In this article, we will explore the process of rollback an explicit SQL Server transaction. We will also explore the difference between explicit and implicit transactions.
Read more »Getting started with parameterized Power BI reports
June 16, 2020In this article, I am going to explain how we can develop parameterized Power BI reports locally and then migrate the same report across multiple environments, like development, QA, and production. Parameterized Power BI reports are essential because we can use the same report to develop the charts and the KPIs and then provide the same report to the QA who will test it on a separate environment and finally when the testing is completed, it can then maybe provided to an administrator who can publish it to the production workspace.
Read more »SQL Server performance tuning – RESOURCE_SEMAPHORE waits
June 16, 2020When dealing with SQL Server performance tuning waits, we may see RESOURCE_SEMAPHORE waits along with other related monitoring that indicates memory as a possible pain point for our server (such as the below image that shows memory being one of the top waits overall).
Read more »Learn SQL: Intro to SQL Server loops
June 15, 2020Loops are one of the most basic, still very powerful concepts in programming – the same stands for SQL Server loops. Today, we’ll give a brief info on how they function and introduce more complex concepts in upcoming articles of this series.
Read more »Automatically Start/Stop an AWS RDS SQL Server using AWS Lambda functions
June 12, 2020This article gives you an overview of the AWS Lambda function to automatically start and stop AWS RDS SQL Server.
Read more »Interpreting execution plans of T-SQL queries
June 12, 2020In this article, we will analyze a simple T-SQL query execution plan with different aspects. This will help us to improve our practical skills instead of discussing theoretical knowledge.
Read more »How to stop an AWS RDS SQL Server using a web console and AWS CLI
June 11, 2020This article explores the process to stop an AWS RDS SQL Server using web console and AWS CLI.
Read more »Using the SQL Server Service Broker for Asynchronous Processing
June 10, 2020Introduction
In the real-world implementation of SQL Server of an enterprise system, it always needs to implement data in multiple databases. In most of the cases, a single transaction will span across multiple databases. If there are multiple databases, there will be performance issues and implementation issues during the cross-database transactions. However, with the use of SQL Service Broker that was introduced in SQL Server 2005, you can implement asynchronous transactions between databases.
Read more »Difference between Unique Indexes and Unique Constraints in SQL Server
June 10, 2020This article gives you an overview of Unique Constraints in SQL and also the Unique SQL Server index. Along the way, we will look at the differences between them.
Read more »Security Testing Around Our Business Model and Risks
June 9, 2020When we create an environment and consider our security testing from development to production and how changes are deployed throughout each environment, we want to consider what we’re protecting and how much resources we’ll devote to this protection. Every company has limited resources, so protecting against all possible threats will not be something we can achieve.
Read more »Calling an AWS Lambda function from another Lambda function
June 9, 2020In this article, I am going to explain how to create an AWS Lambda function and then call this function from another Lambda function within the same region. This is a useful scenario in which we may need to execute a second lambda function based on the outcome of some previous logic. Another scenario may be to execute a second lambda function several times by using different parameters.
Read more »An overview of computed columns in SQL Server
June 9, 2020In this article, we will explore computed columns in SQL Server and their configurations.
Read more »Getting started with AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio Code
June 8, 2020In this article, I am going to explain how to start using the AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio Code to develop serverless functions locally. Serverless applications or functions gives us the ability to develop, test and execute code in the cloud without having to worry about the underlying infrastructure. These applications are scalable which means we can easily increase or decrease the resources consumed by them. AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio Code is an extension available for Visual Studio Code using which we can directly communicate with the resources on Amazon within the code editor.
Read more »The basics of Parallel Execution Plans in SQL Server
June 5, 2020In this article, we will learn the basics of Parallel Execution Plans, and we will also figure out how the query optimizer decides to generate a parallel query plan for the queries.
Read more »SQL Server Choose() function introduction and examples
June 5, 2020In the article, a CASE statement in SQL, we explored one of the important logical expressions – the Case statement in SQL Server to return the values based on the specified condition. Today, we will talk about another useful logical Choose() function in SQL Server 2012 onwards and its comparison with the Case statement.
Read more »Using a Date Dimension Table in Power BI
June 5, 2020In this article, I am going to describe how to use a date dimension table in Power BI. Using a date dimension table becomes extremely important while visualizing facts and figures over some time in the calendar. Sometimes it is possible that we do not have the continuous date values in our dataset that we are trying to work upon.
Read more »Exploring actions and tasks in the SQLPackage Utility
June 4, 2020In this article, I am going to explain in detail about actions and tasks in the SQLPackage Utility. In my previous article, I have explained the overview of the SQLPackage utility. The SQLPackage utility is a command-line utility tool provided by Microsoft to automate SQL Server database deployments. Since this utility is cross-platform, you can easily install it on any operating system of your choice. SQLPackage actions are the types of functions that we can achieve with this utility. You can install this utility directly on any production server and it can be used as is. You can find more information about this utility and SQLPackage actions from the official documentation from Microsoft.
Read more »Using SSIS packages to add row headers and data into flat files
June 4, 2020In this article, we will configure an SSIS package to generate a composite output in the flat-file destination.
Read more »Security Testing SQL Logins with the PWDCOMPARE function
June 3, 2020In this article, we’ll look at using the built-in PWDCOMPARE function in SQL Server for security testing passwords. While this tool may seem like it exposes a weakness in Microsoft SQL Server because we can test for passwords, it should be of note that an attacker could do the same attack by attempting to login to our database server assuming the attacker was able to access a connection to it. Therefore, this function does not increase the risk of an attack on SQL Server but does help us identify possible weaknesses in our environment so that we can quickly mitigate these risks. In addition, we’ll also combine this with other related tools in SQL Server to help us with logins.
Read more »Working with SSIS packages on AWS RDS SQL Server
June 3, 2020In the first part of the article, Explore SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) on AWS RDS SQL Server, we understood that AWS RDS SQL Server supports SSIS functionality starting from May 19th, 2020.
Read more »A quick overview of the Microsoft Power Platform
June 2, 2020In this article, I am going to explain the various products offered by the Microsoft Power Platform. Microsoft Power Platform is a group of products offered by Microsoft to develop and build complex business solutions, analyze, and draw data visualizations, automate a business process, or build virtual agents for communication. All these products offer a platform in which no code is required to build the applications. These products are in the form of simple GUI which can be used by any business users or developers, thus helping to reduce the need for IT in the organization.
Read more »Explore SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) on AWS RDS SQL Server
June 2, 2020In the previous article, Deploy tabular databases in SSAS on AWS RDS SQL Server, we explored that AWS RDS SQL Server now supports SQL Server Analysis Service (SSAS). It enables you to implement tabular project models for RDS instance as well. In this article, we will explore the support of SQL Server integration service in the RDS environment.
Read more »Overview of the Grafana Dashboard with SQL
June 2, 2020In this article, I am going to demonstrate how to set up Grafana Dashboard for real-time analytics or data monitoring purposes. Grafana is an open-source, cross-platform analytics service tool that can be used to fetch data from several data sources, and then the data can be visualized in a much intuitive way in the form of bars and graphs. This is quite a useful feature for the DevOps or the IT team as it can make their job easier to find abnormalities or spikes in the production environment by observing the logs generated.
Read more »SSAS Database Management
June 1, 2020There are different aspects of SSAS Database Management that we will be looked into detail in this article. We will be looking at backup, processing, and synchronization.
Read more »Connect Azure Databricks data to Power BI Desktop
June 1, 2020This article is next in the Azure Databricks series, where we will learn how to connect data in Azure Databricks to the Power BI Desktop. We will also talk briefly about visualizations in the Databricks service.
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