Sql-Server

Today, another SQL Down Under show is published!

This time I had the great pleasure yesterday to record a podcast with an old friend from the SQL Server and data communities Ronen Ariely.

Ronen is a senior consultant and an applications and data architect with more than 20 years of experience in a variety of programming languages and technologies.

He was awarded as a Microsoft MVP seven times and is active in communities, mostly related to Microsoft Azure, Data Platforms, and Dot.Net programming.

2024-03-26

And yet another new SQL Down Under show is published!

Once again, I had the great pleasure yesterday to record a podcast with one of my long-term data platform MVP friends Armando Lacerda.

Armando is a cloud architect and engineer focused on data platform. He is a long-term data platform MVP, MCT, speaker, trainer and coder.

In the show, we discuss changes involving two aspects of SQL Server 2022:

• Backups using snapshots
• Data virtualization

I hope you enjoy it. You’ll find this show (and previous shows) here: SQL Down Under Podcast /

2024-03-19

And another new SQL Down Under show is published!

Once again, I had the great pleasure yesterday to record a podcast with one of my UK based friends Bob Duffy.

Bob is a Principal Data Architect at Prodata’s SQL Centre of Excellence in Dublin, Ireland. He helps enterprise customers build large scale enterprise data warehouses in Azure, typically integrating ERP and financial systems.

Bob is a long-term Data Platform MVP, a Microsoft Certified Architect, Master, and Analysis Services Maestro. He holds a number of Azure role-based certifications. Bob also specialises in performance tuning, architecture, load testing, DevOps, Software engineering, MQ architecture, semantic modelling and meta data driven design on the MS platform.

2024-03-07

Once again, I had the great pleasure to record a Fabric Down Under podcast. This time it was with a fellow “Down Under” guest Philip Seamark, from across the “ditch” (as we both call it) in New Zealand.

Phil is a member of the Fabric Customer Advisory Team and works as a DAX and Data modelling specialist.

He gets involved when enterprise customers need deeper technical support.

In this show, I discuss Phil’s thoughts on Direct Lake which is one of the very new options that came with Microsoft Fabric. It adds another mode to Power BI, in addition to Import and Direct Query modes that have been there previously.

2024-03-06

NOTE: See the updated version of this article .

One of my more surprisingly popular blog posts in the past talked about Machine Learning: Testing your installation of R and Python in SQL Server 2017. The problem is that SQL Server 2022 changed things.

Now the SQL Server team has published an article on how to make it work.  What I’ve been finding though, is that people are struggling to follow that article. And more concerning, people using named instances of SQL Server (like SQLEXPRESS) couldn’t get it to work at all, no matter how much they tried.

2024-03-04

This is the final part of a series on using Change Data Capture with Azure SQL Database, and looks at accessing the data from change data capture from another database.

Scenario

I often use Azure SQL Database as a data warehouse. It’s a perfectly fine database for that. But the challenge with Azure SQL Database is always about how to access data in other databases.

Many people don’t seem to realize that you can use External Tables (and External Data Sources) to read data in one Azure SQL Database, in another Azure SQL Database.

2024-01-22

The latest online on-demand course that I’ve been working on is now out the door. SQL Server Locking, Blocking, and Deadlocks for Developers and DBAs is available at our site: SQL Server Locking, Blocking and Deadlocks for Developers and DBAs (sqldownunder.com)

It’s designed to let you learn to find and fix locking issues, and to avoid them in the first place.

To celebrate the release, use coupon code LOCKINGRELEASE until January 20th to get 25% off the price.

2023-12-31

I know it’s been a while, but there’s a new SQL Down Under show published!

While I’ve been busy with https://cosmosdownunder.com and https://fabricdownunder.com , I haven’t forgotten the SQL Down Under shows. It’s time for some more SQL Server love.

I had the great pleasure yesterday to record a podcast with one of my UK based friends Rob Sewell. Rob’s one of the rare breed that is both a Data Platform MVP and an Azure MVP.

2023-11-11

In a previous post, I wrote about how to create a hash of all the columns in a table, by using FOR JSON PATH and HASHBYTES. This is incredibly useful if you need to check if incoming data is different to existing table data.

The code that I suggested (based on WideWorldImporters) was as follows:

SELECT po.PurchaseOrderID,
       HASHBYTES('SHA2_256', pod.PurchaseOrderData) AS HashedData
FROM Purchasing.PurchaseOrders AS po
CROSS APPLY
(
    SELECT po.*
    FOR JSON PATH, ROOT('Purchase Order'), INCLUDE_NULL_VALUES
) AS pod(PurchaseOrderData);

The challenge with that code though, is that for the existing table data, it’s best calculated when the data is stored, rather than every time it’s queried. And, bonus points if you then create an index that holds just the key for matching plus an included column for the HashedData. With a bit of careful work, you can get an efficient join happening to find differences.

2023-10-09

This is part 4 of a series on working with change data capture (CDC) in Azure SQL Database. This part discusses how to enable it and how to use it.

When I was reading the documentation for CDC in Azure SQL Database, I kept coming across a mention that it required at least an S3 service level objective (SLO), if you were using a DTU-based database.

I really hoped that wasn’t the case.

2023-09-23