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The Voice of the DBA
 

Daily Coping Tip

Write down ten things you feel grateful for in life and why.

For many of you out there working in a new way, I'm including a thought of the day on how to cope in this challenging time from The Action for Happiness Coping Calendar. My items will be on my blog, feel free to share yours.

Going Virtual

Microsoft accounted that Build will go virtual this year, which is both saddening and exciting. I've been fortunate enough to attend Build 3 times and I've enjoyed the experience every time. Even when I was there for only 24 hours. I wasn't sure I'd get to go this year, but now I can.

Sort of.

The experience of a remote event is different. I've watcher numerous remote keynotes, including for the PASS Summit, over the years. I've attended 24 hours of PASS, GroupBy, and various Microsoft events, though in all those cases I only attended part of the event. I saw a few sessions, having them run in the background while I was doing something else.

With the world struggling with the COVID-19 epidemic, I know we'll see more virtual events this year. I'm torn on what I think here. Certainly more people can join in and get information, which is overall a good thing. When we can share information more widely, we open up more collaboration and allow those that are not privileged enough to attend to still be a part of the event.

At the same time, events are expensive and some of the costs are often covered by sponsors and vendors, which lose out in a virtual setting. They don't get the same chance to interact with attendees. There's also the loss of interaction and interpersonal networking among those that go.

I don't like the idea of having all events be virtual, nor do I like the idea of only having attendees get information. There is some balance to be struck here, though I'm not even sure what I want. I think PASS does a good job of streaming some sessions, and I love SQL Bits making recordings available later, though in both cases, I often feel very disengaged.

The MVP Summit was virtual this year, and I made it a point to shut down everything outside of interactions with attendees. However, that was hard. A few work things popped up and there were times I couldn't turn off everything. Even when I could, it was more distracting with more people at home, and I'll admit, concerns over the state of the world weighed me down.

Virtual events are a challenge, but we're all going to get used to them for the time being. Redgate is doing a streamed event next week and I expect even more across the coming months as many of us strive to keep businesses going and achieve some level of normalcy. I know that continued learning, inspiration, and career growth with be hard with virtual events, but I look forward to finding ways that keep us engaged.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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

Redgate SQL Provision
 
  Featured Contents

Creating SQL containers on Azure Data Studio Notebooks with Python

carlos10robles from SQLServerCentral

Carlos Robles explains how to use Azure Data Studio Notebooks to create SQL containers with Python.

Power BI Dashboard vs Report vs Workbook

Additional Articles from MSSQLTips.com

There are many different ways to present data using Power BI and this tip looks at these different methods such as Power BI Dashboards, Power BI Workbooks and Power BI Reports.

Avoid using constants in an ORDER BY clause

Additional Articles from SimpleTalk

Phil Factor explains why an ORDER BY clause should always specify the sort columns using their names, or aliases, rather than using an integer to specify the position of a column in the SELECT list.

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Extended Events: Live Data Explorer, Getting Started

Grant Fritchey from The Scary DBA

One reason a lot of people don’t like Extended Events is because the output is in XML. Let’s face it, XML is a pain in the bottom. However, there...

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Using Azure Data Factory Mapping Data Flows to populate Data Vault - PASS Video

Rayis Imayev from Data Adventures

(2020-Mar-15) Video recording of my webinar session on Using Azure Data Factory Mapping Data Flows to populate Data Vault at the recent PASS Data Architecture Virtual Group meeting.It was based...

 

  Question of the Day

Today's question (by Xedni):

 

PARSENAME and Input Length

What will this result in?
declare @long_obj nvarchar(768) = replicate('a', 128) + '.' + replicate('b', 128) select parsename(@long_obj, 1)
 

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

 

 

  Yesterday's Question of the Day (by MilesC)

Partitioning Limits in SQL Server 2019

What is the partitioning limit for tables and indexes in SQL Server 2019?

