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Database Weekly
The Complete Weekly Roundup of SQL Server News by SQLServerCentral.com
Hand-picked content to sharpen your professional edge
Editorial
 

Christmas in July

My son asked me to sign for a package on Friday. He was at work and had ordered himself some new joystick for a gaming thing. He told me this was his "Christmas to himself in July."

We've just past the halfway point of the year, and it's been interesting. Both a semi-stressful moving on from the pandemic, and a fantastic opening up of life for me in many ways. I've had some great trips, experiences, and enjoyed time with people.

This is a time when many will treat themselves to a Christmas in July, perhaps with a gift or a trip that let's them enjoy life. I thought about that as I saw a few articles like this one on sales and deals. It's Independence Day on Monday, a holiday in the US, and lots of retailers use this as an excuse for a sale. I won't likely get anything techy, but I do need some new gloves since we are putting in 1000' of new fence at the ranch.

If you've had a good year, is there something you'd reward yourself with? A new mobile device? Maybe some tech-game thing? An upgrade to hardware? Maybe you'll get a new car, like I did last year. Perhaps you'll take a trip or partake in some event. I guess I fall into that category as my wife and I have tickets to the jazz festival in Winter Park in a few weeks. We'll spend a weekend in the mountains as a reward for our hard work.

If it's been a tough year, maybe there's something you treat yourself with to cope with this crazy world. Let us know what you will do, or maybe dream a bit and think about what you might wish you would do.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Join the debate, and respond to the editorial on the forums

 
The Weekly News
All the headlines and interesting SQL Server information that we've collected over the past week, and sometimes even a few repeats if we think they fit.
Vendors/3rd Party Products

Training: Maximize the power of SQL Prompt with SQL Toolbelt Essentials

Watch this 30-minute training session to discover how you can use SQL Prompt in combination with other tools in SQL Toolbelt Essentials to boost productivity, simplify collaboration, and deliver accurate database changes faster.

Administration of SQL Server

On Cumulative Updates and GDRs

After another Patch Tuesday™ has come and gone, I have seen more confusion about build numbers and what they mean.

TLS versus MTLS: What is the difference

From SQLServer-DBA.Com

MTLS is commonly found in a zero trust architectur...

SQL Server 2022: Backup and Restore database to AWS S3 bucket - Part 1

From MSSQL Tips

In this article we look at how to configure AWS to allow backup and restore from a SQL Server 2022 database using AWS S3 storage.

A Simple SQL Server Health Checklist

From StraightPath Solutions SQL Blog

Being part of a consulting team has given me experience with many environments, and part of the work I do every week is to check for the various best...

Azure CosmosDB

How to use DateTimeBin() function in Azure Cosmos DB

From Hasan Savran

       I wrote about the Date_Bucket() funct...

Azure Databricks, Spark and Snowflake

Introducing Data Cleanrooms for the Lakehouse

We are excited to announce data cleanrooms for the Lakehouse, allowing businesses to easily collaborate with their customers and partners on any cloud in a privacy-safe way. Participants in the data cleanrooms can share and join their existing data, and run complex workloads in any language – Python, R, SQL, Java, and Scala – on the data while maintaining data privacy.

Azure SQL

Azure SQL connectivity error 10060 example : a DNS resolution issue.

From Azure Database Support Blog

Issue: When connecting from inside Azure (an Azure...

SQL Server Performance: Upper and Lower functions and Database collation.

From Azure Database Support Blog

Issue: SQL Server performance issue: possible high...

Parameterizing Azure Policy and Ensuring Azure SQL AD Authentication

From Simple Talk

I wrote before about enforcing Azure SQL AD Authen...

Azure SQL Security: Database Protection with Defender for Cloud (Ep. 5) | Data Exposed

From Azure SQL

In this episode of Data Exposed with Anna Hoffman and Ido Keshet, learn about how defender for SQL (and defender for cloud) can address the top security concerns. We’ll...

Azure SQL Managed Instance

Stuck operation in Azure SQL Managed Instance due to private DNS zone name

From Azure Database Support Blog

  Recently I have been working on some cases for stuck operations on Azure SQL managed instance. These operations can be such as an update backup storage redundancy or scale...

Career, Employment, and Certifications

The First 30 Days at a New Database Job

From SQLServerCentral Blogs

Over the last four years, ok it seems longer than ...

[Video] Office Hours: Professional Development Questions

From Brent Ozar Unlimited

Most of the questions y’all post at https://pollgab.com/room/brento are technical ones, but there were a handful of interesting professional development and career ones in the queue, so I cherry-picked...

Hybrid Work: The Best or Worst of Both Worlds?

From IT Pro - Microsoft Windows Information, Solutions, Tools

Yelp's CEO comes out strongly against hybrid work, as more workers continue to demand more flexibility.

What’s next? Pt 2

From SQLServerCentral Blogs

Well, it’s only been about a week and a half but...

Speaker diversity

From SQLServerCentral Blogs

Recently PASS Data Community Summit sessions were selected and the wounds were opened on Twitter around speaker diversity in the community. I heard from several people via my DMs... The...

