Power BI Desktop Interactive chord diagrams

September 28, 2018 by Rajendra Gupta

Power BI desktop helps to create interactive reports and dashboards from a high and complex volume of the data. The Power BI desktop is an integrated tool where we can get the data from different sources.

Load testing for SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)

September 25, 2018 by Esat Erkec

Performance monitoring is a very significant and essential topic for database or system administrators. This is no different with SSRS load testing. In some cases, performance problems can lead to significant system downtime. Most of the time in the background of the problem is having insufficient resources or improper settings. Therefore, before experiencing performance issues, we have to take some time to review preventive measures related to current system configurations or new installations. The load test (or stress test) is the most commonly used approach to tune systems before real-life staging conditions. Now we will discuss the details of load test, and in particular SSRS load testing.

SQL UNION overview, usage and examples

September 25, 2018 by Prashanth Jayaram

This article will provide a deep dive into the SQL UNION operator, describing its many uses along with examples and explore some common questions like the differences between UNION vs UNION ALL.

SQL Server installation and upgrade troubleshooting interview questions

September 21, 2018 by Rakesh Patil

1. Can a Service Pack or Cumulative Update be uninstalled to roll back in case of failures?

We cannot uninstall a service pack or Cumulative Update on SQL Server 2005 or lower.

Starting with SQL Server 2008, we can uninstall a service pack or Cumulative Update from control panel Add or remove programs a view installed updates window.

Three Steps to quickly solve SQL Server High CPU usage

September 20, 2018 by Rakesh Patil

Introduction

SQL High CPU is one of the most important performance issues when monitoring SQL Server

High CPU usage in SQL Server issue may be caused by slow query performance, load on server and/or some configuration settings which affects entire application performance also.

Using the SQL Coalesce function in SQL Server

September 20, 2018 by Prashanth Jayaram

String manipulation is a process to generate another form of existing data in a way the business uses or displayed as results in the reports. Previous SQL string function articles, I have written, including SQL string functions for Data Munging and SQL Substring function overview discussed data preparation and data management tasks using built-in SQL Server string functions.

How to embed a Power BI Report Server report into an ASP.Net web application

September 20, 2018 by Sifiso W. Ndlovu

Every once in a while, teams from different functional areas of the business (i.e. business intelligence, software development, web development etc.) would join forces to form a cross-functional development team with a common goal of integrating a business intelligence artefact such as a SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) report into a front-end web application. There are many reasons for forming such a partnership including a lack of report-development skill by web developers, BI team owns a better reporting tool for data visualization, or maybe to prevent the software team from “reinventing the wheel” by developing a report that has already been produced elsewhere.

Deploy SQL Server with Cluster Shared Volumes – part 2

September 19, 2018 by Sreekanth Bandarla

In the other article in this series: Deploy SQL Server for failover clustering with Cluster Shared Volumes – part 1 we have seen what a cluster shared volume is and what are the advantages and other considerations to keep in mind when deploying CSVs for SQL Server workloads. In this article, I will walk though actual installation of a failover cluster Instance leveraging CSVs.

Text Analytics with Microsoft Flow

September 19, 2018 by Esat Erkec

Twitter is a very popular social media platform which generates millions of tweets a day. These tweets include very valuable data for marketers or social media analyzers because they can analyze these tweets with specific algorithms and find out the sense of social media users.

SQL Server Data Import using SQL Operations Studio

September 18, 2018 by Rajendra Gupta

SQL Operations Studio is a new GUI based tool that works on Windows, Mac OS and Linux operating systems. It connects to SQL Server, Azure database, and SQL DW.

SQL Server database backup tools

September 18, 2018 by SQLShack

This collection of content presents an overview of top SQL Server database backup tools, with product page links for each of the tools and screenshots if available. If you noticed a tool we missed, please let us know in the comments below.

Querying data using the SQL Coalesce function

September 18, 2018 by Bojan Petrovic

We all know that a Null value is a field with no value. The statements that we are running daily will have to deal with Null values, especially when it comes to strings concatenation (adding strings together).

Available options for generating heatmaps in an SSRS report

September 17, 2018 by Sifiso W. Ndlovu

As developers of business intelligence solutions, we tend to service different types of business users. Whilst a call center supervisor is more likely to consume reports that offer detailed breakdown of day-to-day performance of her call center agents, senior managers on the other hand often prefer big-picture analytical reports that represent data in a form of colorful graphs and charts. Not surprisingly, such reports often make use of heatmap controls to provide visually effective comparative view of business metrics against set targets.

SQL Join overview and tutorial

September 17, 2018 by Prashanth Jayaram

The ability to combine results from related rows from multiple tables is an important part of relational database system design. In SQL Server, this is accomplished with the SQL join clause. It’s the nature of traditional relational database systems where some table contains information related to other tables with a common key value. Using a SQL join, you can easily perform queries on related data-sets from multiple tables with these shared keys.

SQL Server database auditing tools

September 17, 2018 by SQLShack

This collection of content presents an overview of top SQL Server database auditing tools, with product page links for each of the tools and screenshots if available. If you noticed a tool we missed, please let us know in the comments below.

All database auditing tools are sorted by alphabetical order.

Advanced SQL Interview Questions and Answers on SQL Server Architecture

September 17, 2018 by Rakesh Patil

These SQL interview questions and answers deal with the following topics:

SQL Server High & Low-Level Architecture
Transaction Log Architecture
Query processing Architecture
Memory Architecture
New Features added in SQL Server versions 2008, 2008 R2, 2012, 2014, 2016
SQL Server High & Low-Level Architecture

SQL Substring function overview

September 14, 2018 by Prashanth Jayaram

The requirement of data refactoring is very common and vital in data mining operations. In the previous article SQL string functions for Data Munging (Wrangling), you’ll learn the tips for getting started with SQL string functions, including the SQL substring function for data munging with SQL Server. As we all agree that the data stored in one form sometimes require a transformation, we’ll take a look at some common functions or tasks for changing the case of a string, converting a value into a different type, trimming a value, and replacing a particular string in a field and so on.

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) Shared Dataset

September 14, 2018 by Esat Erkec

In the SQL Server Reporting Service (SSRS) report development process; we can use a beneficial feature which is called the “shared dataset”. The purpose of SSRS embedded datasets are to retrieve data from target data sources for only one report but a shared dataset can be used by multiple reports to retrieve data.

How to perform a performance test against a SQL Server instance

September 14, 2018 by Jefferson Elias

Introduction

Intended audience

This document is intended for application developers and database administrators who plan to evaluate performance for any computer hosting a SQL Server instance.

Top free add-ins for SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)

September 13, 2018 by SQLShack

This collection of content presents an overview of free SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) add-ins, with product page links for each of the tools and screenshots if available. SSMS add-ins are presented in alphabetical order. If you noticed a free tool we missed, please let us know in the comments below.