Answer: Tables and indexes are limited to 15,000

Explanation: The partitioning limit for SQL Server 2019 for tables and indexes is 15,000.  This is true for all versions starting with SQL Server 2012.  Before SQL Server 2012 the partitioning limit was 1,000. Ref: Partitioned Tables and Indexes - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/partitions/partitioned-tables-and-indexes?view=sql-server-ver15

Discuss this question and answer on the forums

 

 

 

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 - Development
Programmatically create SSRS report as PDF - I would really appreciate some guidance on how to get vb code working in a SSRS report.  Please refer vb code at end of posting. The code has been added to Custom Code (Report Properties, Code) and the code is called from a Text Box expression in the report.  I have created a SSRS Data […]
How to check if a particular table is being used right now? - I am completing an SP that will do massive deletes based on certain criteria from a dozen of tables. On average each table is tens of millions of rows, no permanent or tuned indexes on it (it is a staging-swap kind of tables,  temporary transactional data holders) but occasionally heavy selects can be run against […]
Running Total - I have a table that captures rainfall data approx every 10 minutes. I want to calculate a sort of a running total of the Last Hour's Rainfall and the Last 8 Hours Rainfall by Time. Last Hour's Rainfall = Sum(PrecipitationAmount) for the previous 60 minutes (PrecipitationMinutes is the number of minutes over which the PrecipitationAmount […]
SQL Server 2016 - Development and T-SQL
Need some help getting info of people logged in, but from the POV of NON-Sysadm - I modified a proc that returns a result set of all user emails to the application in question, with one column that displays a sundial if that user is logged in. I did this by doing a left outer join to sys.dm_exec_sessions Left join sys.dm_exec_sessions b on login_name = Su.name and program_name like '
I was asked to get rid of this Dynamic SQL for performance purposes. - Is it REALLY possible to bypass the @Where_Clause variable and make the below SQL non-dynamic? This is a statement from an SP that receives the below 5 parameters and dynamically builds the WHERE clause from them. I don't think it is possible NOT TO USE DYNAMIC SQL HERE, but double-checking with you guys. Thanks. -- […]
Need explanation for below query what it does -   @Date1 = '20150630' DATEADD(m,6, @Date1) < DATEADD(m,-12,GETDATE())   Ignore this, i got the answer after validating.
Administration - SQL Server 2014
SQl Stored Procedure - View Tuning - Hi, We have a stored procedure which calling view which contains bunch of tables in sql 2014 and 2017 and it's slow. View contains roughly 100K records. I was looking view and based on joins and where clause i have created index but nothing gain as performance it's same. I tried following: Created Index based […]
Development - SQL Server 2014
Using an Execute SQL task to return XML and store it in an SSIS variable string - Hey guys, I need to run a query in an execute sql task and return XML converted to Varchar(MAX) and store it in an ssis variable with a datatype of string. This is what I tried   TSQL: DECLARE @Variable XML DECLARE @VAriableString VARCHAR(MAX) SET @Variable = (Select top 4 ID from [dbo].[Company] FOR XML […]
SQL Server 2012 - T-SQL
Concatenating to a string - I am trying to concatenate values into one string value and what i have so far is progress, but I want to encapsulate my variables with single quotes. The below gives me e.g. Karen,Cox,Oakland,MN,95573 when what I need is 'Karen','Cox','Oakland','MN','95573': p.firstname + ',' + p.lastname + ',' + i.city + ',' + t.stateAbbrveation + ',' […]
SQL Server 2019 - Administration
Gauging Performance Improvement after removing the unused indexes - Hi All, Removed some of the unused indexes. But, how to identify the performance improvement? Is there anyway to generate any metrics and giving that the managers?   Regards
SQL Server 2019 - Development
PowerBI Report Builder - can it use/declare variables? - In SSRS, creating your own variables for use within your report is trivial... did MSFT leave this out of PowerBI Report Builder? In SSRS, I could create a dataset, and create a variable, and set the value using an aggregate for example (like a count of records in a dataset). I'm trying to do the […]
Ensuring a randomly generated number is always 8 digits - Hi there   I have inherited a piece of code which generates an Activation Code based on a seeded value as follows select cast (round(rand(31303258 * rand(DATEPART(millisecond,GETDATE()))) * 100000000,0) as int) where 31303258  is the seed or another 8 digit number   Now what I have noticed is that not all the time, a 8 […]
Reporting Services
Programmatically create SSRS report as PDF - I would appreciate some guidance on how to get vb code working in a SSRS report.  Please refer vb code at end of posting. The code has been added to Custom Code (Report Properties, Code) and the code is called from a Text Box expression in the report.  I have created a SSRS Data Source […]
SSRS 2016
SSRS 2016 - force page break - Hello, How it is possible to dynamically force a page break? for example: if the final page is on pagenumber say number 9 then have a page break before this page? Thank you
Integration Services
SSIS & Azure SQL database - Hi , I have an on-premise SSIS package which connects to SQL Server database(Source). On connecting source using onpremise SSIS need to connect Azure SQL database , after connecting Azure SQL database need to truncate the stage table first and insert the source data. On success of source data to destination table (stage table), need […]
 

 

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