Community Interests

How session selection worked with the old PASS

From SQLGene – Learning SQL Slowly

There’s some valuable discussion going on regarding diversity and conferences. I wrote about it last year. I’d like to write more of my thoughts on the subject, but so...

Computing in the Cloud (Azure, Google, AWS)

Lesson Learned #212: Hands-On-Labs:TCP Provider: The semaphore timeout period has expired

From Azure Database Support Blog

We used to have cases where our customer faced the following error message: "TCP Provider: The semaphore timeout period has expired" in this video below my colleague Dineu Assis...

5 Myths About Cloud Pricing

From IT Pro - Microsoft Windows Information, Solutions, Tools

Don't fall for these cloud pricing myths: Figuring out how much cloud computing will cost you is not as simple as it seems on the surface.

Conferences, Classes, Events, and Webinars

DevOps 101: Unlock the value of frequent deployments with Database DevOps

Frequent deployments can give you greater flexibility in meeting changing business requirements, but if code quality is poor this may cause major headaches for your customers and your whole organization. Join Microsoft Data Platform MVP, and AWS Community Builder Grant Fritchey to discover the benefits of, and best practices for frequent deployments.

Accelerating Digital Transformation: The role of DevOps and Data

SQL Server Central Editor, Steve Jones is joined by a panel of industry experts from around the globe to discuss their experiences with digital transformation, and the impact it had on themselves, their teams and the wider organization.

Data Visualisation

what is a stacked bar chart?

A few years ago, we posted a question on this blog that is as relevant today as it was years ago: “Is there a good use case for a stacked bar chart?”

what is a stacked bar chart?

From Storytelling with Data

  ...

Database Design, Theory and Development

I’m Beggin, Beggin you, to stop using VarChars as IDs

As I was troubleshooting a performance issue, I noticed that there was an implicit conversion (SQL Server automatically converts the data from one data type to another) happening in my join. The join was on a column that was named the same in both tables, but one was datatype INT (integer) and the other was a datatype of VARCHAR(50) (variable character up to 50 places).

Hardware

Patriot P400 SSD Review: All You Need, and Then Some

From Tom's Hardware US

We put the Patriot P400 SSD through our rigorous t...

HPE Unveils ProLiant Server With 128-Core Ampere Altra Max CPU

From Tom's Hardware US

Hewlett Packard Enterprise now offers 1P machines ...

New Intel Raptor Lake ES CPU Rumored to Boost up to 5.5 GHz

From Tom's Hardware US

The new 'Core i9-13900K ES3' chip increases the CP...

MDX/DAX

Understanding the optimization of SWITCH

From Sqlbi

The SWITCH function in DAX has been optimized over...

Performance Tuning SQL Server

SQL Server 2022 Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization: When PSP Can Help Your Queries Go Faster

From Erik Darling Data

Errant Hairs I’ve used this proc as an example in the past. It’s a great parameter sniffing demo. Why is it great? Because there’s exactly one value in the Posts table...

How to obtain SQL Execution Plans using different methods

From SQLShack

In this article, we will learn various methods of how to get an SQL execution plan of a query. Introduction A SQL Execution plan is a very helpful query...

Polybase/HDInsight

Hive Locks

Locks in database can be either Read Lock or Write Lock. Locks are used when concurrent applications tries to access the same table. Locks prevents data from being corrupted or invalidated when multiple users try to reach while others write to database.

PowerPivot/PowerQuery/PowerBI

Best practices in creating aggregations in Power BI and ADX

Every visual shown in a report in PBI, contains some form of aggregation. The question is how the aggregations are calculated and at which step in the pipe of bringing the data from the data source to the report. In this article, I’ll be using data coming from Azure Data Explorer aka Kusto aka ADX.

ALM Toolkit would not open (When using External Tools from Power BI Desktop)

I recently got a new laptop and I had to install all my programs again. Everything was going as expected, except when I went to use ALM Toolkit, the program would not open. I would click on ALM Toolkit, I would see it open for a few seconds in task manager and then it would disappear.

Composite Model in Power BI; DirectQuery and Import Data Combined

From RADACAD

In the early days of developing Power BI solutions...

Monitoring Power Query Online Memory And CPU Usage

From Chris Webb's BI Blog

Power Query Online is, as the name suggests, the o...

How to Trigger a Power BI Dataset Refresh via Azure Synapse Analytics in 3 Simple Steps.

From Purple Frog Systems

In this blog post we’ll explore how to trigger a...

Generating smart narratives in Power BI

From SQLShack

In this article, we will learn how to use smart na...

Analyzing key influencers in data with Power BI

From SQLShack

In this article, we will use Power BI Desktop to analyze key influencers in a dataset and learn how to use the corresponding visualization as well. Introduction Data volumes...

Generating Unicode Characters in Power Query

From SQLServerCentral Blogs

You may have used the UNICHAR() function in DAX to return Unicode characters in DAX measures. If you haven’t yet read Chris Webb’s blog post on the topic, I... The...

Product Reviews and Articles

Building a Database with Flyway

From Product learning – Redgate Software

Flyway, especially Flyway Teams edition, can be us...

Alert Filtering in SQL Monitor

From SQLServerCentral Blogs

SQL Monitor has improved a lot over the last coupl...

Product Upgrades and Releases

Released: SCOM Management Packs for SQL Server, RS, AS (7.0.38.0)

From MS SQL Server Blog

Updates to SQL Server, Reporting Services, and Analysis Services Management Packs are available (7.0.38.0). You can download the MPs from the links below. Majority of the changes are based...

Public preview: Microsoft Purview data sharing for Azure Storage

From Azure Updates

Microsoft Purview data sharing for in-place data sharing for Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS Gen2) and Azure Blob Storage is now in public preview.

General availability: MATCH clause for Query

From Azure Updates

The MATCH clause is used in the Azure Digital Twin...

Generally available: Azure Backup multi-user authorization for recovery services vaults

From Azure Updates

Multi-user authorization for Backup provides enhanced protection for your backup data in recovery services vaults against unauthorized critical operations.

SQL Server News

Query Store Improvements in SQL 2022

Query Store was first introduced in SQL Server 2016 and it is amazing how far it has come in such a short time. You can already use Management Studio and Azure Data Studio to get detailed resource consumption for all your queries, such as CPU, memory, and I/O, for Query Performance Insight to give you a quick and efficient way to determine impact. The automation and built-in knowledge that is used to make your job easier is impressive.

Restoring a SQL Managed Instance database backup to SQL Server 2022 (Private Preview)

From Azure SQL

Restoring a backup file is the easiest way to copy...

Initial Thoughts about SQL Server 2022

From Deb the DBA

I had the opportunity to do a presentation at work last week about SQL Server 2022. I titled it “Features in SQL Server 2022 We’re Looking Forward To”. I...

Introducing the SQL Server 2022 blog series

From Microsoft SQL Server Blog

Introducing a new blog post series to highlight new features and enhancements available with SQL Server 2022. SQL Server 2022, now in public preview, is our most Azure-enabled release...

SQL Server Security and Auditing

Creating a Database Audit Specification can create new users & schemas in the background

From SQLStudies

I love database audits. They are simple, easy to u...

Security News and Issues

Analyzing the Swiss E-Voting System

From Schneier on Security

Andrew Appel has a long analysis of the Swiss online voting system. It’s a really good analysis of both the system and the official analyses.

Understanding Have I Been Pwned's Use of SHA-1 and k-Anonymity

From Troy Hunt

Presently sponsored by: Detack. Detect & preve...

18 Zero-Days Exploited So Far in 2022

From Dark Reading: Dark Reading News Analysis

It didn't have to be this way: So far 2022's tranche of zero-days shows too many variants of previously patched security bugs, according Google Project Zero.

Software Development

GitHub Copilot, Amazon CodeWhisperer AI-Assisted Development Tools Debut

From IT Pro - Microsoft Windows Information, Solutions, Tools

A new group of AI-assisted tools is emerging from GitHub and AWS to help developers more rapidly develop code.

T-SQL and Query Languages

Fun With KQL – Print

From Arcane Code

Fun With KQL - Print

What’s up with the different JOINS in Azure SQL and Azure Synapse?

From Guy in a Cube

Not sure what the different JOINs mean in Azure Sy...

Steve Explains how to build a Recursive CTE

From Steve Stedman

Transcription of Video: So here’s an example of ...

Searching through a database via SQL

From Simple Talk

Imagine that while developing or testing a SQL Server database, you get an error message mentioning a database object, and you scratch your head, and mutter ‘by the bones...

Looking at Math with Recursive CTE’s

From Steve Stedman

Transcription of Video: Let’s take a look at another recursive CTE. That’s not looking at tables, but it’s just looking at math. And here, we could create a recursive...

Tech News

3 Signs That Your Data Is Trapped in Silos

From Dataversity

The path to data maturity begins with the realizat...

Forrester Report Identifies Widespread Multi-cloud Usage in US

From IT Pro - Microsoft Windows Information, Solutions, Tools

A Forrester Research analysis of the state of cloud in the U.S. found that 94% of organizations now use the cloud, though a number of challenges still remain.

Is VMware Doomed After Broadcom’s $61B Takeover Bid?

From Petri IT Knowledgebase

Broadcom announced that it was planning to acquire VMware in...

The Lighter Side

Thor: Love and Thunder Xbox Series X Gets Epic Mjolnir Makeover

From Tom's Hardware US

Customized Xbox Series X has the looks, but probably not the power of Mjolnir. Xbox sweepstakes is open now until July 21. The movie is in cinemas starting July...

Tools for Dev (SSMS, ADS, VS, etc.)

Lesson Learned #211: Monitoring SQLPackage Import Process

From Azure Database Support Blog

We used to have cases where our customer asked wha...

Seven tips in seven minutes for the SQL Developer | Data Exposed: MVP Edition

From Azure SQL

Come learn seven quick tips that will make you a b...

 
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