Azure

Dynamic Data Masking was added to SQL Server back in 2016. I’ve almost never used it since. Why? There were two reasons:

#1: The first reason was that it didn’t work in conjunction with other security features. In particular, you couldn’t use dynamic data masking in conjunction with Always Encrypted. From the start, I’ve been telling the product group that this is a misstep. There’s very little data that I’d want to hide from my own staff, that I’m happy still being visible to a hosting provider.

2021-03-23

When I’m building Azure Data Factory pipelines, I often want to rescale, i.e. change the Service Level Objective (SLO) of Azure SQL Databases before and after processing. For example: I might have a database that sits at S0 or S1 all day long when not being processed (to allows for the odd adhoc query), but I want it at S6 to do overnight ingestion of data and loading of analytic data models. Then I want it to go back to what it was before.

2021-03-02

In the dying days of PASS, one of the attempts at keeping the organization afloat was the introduction of the PASS Pro membership. One benefit of that was access to a series of Learning Experiences. Since the demise of PASS, our friends at Red-Gate have purchased the assets, and that includes those courses.

I was pleased to hear from the Red-Gate team that the courses have now been made available for free, and without any type of paywall/loginwall. That’s just awesome.

2021-02-11

I still get really excited when T-SQL has new language elements added. I’m not talking about new data definition or management statements. I’m talking about new functions and logic. So, as expected, I was really happy when I saw some posts saying that GREATEST and LEAST now seemed to be working in Azure SQL Database.

They’ve been in other database engines before but weren’t part of T-SQL.

I tried them, and sure enough, they work as expected. NOTE: Intellisense hasn’t caught up yet, so they’re still flagged as syntax errors.

2021-01-12

I was really pleased to get to record a SQL Down Under podcast with an old friend Pedro Lopes recently. Pedro is a Principal Program Manager with Microsoft in the Azure Data SQL Server area.

A year or so back, I had Joe Sack on the show telling us where Intelligent Query processing was heading, and Pedro now fills us in on where it’s got to.

We recorded the show earlier in this month but I couldn’t release it until after the PASS summit where some of the features were announced.

2020-11-23

I’ve been in so many companies lately where new CTOs and CIOs claim to have a cloud focus, but all they want to do is migrate all their existing systems from on-premises VMs to cloud-based VMs. They talk about making a cloud transformation but they’re not transforming anything.

I was pleased to get a chance to create a short educational series for the people at PASS to cover some of my thoughts on how to make a real transformation, not just a migration.

2020-10-09

Hi Folks,

Just a heads-up that we’ve just released SQL Down Under podcast show 79 with Microsoft Principal Program Manager Mark Brown.

Mark is an old friend and has been around Microsoft a long time. He is a Principal Program Manager on the Cosmos DB team. Mark is feature PM for the replication and consistency features. That includes  its multi-master capabilities, and its management capabilities. He leads a team focused on customers and community relations.

2020-04-04

I’ve been working a lot with ADF (Azure Data Factory) again lately. If you’ve started to work with ADF and aren’t using Git in conjunction with it, you need to change that now.

ADF objects are also represented as JSON objects and lend themselves nicely to being stored in Git.

Another key advantage is that if you don’t have Git connected, when you’re working with ADF, you don’t have a Save button. If you’re part way through making changes, you can either Publish them or Discard All. When you have Git in place, you get an option to Save.

2020-02-21

At one of my customer sites, I recently started having an issue logging onto an Azure SQL Database. The customer had configured Azure Active Directory (AAD) and were using Multi-factor Authentication (MFA).

I had previously been using it OK.

I would connect to the server using SSMS, enter my username and password, and then be prompted for the MFA authorization. After I authorized the logon, I would then receive the error shown in the main image: Login failed for user ‘NT AUTHORITY\ANONYMOUS’ and Error 18456.

2019-09-25

System configurations are becoming more complex all the time. Each and every server, container, and key application and service today has log files that tell you a wealth about what’s going on under the covers. But how accessible are those log files in your organization?

If you aren’t using a log management tool, you probably should be.

Here are a few easy ones to get started with:

Azure Monitor

One thing that I do find frustrating with Microsoft tooling at present is the constant churn of product names. A while back, we had Application Insights that could collect details of what was happening within an app. The data for that was stored in a tool called Log Analytics, and it could also collect operating system logs and more. Agents were provided for on-premises systems.

2018-12-20