The Complete Weekly Roundup of SQL Server News

Hand-picked content to sharpen your professional edge

This was a short week in the US with the Thanksgiving holiday. This is a time when many people in the US have a long holiday weekend and often get together with family for some time away from work. It's also a tradition for many people to "give thanks" to the blessings and people in their life. It's a good time to reflect and appreciate the things that go well for you.

That doesn't mean that many, or even most, of us aren't looking to grow our careers. For some of us, that may mean moving into a new field. Is that a good decision? Will we like the day to day work? Those are tough questions, and while you might be enamored with some technology as a hobby, when you do the work every day, things aren't always the same. I've certainly seen this with friends and colleagues that have dramatically changed the lives into a completely new field. What is fun a few hours a week may not be as interesting when it's a 40-50 hour a week grind.

At SQLServerCentral, we often see posts where a community member asks if they should learn x or y. Should they move into a new career, or what's it like working as a person that does z? Those are good questions, and I ran across a nice blog post from Dev Nambi on what it's like being a data scientist. If you're interested in data science, this is a nice list of notes about his job, but even if you were thinking about becoming an HA specialist, or Power BI report writer, or something else, the post talks about things that make impressions with his job. I'd like to hear more about how others would answer some of these questions about their own work. I need to do some of this myself.

There are also a few very good items that I wanted to highlight. First, Dev notes that you don't learn everything in school and there is more to work than is learned in school. That being said, there are core concepts to understand. I think this is true in most fields. We need some good base knowledge, but there is more than that knowledge. We need to learn how to put concepts and requirements together, as well as continue to ask good probing questions about the task.

The other item that is pointed out a few ways is teamwork. Communication skills, including body language and humor, are important. We are social creatures and while I think having a variety of skills, views, and ideas is important, we need to get along with each other. We need teamwork within an organization, but for our careers, we also need a team of people to help us. That's our network. Those skills are important for all of us, no matter what the job.

If you want to move into a new role and grow your career, you have options. You can use schooling, you can try to grow in your role, or you can learn things on your own and apply for new positions. They all work, but they all have some drawbacks as well. They also all require effort and motivation, so if you want to make a change, set some learning goals, and start working. Making strides in a direction will help you grow and get you closer to your goals.

Steve Jones from SQLServerCentral.com

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

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.

Webinars

SQL in the City Streamed December 2018 - 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....(more)

Year in review with Kendra, Steve, Grant and Kathi: The best of 2018 and our predictions for 2019 - Join Microsoft Data Platform MVPs Kendra Little, Steve Jones, Kathi Kellenberger and Grant Fritchey live to discuss the highlights they’ve seen in 2018 and what cool things they hope to be surprised with in 2019. Along the way they'll share their own personal moments of glory, and favorite goofy memories as well....(more)

Live video panel: Things we learned the hard way… - Panellists Kendra Little, William Durkin and Hamish Watson are joined by guest, Tony Maddonna-Microsoft Platform Lead & SQL Server Enterprise Architect at BMW Manufacturing, to discuss examples of things they’ve learned the hard way....(more)

Data Masking: Insights & Actions - In this 30-minute webinar, Microsoft MVP Kendra Little will explore key challenges and recommendations to prevent exposure of private data in your next data breach, featuring insight from Gartner’s 2018 Market Guide for Data Masking....(more)

T-SQL

Dates and Times in SQL Server: DATEDIFF() and DATEDIFF_BIG() - Last time we looked at adding or subtracting date parts using the DATEADD() T-SQL system function. This week we see how to calculate the difference between two date-time values using DATEDIFF() and DATEDIFF_BIG(). The syntax for both functions is identical: ......(more)

The Lighter Side

How to build a Wall Mounted Family Calendar and Dashboard with a Raspberry Pi and cheap monitor - I love dashboards. I love Raspberry Pis (tiny $35 computers the size of a set of playing cards). And I'm cheap frugal. I found a 24" old LCD at Goodwill (a local thrift shop) and bought it but it's been sitting unused in my garage. Then I stumbled on ......(more)

