The Bit Bucket

Have you looked into Azure Machine Learning as yet?

If not, this might help. It’s a free eBook on getting started with it. Click the book to follow the link:

2015-04-14

Was speaking with a customer today about an issue where they were receiving “Out of Memory” exceptions when trying to load a 32 bit PostgreSQL ODBC driver from within an SSIS package.

When the package was run from the command line using Dtexec, all was fine. When the package was run from within the SSIS Catalog, the same package refused to run. They had presumed it was some issue to do with 32 bit vs 64 bit drivers. The customer resolved it by installing the latest 64 bit PostgreSQL ODBC drivers.

2015-04-10

Recently, I wrote about one of the issues with the Invoke-SqlCmd commandlet where it sets the ApplicationName when you use the parameter that should set the host.

Fellow MVP Ben Miller sent me a copy of the Invoke-SqlCmd3 that they were using. It was much better.

I then realized that there were many other options missing from these commandlets (such as options for Database Mirroring and Availablity Groups) and so I set about improving it.

2015-04-03

One of the common challenges that arises in many applications is around how to optimize the SQL Server performance of dynamic search queries. For example, we’ve all seen applications with screens like this:

clip_image002

Often, there will be many, many more fields to be searched. What I often hear from developers is that there is no way to optimize the query because you don’t know in advance which options the user will choose. While this is partly true, it assumes that human behaviour is much more random than it really is. Let me explain:

2015-04-01

The Power BI team have released details of their March update to the standalone Power BI designer.

The first thing I noticed is just how much faster the tool operates. The blog post mentioned performance enhancements but I really, really noticed them.

One particular enhancement that I wanted to call out was the additional of a connector for Google Analytics. I’ve been trying that this morning and have found it really easy to use. All the standard categories appear as available sets of data:

2015-03-27

Two of the parameters in SQL Server connections are the Application Name and the Host Name. You can see these in SQL Server if you execute the following command:

I’ve always been a fan of having applications identify themselves in their connection strings. It makes tasks like tracing much easier. The tools supplied with SQL Server do a reasonable job of that as you can see above. But many other tools don’t do such a good job.

2015-03-19

A short time back, I provided an updated script that can be used to rebuild clustered columnstore indexes when necessary.

One thing that wasn’t covered by that script was the ability to only individual index partitions. Below, I’ve provided an updated version of the script that will rebuild only affected partitions if the clustered columnstore index is partitioned.

-———————————————————————

-- Rebuild clustered columnstore indexes when necessary

--

-- Dr Greg Low v2.2

2015-03-05

I make no secret of the fact that I think that table compression was the best thing added to SQL Server 2008.

It seems like every week that I’m talking to clients about it. They have Enterprise Edition but they weren’t using it because they were familiar with O/S level disk compression and they think that compression will mean smaller and slower, yet this often couldn’t be further from the truth for customers whose databases are currently I/O bound or who don’t have enough memory in their buffer cache for it to work correctly.

2015-03-05

I know that many of my readers appreciate finding out when free eBooks become available.

Microsoft Virtual Academy has been releasing quite a few lately.

In particular, SQL Server and database folk might want to take a look at the following:

Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2014
Introducing Windows Server 2012 R2
Introducing Microsoft Azure HDInsight
Microsoft Azure Essentials: Fundamentals of Azure
Microsoft Azure Essentials: Fundamentals of Azure
Introducing Windows Azure for IT Professionals
Rethinking Enterprise Storage: A Hybrid Cloud Model

2015-02-20

This is the first year for Microsoft’s new Ignite conference. Many people are keen to go but figure it would break the bank.

Here’s another option:

The Microsoft Virtual Academy have their Heroes program running again. You get one point in the draw for just signing up. Even better though, take some courses and both learn something worthwhile and increase your chances of winning the competition: