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The Voice of the DBA
 

The Best Graph

Conveying information is a bit of an art and science. Many of us have written reports, graphs, charts, etc. at some point in our career. We've likely created some good ones and some bad ones that our clients love or hate. Perhaps if you're like me, you make a small attempt and then ask someone else to clean it up for you.

However, visualizations are important. In the modern world, many people want a visualization instead of a table of data, or at least alongside a table. That means we want to ensure we are conveying information well and not just picking the prettiest picture.

One interesting thing to consider is how different types of graphs affect how we process information. There was a post from Madiera Data that looked at how different graphs helped someone analyze the data. It starts with bar graphs, which have been very popular in the last few years. They are appearing in lots of business dashboards, news articles, and more. They can be useful in some situations, but not all. Especially when trying to compare the different segments.

Instead, other visualizations can be better. The article shows table graphs are working well. I conducted my own experiment with visuals, and I found a line graph was easier to use. However, that was for my data. Your data might need different visuals if you use it differently.

I don't think there is a best graph, but there can be a best graph for a particular data set and a particular client(s). The way someone makes decisions based on a visual could dictate what works best. That's my advice: work with your clients.

For good general advice, I think you should lean on https://www.storytellingwithdata.com/, Meagan, and resources such as Edward Tufte, who have spent a lot of time thinking, experimenting, and understanding how to convey information visually. You could learn a lot from them.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Join the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums
 
  Featured Contents
SQLServerCentral Article

Using Azure Data Studio to Deploy a SQL Server VM on Azure

Vincent92 from SQLServerCentral

This article looks at deploying SQL Server on an Azure VM from Azure Data Studio.
External Article

PASS Data Community Summit 2023 registrations are open!

Additional Articles from Redgate

In 2023, connect, share & learn with like-minded peers, speakers, and industry leaders during the full week of data celebrations. Summit happens in person, from November 14th to 17th in Seattle. Check out the blog post and learn more.
External Article

Retrieving MySQL data from within Python

Additional Articles from SimpleTalk

The approach you take when accessing MySQL will depend on the programming language you’re using and the connector you choose for interfacing with the database. Whatever approach you take, the same basic principles generally apply to each environment. You must establish a connection to the database and then issue the commands necessary to retrieve or modify the data.
Blog Post

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - What Backups Are In This File?–#SQLNewBlogger

Steve Jones - SSC Editor from The Voice of the DBA

I had a question on multiple backups in a file and had to check my syntax. This post shows how to see which backups are in a file. Note:...
Blog Post

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Impact of TDE on Performance

Matthew McGiffen from Matthew McGiffen DBA

Microsoft states that enabling TDE usually has a performance overhead of 2–4%. That doesn’t sound like very much, and personally I wouldn’t let it bother me if I want...
SQL Server 2022 Query Performance Tuning

SQL Server 2022 Query Performance Tuning: Troubleshoot and Optimize Query Performance

Additional Articles from SQLServerCentral

Troubleshoot slow-performing queries and make them run faster. Database administrators and SQL developers are constantly under pressure to provide more speed. This new edition has been redesigned and rewritten from scratch based on the last 15 years of learning, knowledge, and experience accumulated by the author. The book Includes expanded information on using extended events, automatic execution plan correction, and other advanced features now available in SQL Server.

 

  Question of the Day

Today's question (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor):
 

SQL MI Stop/Start Billing
I can stop and start an Azure SQL Managed Instance on demand. I start an instance at 7am and then stop it at 17:05pm. It takes 5 minutes to stop and it stopped at 17:10. How many hours am I billed for?

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

 

  Yesterday's Question of the Day (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor)

Picking the Backup to Restore

I have a backup file for a SQL Server 2019 database that has been used over and over. There are 5 full backups that were appended to this file across the last week. If I want to restore the third one, what do I need to do?

Answer: Use FILE=3 in the RESTORE command.

Explanation: You use the FILE=3 parameter to specify the third file in a backup that contains multiple files. Ref: RESTORE - Specifying a Backup Set - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/statements/restore-statements-arguments-transact-sql?view=sql-server-ver16#specifying-a-backup-set

Discuss this question and answer on the forums

 

Featured Script

Simple script to de-identify data

Stewart "Arturius" Campbell from SQLServerCentral

An audit finding relating to production data, containing customer identifiable data, in a UAT environment, prompted this simple script, which completely scrambles data in such a way that the original value can not be reconstituted.

create view dbo.random
as
select convert(int,rand()*10) random; /*the multiplier can be any number, I just used 10 to demo*/
GO
CREATE OR ALTER FUNCTION dbo.scramble (@In NVARCHAR(4000))
RETURNS NVARCHAR(4000)
AS
BEGIN
declare @a nvarchar(4000)='',@li tinyint=0;
while @li < len(@In) begin select @a+= nchar(ascii(substring(@In,@li+1,1))^random) from dbo.random; select @li+=1; end RETURN @a; END GO select dbo.scramble ('absoltion z, ABSOLTION Z');

More »

 

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 - Administration
HOWTO Change the system collation using setup (rebuilddatabase) and retain data? - Dears, I'm aware of the process of rebuilding system databases using the setup.exe /ACTION=REBUILDDATABASE command, but has somebody a procedure/script to move also the data in master and msdb along to the rebuild databases? Thanks, Tim
SSISDB and availability groups problem - I just got called in on an SSISDB / AG issue. We had a fail over event and suddenly a job that calls a package in SSISDB is not working because the package isn't decrypting properly. So we start digging into it and I found something interesting. For kicks and giggles, I opened the AG […]
Administration - SQL Server 2014
Azure DevOps - Hi Experts, We are in the phase of automating our releases which include database change as well. Our SQL server are inside the firewall with no internet access, In this case how can agent pool connect to databases?
SQL Server 2012 - T-SQL
Put output of a dynamic query using OpenQuery into a temporary table - Hello. I am tasked with converting some regular T-SQL queries to OpenQuery. I am very new to OpenQuery so learning on the fly. I have to do the query dynamically because of some of the variables involved. I have a very simplified version of what I am doing below. I want to know if I […]
SQL Server 2019 - Administration
AD permissions updates CVE-2021-42291 and AO Clusters/GL - I have an SQLSERVER Always on Environment. In AD it's logging:  The directory service detected an LDAP modify request for the folling object that normally would have been blocked for the following security reasons.  The client included an nTSecurityDescriptor attribute in the add request but did not have explicit permissions to write one or more […]
Database snapshot, TDE, and sys.databases - Something I was looking at on a dev server where I was taking some snapshots and where we have TDE enabled and operational on the underlying database. Querying sys.databases shows the is_encrypted field as zero? Reading through the TDE documentation there is no exception that snapshots are NOT encrypted that I could find, but now […]
Creating multiple identical indexes - Hi I have a large table of 87 million rows that needs to have 3 identical non clustered indexes on it. Please don't ask  me why, I'm aware of how ridiculous it sounds......... The first index creates in 10 minutes, the seconds one took 13 hours. I'm doing this on a development server that nobody […]
SQL Server 2019 - Development
Triggers applied to primary and secondary tables causing rollback on primary - Apologies for the title, I'll explain more clearly. I have two tables and each has a trigger applied. The first table trigger is a simple audit style (AFTER INSERT/UPDATE) trigger that takes a copy of the modified record and inserts it into a Log Table. On the Log Table, I'm using another (AFTER INSERT/UPDATE) trigger […]
Calculate a sum based on time periods in CASE statement - Hello everyone, I have a situation where I am trying to calculate SUM(History Quantity) based on MIN Posted Date + specific number of weeks. For example, how many quantities were sold within the start date of '2022-05-22' + 8 weeks The code that I have now, but need to understand how to make CASE statement work because […]
Code first development - data from local and remote database - For my project I have to read data from a remote employee database : data like LastName, Firstname, Email, SerialNumber. In the new databse (other than the remote one) I have to add some other fields like Role, Profile, Salarylevel, Active. I read remote data by a DBContextA and using a class created with CodeFirst […]
SSRS 2016
Unable to connect SSRS - Hi, We are using SSRS 2016 version, it's running good and suddenly it's throwing exception as below when we are trying to generate reports, after restarting the SSRS again it's working good.   2023-05-18 22:07:42.9021|INFO|1|library|Dump on: Microsoft.ReportingServices.Diagnostics.Utilities.InternalCatalogException Microsoft.ReportingServices.Modeling.InternalModelingException Microsoft.ReportingServices.ReportProcessing.UnhandledReportRenderingException 2023-05-18 22:07:42.9021|INFO|1|library|Do not dump on: Microsoft.PowerBI.ReportServer.WebApi.Catalog.CatalogAccessExceptionSystem.Threading.ThreadAbortException System.Web.UI.ViewStateExceptionSystem.OutOfMemoryException System.Web.HttpExceptionSystem.IO.IOExceptionSystem.IO.FileLoadException Microsoft.SharePoint.SPException Microsoft.ReportingServices.WmiProvider.WMIProviderException System.AppDomainUnloadedException 2023-05-18 22:07:42.9021|INFO|1|library|Minidump location: C:\windows\TEMP\   […]
Integration Services
ODBC connection throwing error while reading data from EAP - SSIS - Hi, I am using ODBC connection manager to fetch data from EAP source in SSIS It is throwing DTS_E_INDUCEDTRANSFORMFAILUREONERROR on 1 of the columns PipelineOwnerName which is varchar(121) in EAP table. I have tried these approaches: select PipelineOwnerName from Sales where Period = '2021' --- Failed select cast(PipelineOwnerName as varchar(121))  from Sales where Period = […]
Design Ideas and Questions
Help with architecture - Hi! I'm trying to make something similar to this: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/integrated-circuits-ics/memory/memory/eeprom/774?s=N4IgjCBcoJwGwWiAxlAZgQwDYGcCmANCAG4B2UALgE4CuhIA9lANogDMALGwEwAM3IALpEADhSggAytQCWpAOYgAviqA So I spent a while identifying key components and wrapping my head around it until I came up with this: https://dpaste.org/wV0UT/slim Then I wrote another script to populate these tables and to add an eeprom, so that I can figure out the sequence of queries […]
SQL Server 2022 - Development
Determining Time Worked Between Time Pairs During Certain Hours of Higher Pay - We have nurses pulling night shifts. They get bonus pay (more $$$ per hour) during the hours of 10pm and 5am. They check in and we capture their check-in time and check out time.  How can I calculate the amount of time the worked during the overtime pay hours?  I know SQL pretty OK - […]
Update in an Insert Trigger - I have a need to set current fields to default values when a new record is inserted. Is it good practice to update the same table in an after insert trigger?
 

 

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