SQL Server Security and Auditing

SQL SERVER – Finding User Who Dropped Database Table - Though I mainly focus on SQL Server Performance Tuning as my primary consulting engagement, there are moments when I am asked questions from my regular clients which are not related to SQL Server Performance and they still expect me to answer. I think ......(more)

Security news and thoughts

Using Machine Learning to Create Fake Fingerprints - Researchers are able to create fake fingerprints that result in a 20% false-positive rate. The problem is that these sensors obtain only partial images of users' fingerprints -- at the points where they make contact with the scanner. The paper noted ......(more)

R Language

Zero Counts in dplyr - ere’s a feature of dplyr that occasionally bites me (most recently while making these graphs). It’s about to change mostly for the better, but is also likely to bite me again in the future. If you want to follow along there’s a GitHub repo with the necessary code and data....(more)

Product Upgrades and Releases

OpenCPU 2.1 Release: Scalable R Services - OpenCPU provides a mature and robust system for hosting R based services. The server exposes a simple HTTP API for calling R functions, scripts and managing data. The Cloud Server is completely free and scales up to many concurrent users. This provides ......(more)

SSMS 17.9.1 is now generally available - We are excited to announce the release of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 17.9.1. Download SSMS 17.9.1 today and for details please see the Release Notes. This is a minor update to 17.9 with the following important improvements: Occasionally, SSMS ......(more)

Product Reviews and Articles

Database Development in Visual Studio using SQL Change Automation: Getting Started - SQL Change Automation (SCA) is a tool designed to help you automate and optimize the way you develop, build, test, and release SQL Server databases, including integration with source control. In this article, the first in a short series, I’ll show you ......(more)

PowerPivot/PowerQuery/PowerBI

Exception Reporting in Power BI: Catch the Error Rows in Power Query - To build a robust BI system, you need to cater for errors and handle errors carefully. If you build a reporting solution that the refresh of that fails everytime an error occurs, it is not a robust system. Errors can happen by many reasons, In this post, ......(more)

How to Assign Pro Licenses to a Power BI Tenant - This is a question that comes up all the time. Power BI licensing is not complicated but a common challenge is that the person who sets up a new Power BI subscription and tenant within an organization is often not the same person who manages Office 365 ......(more)

Quick Measures in Power BI: You don’t have to write DAX!? - You read it right, you don’t have to write DAX. If you are calculating a year to date, running total, or every rolling average, you may be able to do it without writing a single line of DAX code. How this is possible? With Quick Measures. Quick measures ......(more)

Slicer Restatement in Power BI - In this video, Patrick looks at a small feature called slicer restatement in Power BI. This feature will help you to determine what was selected in a slicer. While this feature was added back in April 2018, we are betting that most folks don't know slicer ......(more)

MDX/DAX

Using RANKX in Computed Column and MEASURE - This is my first blog for PBI –  DAX. I lately started working on DAX and trying to understand it in depth. While looking for a DBA hat, getting different mid-destination in between. While working with DAX, First challenge which I faced is with RANKX ......(more)

HA/DR/Always On/Clustering

Failover Detection Utility – Availability Group Failover Analysis Made Easy - To analyze the root cause for the failover of an Availability group, users are required to perform coordinated analysis of various logs including the Cluster Logs, SQL Error Logs, and the Availability groups extended events logs. This coordinated analysis of the logs can be difficult and requires extensive knowledge of the internals and the various logs associated with Availability Groups. The failover detection utility is meant to make this analysis easier and provide a quick root cause analysis for the unexpected failovers and/or failed failovers. The failover detection utility currently only supports analysis of Availability groups on Windows....(more)

ETL/SSIS/ELT

Packaging SSIS Catalog Deployments - I love the SSIS Catalog. It’s an elegant piece of data integration engineering and I cannot say enough positive things about it. Packaging SSIS Catalog deployments can be tricky, though. The SSIS Catalog is a framework. Frameworks manage execution, configuration, ......(more)

