A community of more than 1,600,000 database professionals and growing

Featured Script

Quick SQL connection and process details with current SQL - Version2

The Voice of the DBA

MoSQL

Google is doing more SQL, or at least shifting towards relational SQL databases as a way of storing data. At least, some of their engineers see this as a better way to store data for many problems. Since I'm a relational database advocate, I found this to be interesting.

When Google first started to publish information on BigTable and other new ways of dealing with large amounts of data, I felt that these weren't solutions I'd use or problems that many people had. The idea of Map Reduce is interesting and certainly applicable to the problem space Google had of a global database of sites, but that's not a problem I've ever encountered. Instead, most of the struggles I've had with relational systems are still better addressed in a relational system.

Google feels the same way, and in a blog, they talk about choosing strong consistency where possible. This is a post that promotes their relational SQL database (Cloud Spanner), but there is a good discussion of why consistency matters and where moving to popular NoSQL models, like eventual consistency, cause a lot of problems. Both for developers and clients.

This quote caught me eye, and I may use this with developers that look to avoid RDBMS systems: "Put another way, data stores that provide transactions and consistency across the entire dataset by default lead to fewer bugs, fewer headaches and easier-to-maintain application code." I think that's true as I think many of the advantages promoted in non-RDBMS systems are often placing a greater burden on the application developer than they realize. A burden that grows over time as the techniques used cause more technical debt.

I think more SQL based systems are the way to go for many problem domains. Google agrees, and if you read more about the Cloud Spanner team, you might agree as well. You'll also find them to be incredibly smart people that think deeply about the problems that are both raised and solved by relational systems.

So go ahead and promote more SQL Server databases. Google thinks they're good for many applications, and that's good enough for most developers.

Steve Jones from SQLServerCentral.com

Join the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums

The Voice of the DBA Podcast

Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.1MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

The Voice of the DBA podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music.

SQL in the City Streamed

The theme for December 2018's SQL in the City Streamed is Your Journey to Compliant Database DevOps. The schedule includes sessions designed to broaden your skillset, support your ongoing learning, and keep you up-to-date with what’s new in the industry and at Redgate. Find out more and register for free

NEW SQL Provision: Create, protect, & manage SQL Server database copies for compliant DevOps

With SQL Provisions virtual cloning technology, databases can be created in seconds using just 1MB of storage, and sensitive data can be anonymized or replaced with realistic data to ensure it is protected as it moves between environments. Download your free trial

Featured Contents

Configuring SQL Server Always on Azure Servers(Iaas)

Vishnu Gupthan from SQLServerCentral.com

Configuration of SQL Server Always on in Azure Virtual machines differs in multiple ways comparing with the on-premise Implementations. This article will help you to have a handy note to configure always on in Azure servers from a DBA perspective. More »

Write more compact SQL Server code using new features

Additional Articles from MSSQLTips.com

Learn about new functions in SQL Server 2016 and 2017 to have more readable and compact code including STRING_AGG, TRIM, TRANSLATE and DROP... IF EXISTS. More »

How to reset your development database in seconds using SQL Clone

Let’s say you’re making experimental changes to your development database and, to explore a hypothesis, you’ve just dropped a table. How long does it take you to restore the database to its previous state, so you’re ready to continue testing? If it’s long enough to go fetch a coffee, then it’s too long. More »

From the SQLServerCentral Blogs - Live Query Stats of Running Queries

Gavin Draper from SQLServerCentral Blogs

Since SQL Server 2014 SP1 we’ve had DMV’s that can support Live Query Statistics (Basically a query plan that gives... More »

From the SQLServerCentral Blogs - Running a custom SQL Server Docker Image in Amazon AWS

Klaus Aschenbrenner from SQLServerCentral Blogs

(Be sure to checkout the FREE SQLpassion Performance Tuning Training Plan - you get a weekly email packed with all the... More »

Question of the Day

Today's Question (by Steve Jones):

I have some code that runs in various client databases. For the OrderLine table, I want to ensure I know which client database I'm running in. In the context of the Acme database, I run this:

 SELECT PARSENAME('dbo.OrderLine', 3)

What is returned? Note: the 3 represents the database name.

Think you know the answer? Click here, and find out if you are right.

We keep track of your score to give you bragging rights against your peers.
This question is worth 1 point in this category: PARSENAME().

We'd love to give you credit for your own question and answer.
To submit a QOTD, simply log in to the Contribution Center.

Expert Scripting and Automation for SQL Server DBAs

Automate your workload and manage more databases and instances with greater ease and efficiency by combining metadata-driven automation with powerful tools like PowerShell and SQL Server Agent. Automate your new instance-builds and use monitoring to drive ongoing automation, with the help of an inventory database and a management data warehouse. Get your copy from Amazon today.

Yesterday's Question of the Day

Yesterday's Question (by Steve Jones):

I've got an R data frame (pass.videos) that has a number of data items about the PASS videos stored on a flash drive. I want to get an idea of the structure of the data set with data types and a sample of values. What function should I use?

Answer: str(pass.videos)

Explanation:

The str() function will return information about the structure of the data frame with the names of the elements , the data type, and a sample of values.

Ref: str() - click here

» Discuss this question and answer on the forums

Featured Script

Quick SQL connection and process details with current SQL - Version2

Venugopal Saride from SQLServerCentral.com

Step 1: Create the view

Step 2: Join with sys.sysdatabases and sys.dm_exec_connections check the connection details

Database Pros Who Need Your Help

Here's a few of the new posts today on the forums. To see more, visit the forums.

SQL Server 2017 : SQL Server 2017 - Administration

Sql 2017/2019 unattended installs tempdb files - Trying to verify that what I am seeing is intended behavior not something I have messed up. When installing 2017...

blocking for same query on user DB - Hello Gurus, In Production I noticed one issue and need your help. On the web page when we click on a...

SQL Server 2017 : SQL Server 2017 - Development

SQL Quiz - Here's the challenge: Let's say we had a table of all US Presidents, with the date they took office and...

Lack of clustered index generally a good idea? - https://use-the-index-luke.com/blog/2014-01/unreasonable-defaults-primary-key-clustering-key This is my first exposure to this concept. What is you guys' take on this? It sounds like it MAY...

DT_BYTE to DT_DBDATE - I've got an SSIS project pulling data from a MySQL database into SQL Server. One of the date values in the...

SQL Server 2016 : SQL Server 2016 - Administration

Long Running Processes - I am looking for a query to find and kill long running processes...Now i know i will get a lot...

Index rebuild issues - I have just started at a company that has an existing ERP system and they are some pretty bad performance...

sql server 2016/2017 books etc. - Is there a good book or material to learn the product from a DBA perspective. I will probably take the...

SQL Server 2016 : SQL Server 2016 - Development and T-SQL

Assigning results of stored procedure with parameter to variable - Hi all We've got a stored procedure that gives a list of email addresses based on a parameter and we want...

adding each row incremental - Hello, sadly i am at my witts end with this complicated problem, and i know you guys are smart than i...

SQL Server 2014 : Development - SQL Server 2014

Case when inside of partition by? - Hi, I have the following situation: CREATE TABLE #TAB1( ID INT ,MY_STATE VARCHAR(10) ,EVENT_TS DATETIME ) INSERT INTO #TAB1(ID, MY_STATE, EVENT_TS) VALUES (1, 'STATE_1', GETDATE()) ...

SQL Server 2012 : SQL 2012 - General

Left Join with View taking more time in SQL Server - The below query is taking twenty seconds to display 53,000 records. This query has five left joins with views. But...

SQL Server 2012 : SQL Server 2012 - T-SQL

Return data even if no record present - Hi all, I have table called students, and I would get record even if data is not present for a...

Values are randomly set to NULL - Hi! I have a table with some encrypted values. It has in total 85 rows, and over the weeend, some of the...

Clustered Index Scan vs Seek - Hi, I have a table with an Id field. It is NOT auto increment. Every time we insert the new rows,...

Reporting Services : Reporting Services

Two column body - Forgive my ignorance as it has been several years since I have built a report in SSRS. I have a...

Reporting Services : SSRS 2016

My subreport only shows 1 record, even when there are more. Why? - I've got a main report, which is a detail report. And a smaller report, that's used by the main report...

Data Warehousing : Integration Services

Import specific rows from Excel - Hello, I'll get right to it... I'm trying to schedule a package to pull data from a shared Excel source (which...

SSIS - Error: Failed to acquire connection - A situation caused an error. I need to fix that. Error - Error: Failed to acquire connection "MyDBConnection". Connection...

SQL Server 2005 : Data Corruption

I/O error 23(Data error (cyclic redundancy check) - I have encountered the below error message when i try to do sql query. Server: Msg 823, Level 24, State 2,...

This email has been sent to newsletter@newslettercollector.com. To be removed from this list, please click here.
If you have any problems leaving the list, please contact the webmaster@sqlservercentral.com.

This newsletter was sent to you because you signed up at SQLServerCentral.com.
Feel free to forward this to any colleagues that you think might be interested.
If you have received this email from a colleague, you can register to receive it here.