests:

When building Plumber APIs in R, effective testing is crucial for ensuring reliability and maintainability.

This guide explores a proven pattern for testing own Plumber APIs that maintains fast feedback loops while providing robust coverage of both business logic and API contracts.

Read on for some good advice on API testing in general, followed by its application in R. Jakub also has a link to a GitHub repo showing a concrete example of how this testing can work. H/T R-Bloggers.

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SSIS Slowdowns in Paging to Disk

Published 2025-07-23 by Kevin Feasel

Andy Brownsword notes a major performance risk in Integration Services:

One particular performance issue with SSIS data flows can fly under the radar – spilling to disk. This isn’t clearly visible through regular debugging or execution so can go unnoticed. And it hurts.

Paging to disk is bad for performance. Disks are much slower to access than memory, so we want to keep our data away when possible.

Andy calls out two reasons why we might find spilling to disk, as well as how to track if this is happening.

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Building out a PBIReport.json File for Power BI Performance Load Testing

Published 2025-07-23 by Kevin Feasel

Gilbert Quevauvilliers continues a series on Power BI performance load testing:

I am going to be using Visual Studio Code to edit the PBIReport.JSON.

It is free to download and use, it works on any device.

And most importantly it will also show you errors in the JSON file. This can help when there are potential issues.

For the test I will be putting in the following details below into the PBIReport.JSON

Click through for the process, which is fairly complex all things considered.

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Loading CSV Files via dbatools

Published 2025-07-23 by Kevin Feasel

David Seis loads some data:

Most businesses are rotten with Excel sheets and CSV exports from various tools and as my mentor puts it “Excel is the world’s database”. The dbatools command Import-DbaCsv enables the quick load of CSV tables into SQL Server, which then opens up the world of fast transformation and use in other tools such as PowerBI, or even just having it queryable rather than just in a file somewhere.

Import-DbaCsv is for you if any part of your job is to manually manage CSV files and you want to reduce the amount of time that you take to do that processing. Even if you are not a DBA but are interested in the data field, you can use SQL Server express for free, import and transform data using PowerShell for free, and export that data into Power BI or any other tool for free. I promise it can make your manual processes better, faster, and more resilient and save you tons of time!

Read on for a review of the quite useful cmdlet.

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Managing TempDB Growth with Resource Governor

Published 2025-07-23 by Kevin Feasel

Haripriya Naidu digs into what’s new in SQL Server’s Resource Governor:

In this article, we’ll focus on how to control TempDB datafile growth using Resource Governor (RG).

  • RG is disabled by default and available only on Enterprise edition.
  • Until SQL Server 2022, RG could only manage user databases.
  • Starting with SQL Server 2025, RG can now manage TempDB as well.

Click through for the demo and additional information.

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