DevOps and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)

Integrating the database into DevOps for business success - The benefits of DevOps have been known for some time, but this year’s Accelerate State of DevOps report shows that successful companies are extending the advantages they get from adopting it. The longest-running research of its kind, the report from ......(more)

2019 State of Database DevOps – Take the survey! - Database development practices are more integral than ever to DevOps success. How are we saving time, automating processes, deploying more frequently, all whilst keeping business critical data secure? Take part in the survey for an advanced copy of the research report, and a chance to win a $250 Amazon voucher. ...(more)

Create, protect and manage non-production databases with SQL Provision - SQL Provision allows teams to create a secure, scalable and repeatable process for managing data as it moves through your SQL Server estate, without causing administrative burdens. To find out more and how it can work alongside your existing database DevOps practices, check out this article. ...(more)

Data Science

Becoming a Data Scientist - As a data scientist, one of the most common questions I hear is "How do I become a data scientist? How can I do what you do?" ...(more)

Data Privacy, Complianace, and GDPR

Adopting Compliant Database DevOps at PASS - To help meet the requirements of the GDPR, PASS teamed up with Redgate to implement Compliant Database DevOps. This benchmark process has streamlined PASS’ database development pipeline and strengthened their ability to uphold data privacy regulations such as the GDPR. ...(more)

Redgate acknowledged as a representative vendor in Gartner’s 2018 Market Guide for Data Masking - Data masking is a hot topic right now, in light of increased legislative and compliance requirements, and high-profile data breaches. Gartner recently published their 2018 Market Guide for Data Masking covering their analysis, recommendations, and representative vendors – including Redgate. To find out more, get your complimentary copy of the report from Redgate....(more)

Conferences, Classes, and Events

SQLBits 2019: Pre-Con – 21 Essential Scripts: Performance Tuning for EVERYONE - If you are going to go to SQLBits 2019, you want to come to my pre-con about 21 Essential Scripts: Performance Tuning for EVERYONE. This pre-con contains best of my material and goes beyond what you conventionally know about any topic. It is no-nonsense, ......(more)

Join me for an upcoming webinar, “Data Masking: Insights & Actions” - Click the image to register for the webcast There has never been a better time to start a project to champion data privacy In a recent Harris poll sponsored by the payment company Stripe, over 1,000 C-level executives were asked to rate which factors ......(more)

Computing in the Cloud (Azure, Google , AWS)

The Cloud and Shadow IT. - Shadow IT has been, well, maybe not the bane of the IT department, but certainly a pain in the neck. On the off chance you’ve never heard of shadow IT do any of these sound familiar? A user asks you to restore a corrupt database on a SQL Server you’ve ......(more)

Career Growth

Linux Foundation Offers Open Source Certification Exams from Anywhere - Channel partners looking to increase their workers' open-source skills can let them take their certification exams online. ...(more)

Administration of SQL Server

High CPU and Query Store, A Story of Spinlock Heartache - This is going to be a quick look at an issue that we recently encountered, I’m not going to go in depth into spinlocks and what they are (perhaps that could be the subject of a future post)....(more)

Move Datafiles in SQL Server – Part 2 - Introduction In the first part of the two-part series, we explored migrating databases by first updating the master database system catalogs which contain records of the physical location of data files. In the current article, we shall look at two other ......(more)

Failing to install a new instance of SQL server 2014/2016 - Yesterday, I was working with a client of mine on an issue with configuring SQL server reporting services over a Failover Cluster Instance. Due to issues, we had to uninstall the currently existing instance on the passive node and had to install it freshly. Before ......(more)

Azure Data Studio and XEvents - Azure Data Studio (ADS) is getting all sorts of love and attention these days. So much so that they have finally gotten around to adding Extended Events (XE) to the tool – sort of. Now we have the power to run traces on SQL Server via ADS. The presence ......(more)