Languages and coding

Emil Drkusic
Naming convention - the data model

Learn SQL: Naming Conventions

July 28, 2020 by

A naming convention is a set of unwritten rules you should use if you want to increase the readability of the whole data model. Today, I’ll try to explain how you should formulate your naming convention and, maybe even more important, why should you do it and what is the overall benefit from using it.

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Aveek Das

Understanding the SQL MERGE statement

July 27, 2020 by

In this article, I am going to give a detailed explanation of how to use the SQL MERGE statement in SQL Server. The MERGE statement in SQL is a very popular clause that can handle inserts, updates, and deletes all in a single transaction without having to write separate logic for each of these. You can specify conditions on which you expect the MERGE statement to insert, update, or delete, etc.

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Aveek Das

Understanding common Data Structures

July 15, 2020 by

In this article, I am going to walk you through the concepts of the common Data Structures that every student, colleague working with computers should be aware of. Data Structure forms an integral part of any system or database design. It is a very interesting and intuitive concept that you can apply anywhere. Through this article, I aim to introduce the beginners to the concepts of Data Structures and brush up the same for colleagues who have already been associated with the industry for years. This will also help you understand some database concepts more easily once you have a grasp over these concepts.

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Aveek Das
Deploy to Azure

Deploy Python apps to Azure Functions using Visual Studio Code

July 10, 2020 by

In this article, we are going to build a small python application and deploy it to Azure Functions. The development and the deployment will be done using the Visual Studio (VS) Code. As you might be aware, VS Code is one of the most widely used and preferred code editors for programmers. It is a cross-platform tool, which means you can install this tool on any operating system of your choice, starting from Windows, Linux, or Mac OS.

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Bojan Petrovic
Results grid showing before and after values of the Vacation Hours column

SQL UPDATE syntax explained

July 10, 2020 by

This article will get you familiar with the SQL UPDATE syntax and demonstrate how this statement can be used for modifying data using T-SQL. Data modification side of DML language in T-SQL includes three statements used for modifying data in SQL Server and those are: INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE. The focus here will be on the UPDATE statement explicitly.

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Aveek Das
Debug python scripts in VS Code

How to debug Python scripts in Visual Studio Code

July 8, 2020 by

In this article, I am going to explain how we can easily debug Python scripts using the Visual Studio (VS) Code. In my previous article on this topic, I have explained how to set up a development environment to start coding in Python. I would definitely recommend reading that article if you have not setup your Visual Studio Code environment yet. This article can be considered as a continuation of the above-mentioned steps as I am assuming that you are already into programming in Python using the VS Code.

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Aveek Das
Add users to Power BI

Add users to a Power BI workspace using PowerShell

July 6, 2020 by

In this article, I am going to explain how to add users to a Power BI workspace using Power BI PowerShell. As you already know, Power BI is a business intelligence tool from Microsoft, using which we can build graphical reports and dashboards which bring some sense to our data that resides on the database. Power BI also has a web interface known as the Power BI service, which can be used to share and collaborate these reports and dashboards with multiple users within or out of the organization.

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Aveek Das
If Else Snippet

Setting up Visual Studio Code for Python Development

July 1, 2020 by

In this article, I am going to explain how to set up your Visual Studio Code for Python Development. Visual Studio Code or, popularly known as VS Code, is one of the free and open-source code editors developed by Microsoft and is mostly preferred by developers of all the major programming languages due to its flexibility and other integrated development tools like debugging, IntelliSense, etc. Visual Studio Code is available to be downloaded for all the major operating systems like Windows, Linux, and macOS. You can visit https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/ to download it based on the OS you are using.

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Jignesh Raiyani
Calling SQL Server Procedure inside the Function

Execute a SQL Server procedure inside a function

June 23, 2020 by

In this article, we will ensure that the execution of the SQL Server procedure inside the function is possible. A common understanding of the database developer is that the procedure cannot be utilized or executed inside a user-defined function because the user-defined function does not allow performing DML operation with the table. The procedure is allowed to play with the database and its property, whether a user-defined function isn’t. That should be the essential reason behind allowing the execution of a SQL Server procedure inside the function.

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Dinesh Asanka
SQL Service Broker objects in the SQL Server Management Studio after creating them.

Using the SQL Server Service Broker for Asynchronous Processing

June 10, 2020 by

Introduction

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.

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Timothy Smith
We can see the option to enforce password policy when we manually create a login through the interface or selecting this option as ON when scripting logins for creation

Security Testing SQL Logins with the PWDCOMPARE function

June 3, 2020 by

In 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.

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Frank Solomon

Lever T-SQL for Pinpoint Control of ORDER BY in a Stored Procedure

June 1, 2020 by

Introduction

The T-SQL ORDER BY clause sorts SQL Server SELECT statement result sets, and it becomes important when we build stored procedures. Unfortunately, the syntax offers no flexible way to directly control the ORDER BY clause behavior with argument values. This means we don’t have an easy way to control the specific column or columns that the ORDER BY clause sorts. Additionally, SQL Server does not offer a flexible way to directly control the ascending or descending order of any ORDER BY clause column with argument values. Of course, we can certainly hard-code the ORDER BY clause in a stored procedure, but this approach becomes fixed in stone. We could try a dynamic SQL solution, involving a stored procedure code that dynamically builds and executes SQL Server statements inside a stored procedure. However, this technique becomes tricky, and it can lead to SQL injection attacks. Other techniques might rely on CASE statements, and their complexity can become overwhelming as the column count grows. This article spotlights a clean, efficient, pinpoint T-SQL stored procedure technique that directly sorts one, some, or all SELECT statement result set columns. The technique avoids dynamic SQL, and it operates directly in a stored procedure. The article also shows how to set the ascending or descending sort order of specific columns.

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Aveek Das
Power BI File Generated

Programmatic access to Power BI PowerShell commandlets

May 25, 2020 by

In this article, I am going to demonstrate how to access the Power BI PowerShell commandlets. In the previous article in this series, we discussed how to programmatically access the Power BI Service using the REST APIs available. PowerShell is one of the most frequently used and preferred ways of automating monotonous manual jobs and scripting those. PowerShell comes integrated with Windows, so it can be easily used from any Windows machine.

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