The Complete Weekly Roundup of SQL Server News

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This time, at long last, I may be right.

Annually for the last four years, I’ve had a sit-down with my bosses to talk about what’s happening in technology, where I think the growth will be, what’s going to shrink, and so on. Every year for the last four years, I've predicted strong growth for Azure. Each year I've argued, in my own subtle way, that Microsoft’s “bet the entire farm and sell the children as indentured servants” approach to Azure, which they summarized as “All in”, is going to finally pay off in a big way. Every year up to this one, I’ve been wrong.

Microsoft has been growing the service offering. There’s been more and better functionality coming out almost weekly. Yet, when I gave presentations, I’d be talking to five people, lonely in a giant open room that could have been packed if only I had talked about query tuning. The articles and blog posts I wrote on Azure never got as much attention as the ones on execution plans or backups or monitoring. Yeah, I know, you’re going to tell me that backups are universal, so it’s naturally going to draw a bigger audience, but I expected Azure to take off and become, well, not as universal as backups, but, you know, larger…

This year, when asked about it by my bosses, I regaled them with the functionality of v12 Azure SQL Database, which already has Query Store in production, where you can use Extended Events for monitoring, where they have started to put machine learning capabilities to work with Query Performance Insight. I stood up and waved my arms, shouting about how Azure SQL Data Warehouse was going to revolutionize the industry with affordable parallel data processing technology. Despite barely scratching the surface in terms of the knowledge needed to make it all work, I waxed poetic about the amazing functionality that was going to come from the democratization of machine learning with the Azure Machine Learning studio.

And then…last week I was presenting at SQL Saturday Chicago, with a session called “Azure SQL Database for the Earthed DBA” and I filled the room. It was standing room only. I counted 65 people. They were engaged. They asked questions. I wasn’t lonely any more. Then it hit me… this is the year. Azure really is starting to take off. People are finally recognizing that this isn’t a replacement for their existing servers, that it isn’t going to put them out of a job, that they really do need to learn this cloud stuff. Azure is just another tool, and an important one, in the tool box. Azure is taking off, this year.

This time, I was right.

Grant Fritchey from SQLServerCentral.com

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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. These headlines are gathered throughout the week and are posted in real time at the website. Check there for information throughout the week or enjoy this weekly summary of the SQL Server world.

Tech News : General Interest

A Deep Look at the Role of Data Scientists - by Angela Guess Suzanne Rose recently wrote in DZone, “The distinction between statisticians and data scientists is that statisticians are given data and run regressions, while data scientists find the data, organize and analyze it, and then communicate ......(more)

What Slack is doing to our offices—and our minds - Inside Slack's SF office (though there's a distinct lack of visible emoji in your official office visual, Slackers). (credit: Slack) Walking into the Slack offices in downtown San Francisco feels like walking into a Slack channel online. Brightly colored ......(more)

Using Artificial Intelligence in Your Organization - by Angela Guess David Howell recently wrote in TechRadar, “Using artificial intelligence (AI) in your business may not be something that is on your agenda, but the chances are you may have already begun to use AI without even knowing it. The Airbnb application ......(more)

Tech News : Security

U.S. Cyber Pros Test Skills in Exercise Meant To Stop Attacks - The moment a U.S. official pressed a computer key Tuesday, dozens of security experts who gathered in an underground control room girded themselves for a cyberattack -- a drill meant to thwart the kinds of intrusions that have recently crippled health ......(more)

SQL Server News : Security

SQL Server 2014 is FIPS 140-2 compliant - We have recently published a KB article on using SQL Server 2014 in FIPS 140-2-compliant mode. Please see https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3141890 for more information.   ...(more)

Product Upgrades and Releases

New developer build of SQL Code Guard released - Issues fixed since last developer build[*] fixed incorrect binding of MI008 to MI007[*] fixed xtra EI028 in case with named default constraint[*] fixed error with IncludeIssues method when issues were not actually marked as Warning except ALL issue[*] ......(more)

