The Bit Bucket

This is just a short post that I’ve been meaning to write for a while.

I know that there is an eternal tabs vs spaces debate that goes on in development teams. Currently I’m in the spaces team for SQL queries.

So, it’s a pain in the neck when I receive a script file from someone and it’s full of tabs. Even worse when there are a bunch of tabs at weird tab positions. And I start to edit it, and things jump around, and I think @#$@$!@#$@#$ tabs !

But nowadays, SSMS can help yet very few people seem to realize it.

If you hit Control-H to bring up the Quick Replace dialog (or do it manually when Control-H doesn’t work –> still investigating that), you can set an option to use Regular Expressions:

Click to turn that option on, it will have a background color (default is beige-ish). Enter \t for the from text, and 4 spaces (or whatever your favorite number is) for the “to” text and click the replace all option:

And you get to say “farewell you pesky tabs”.

I also often use this with \r etc. to replace multiple double-lines, etc. etc. (One day we might even get a macro recorder but this helps for many situations)

Hope that helps someone.

Hi folks,

I’ve written another “Data Tales” case for SQL Server Magazine.

It’s posted now and you’ll find it here: http://sqlmag.com/sql-server/data-tales-11-case-ballooning-tables

Enjoy !

Hi Folks,

I got to record another podcast last week and it’s published now: http://www.sqldownunder.com/Podcasts

The guest this time was Data Platform MVP Aaron Bertrand. We initially planned to mostly just discuss SentryOne Plan Explorer because all the Pro features were now available in the free edition, which is an awesome situation. But the release of SQL Server 2016 SP1 came the week before, and as both Aaron and I were deeply invested in the changes that occurred there, we spent time discussing it, and also SQL Server on Linux because the public preview for that was also announced.

Enjoy !

SQL Server Management Studio has moved into the Visual Studio 2015 shell. In general, that’s a really good thing. There are many built-in benefits that come from using that shell. I’ve been showing people many of these. One that surprises many people is the ability to change the font in Object Explorer. No longer do you need to squint at the tiny writing in Object Explorer. You too can change the text in Object Explorer to a readable size (particularly on high-resolution monitors):

In Tools/Options, you can set the font for “Environment” and it now applies to that text (as well as a number of other places):

 

Unfortunately, there are one or two things that are a little harder at first for people who want to use SSMS to write T-SQL. One that was driving me crazy was the scroll bar. Visual Studio tries to give so much information on that bar, about what’s changed, where the insertion carat is, etc. The problem with this is that I often now can’t even find the handle when I want to scroll the window. For example, how do you grab the handle with your mouse and slide the window when it looks like this?

I was starting to get resigned to this when I asked in the MVP email list. Erik Jenson pointed out that the scroll bar itself had properties. I should have thought of that. If you right-click the scroll bar, you get these options:

Choosing “Scroll Bar Options” then leads to this:

The ones that I’ve highlighted are the real offenders. However, note the warning at the bottom. You really don’t want to remove these for all languages. Some might be helpful to you if you use other languages. So instead, click on the option further down the list, to set them for T-SQL only:

 

I hope that helps you make SQL Server Management Studio a bit more useful.

Hi Folks,

The next SQL Down Under show is now online. In it, Glenn Berry discusses hardware and hardware-related performance issues for SQL Server.

You’ll find the show here: http://www.sqldownunder.com/podcasts

Enjoy !

 

More on Glenn:

Glenn Berry is a Principal Consultant with SQLskills. He has worked as a SQL Server professional for many years in a variety of roles, most recently as Database Architect for Avalara in Parker, CO.

Glenn has been a SQL Server MVP since 2007, and has a whole collection of Microsoft certifications, including MCITP, MCDBA, MCSE, MCSD, MCAD, and MCTS, which proves he likes to take tests. His expertise includes DMVs, high availability, hardware selection and configuration, and performance tuning. He is also an Adjunct Faculty member at University College – University of Denver, where has been teaching since 2000. He has completed the Master Teacher Program at University College.

Glenn is heavily involved in the SQL Server community, and is a frequent speaker at user groups, SQL Saturdays, and the PASS Community Summit. He is the author of the book SQL Server Hardware, and he wrote chapters for SQL Server MVP Deep Dives and SQL Server MVP Deep Dives Volume 2 books.

Glenn’s personal blog is at http://sqlserverperformance.wordpress.com/, his SQLskills blog is at http://www.SQLskills.com/blogs/glenn, and he can be reached by email at glenn@SQLskills.com, and on Twitter as GlennAlanBerry.

I ran into this one today and it’s the in the category of things that I’m likely to run into again one day so it’s worth recording it here.

I was trying to configure an unattended execution account for SQL Server Reporting Services 2016 and was getting the above error.

The problem was that even though the machine is just in a workgroup, SQL Server Reporting Services Configuration Manager needs a domain or machine specified for the user name.

You can’t just set a name like SSRSUnattendedExecution, it does have to be MYMACHINENAME\SSRSUnattendedExecution. That’s different to the other SQL Server services that happily let you configure it that way when setting them up.

The message is misleading as it suggests that you can’t do it right now. You can’t do it ever like that.

Hi Folks,

I’ve been continuing with my Data Tales series up at sqlmag.com.

This time I’ve written about a pet hate: seeing code that counts rows when all it needs to do is to check for existence. However, all is not as bad as it seems because the optimizer does a pretty good job of protecting us from ourselves. (At least the SQL Server optimizer does )

It’s here: http://sqlmag.com/sql-server/data-tales-10-it-s-matter-existence

Enjoy !

Hi Folks,

I’ve been writing articles for SQL Server Magazine as part of my Data Tales series.

Over the last couple of months, I’ve been writing a min-series about a database on a diet.

Earlier parts described the need for size reduction, how ROW and PAGE compression come into play, how to choose between them, etc.

Part 4 (the final part) is now online here:

http://sqlmag.com/sql-server/data-tales-9-case-database-diet-part-4

It covers GZIP compression of large string fields, PDF size reduction in BLOBS, and more.

Enjoy !