Microsoft News : General Interest

Microsoft: To Slack or not to Slack? - Would a Microsoft-Slack match-up be collaboration heaven or redundant-technology hell? ...(more)

Blogs : Administration

Different ways to find Data, log and DB Size - Different ways to get the size of the data , log files and Databases ...(more)

Quick PS script to get SQL Server Configuration Aliases - Syndication – WaterOx Consulting - Aliases! They can be quite helpful, but they can also be a... The post Quick PS script to get SQL Server Configuration Aliases appeared first on WaterOx Consulting. ...(more)

Blogs : Analysis Services / BI

Analysis Services Class Libraries - References to these libraries are required when writing .NET applications that interface with Analysis Services. However, as I’m not a serious .NET developer (thank god! /jk /sortof) I don’t use them that much. But when I do, I usually waste the first 10 minutes searching for it in windows explorer before giving up and wasting another 5-10 minutes bingl’ing for the answer....(more)

Blogs : Backup and Recovery

Restoring a Striped Backup–#SQLNewBlogger - Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers. Recently I uncompressed some SQL Backup Pro files. Since multiple threads were used to make the backup, I ended up with multiple ......(more)

SQL Server Backups Are A Business Decision - Blog post #3 in support of Tim Ford’s (b|t) #iwanttohelp, #entrylevel Read more about Tim’s challenge here. It’s very easy to think of SQL Server backups as a technical problem. You have so much stuff going on, BACKUP DATABASE commands, recovery models, ......(more)

Converting SQL Backup Files to MTF - I got a copy of some backup files recently and needed to restore them. However, I don’t have SQL Backup installed on all my instances. It’s not a big deal to install it, but since this is a one-off, I decided to just decompress the files. The documentation ......(more)

Blogs : Big Data

Big Data Myths that Refuse to Die - by Angela Guess Ari Amster recently wrote in Business.com, “Perhaps your business is… thinking of getting in the big data game. But as with any trend, misinformation tends to run rampant, especially when it comes to advanced technologies. While many ......(more)

Blogs : Data Mining/Data Analysis

The 3 Essential Skill Areas of Data Science - Bob Hayes recently wrote in Business2Community, “Gil Press offers an excellent summary of the field of data science. According to Press, the term, data science, first appears in use in 1974. ...(more)

Blogs : Database Design, Theory and Development

How important is clustered index for a table - I am not sure, how to name this topic. May be, start by following questions.   How important and effective is clustered index for a table? How to solve the heap fragmentation? Why my query is running slow most of the time for this particular table? Are ......(more)

Blogs : Events

Tuga IT 2016 – Registrations are open - The registrations for Tuga IT 2016 are finally open: http://tugait2016.eventbrite.com, hurry up cause we are starting to promote it very heavily right now. Last major event we did in Lisbon in 2015 was full by the 1st of April with… ...(more)

Blogs : High Availability/Disaster Recovery

Availability Group DMVs Reporting Incorrect Values - In my opinion one of the key features of SQL Server 2016 is the rebuilt and optimized log redo mechanism for AlwaysOn Availability Groups. Check out the many new AG features here. Check out my posts here and here to learn about how Availability Groups ......(more)

Blogs : Machine Learning

Machine Learning Doesn’t Need to Be Complicated - by Angela Guess Josh Lewis recently wrote in ComputerWorld, “Machine learning is powerful but needn’t be mysterious. Its basic capabilities, like regression, classification and clustering, are easy to understand, and nontechnical knowledge of those capabilities ......(more)

The Future of Machine Learning: Trends, Observations, and Forecasts - The fundamental assumption in Machine Learning is that analytical solutions can be built by studying past data models. Machine Learning supports that kind of data analysis that learns from previous data models, trends, patterns, and builds automated, algorithmic systems based on that study....(more)

Blogs : MDX/DAX

Consider removing the NON EMPTY key word from the COLUMNS axis - You might have seen error message like this from a SQL job that pulls data from an OLAP cube using OPENQUERY: The OLE DB provider “MSOLAP” for linked server “CUBE_LINK” indicates that either the object has no columns or the current user does not have ......(more)

Blogs : Performance and Tuning

Recompile Monitoring using XEvents - Recompiles can be a hidden bottleneck on your server, and it may not be too obvious.  I should know, it happened to me.  Unfortunately for me, that was before I was a proponent of tracing or using XEvents to watch for recompiles.  Fortunately for you, ......(more)

Addressing large memory grant requests from optimized Nested Loops - Optimized Nested Loops (or Batch Sort) is effectively an optimization aimed at minimizing I/O during a nested loop when the inner side table is large, regardless of it being parallelized or not. The presence of this optimization in a given plan may not ......(more)

Blogs : R Language

R 3.2.4 released - The R Core Group announced yesterday the release of R 3.2.4, the final update in the R 3.2.x series. (R 3.3.0 is scheduled for release on April 14.) This update, codenamed "Very Secure Dishes", makes a few minor improvements and bug fixes, including long vector support for the smooth function, some improvements in package installation, and a few accuracy improvements for edge-cases in some statistical functions....(more)

Blogs : Security and Auditing

Row Level Security–Part 2-Write Operations - In the first entry in this series (to view, follow this link ), I took a look at the how row level security worked with read operations. Now in this entry, I want to expand that to how you use it to limit what a user might write to, or delete from a ......(more)

Blogs : Software Development

The benefits of a fully agile workplace -- or why you should not stop at scrum - Beta News[^]:In a recent survey by Hewlett Packard, 51 percent of IT and development professionals identified as leaning toward agile principles, while only 16 percent claimed to be fully agile.I'm agile - I can touch my toes (when sitting down) ...(more)

Blogs : SQL Server 2016

Columnstore Index: What is new in SQL Server 2016? - The columnstore index was first introduced in SQL Server 2008R2 with PowerPivot https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff628113(v=sql.100).aspx and this technology was incorporated in SQL Server 2012 with some changes and was surfaced as read-only non-clustered columnstore index (NCCI). ...(more)

Preview release of SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) for SQL Server 2016 RC0 - Microsoft has released a preview release of SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) that supports migrating databases from Oracle, Sybase ASE, DB2, MySQL and Access up to SQL Server 2016 Release Candidate 0. In this release, the following features have been added:...(more)

SQL Server on Linux Authentication - Yesterday Microsoft announced that they will now support SQL Server on Linux. They are targeting mid-2017, but you can download a preview now. I am on a technical list where I saw someone inquire about the support for Windows authentication or if SQL authentication would be the only choice....(more)

Bigger, Faster ... Free-er? SQL Server 2016 takes aim at Oracle - Microsoft announces "free" SQL access to Oracle customers — with Software Assurance subscription ...(more)

Announcing SQL Server on Linux - Official Microsoft Blog[^]:This will enable SQL Server to deliver a consistent data platform across Windows Server and Linux, as well as on-premises and cloud. We are bringing the core relational database capabilities to preview today, and are targeting ......(more)

My thoughts on SQL Server on Linux - Well yesterday was a big day in the SQL Community, Microsoft announced that they will be developing a version of SQL Server for Linux. Check out the announcement here....(more)

SQL server on Linux - Microsoft accounted yesterday that SQL server will plan run in Linux, with early private preview available today along with full launch for mid-2017. You can find the official blog here. If you like to sign up for the preview, you can apply here.I assume ......(more)

Blogs : T-SQL

Ever wonder what that goofy query in the header means? - It’s T-SQL Tuesday time again (Number 76!) and this month we are hosted by Bob Pusateri (b/t) who has invited us to talk about Text. Text. What an interesting subject. So much of our jobs is all about searching for and manipulating text. When I started ......(more)