SQL Server database continuous integration (CI) Best practices and how to implement them – Testing, processing and automation January 31, 2017 by Nemanja Popovic Testing Test databases should be processed with unit tests In many shops code is unit tested at the point of commit. For databases, I prefer running all unit tests at once and in sequence against a QA database, vs development, as part of a Test step, in my continuous integration workflow pipeline. Yes, issues would be caught later than at check-in, but continuous integration largely solves this with frequent iterations, including at a commit itself. So the difference between on-check in, unit testing and unit testing a build created on-commit, is simply that the unit tests will be run against a fully re-constituted QA database, vs Development. The previous article in this series is SQL Server database continuous integration (CI) Best practices and how to implement them – Source control. Read more »
SQL Server database continuous integration (CI) Best practices and how to implement them – Source control January 31, 2017 by Nemanja Popovic This article provides for a roadmap to continuous integration and delivery best practices, and along the way demonstrates how to apply these with ApexSQL tools and technologies. In some sections this article is aspirational, as no solution yet exists, but demonstrates our plan, direction and roadmap. As the tools that apply these best practices are released this article will be updated accordingly. Read more »
How to resolve Excel Timeline Filter Errors caused by SQL Server OLAP Data Sources January 31, 2017 by Sifiso W. Ndlovu Over the course of my career, I have developed and deployed to production several business intelligence solutions. These solutions have been consumed using numerous data visualisation tools. One of those data visualisation tools, is Microsoft Excel – which remains a popular data visualisations tool for many of my end users. Like many software products, newer version releases of Excel usually introduce new features. One such feature is the Timeline filter control which was first introduced in Microsoft Office 2013. The Timeline filter control enables end users to visually filter Excel PivotTables using fields defined as dates. The Timeline filter has several benefits compared to the traditional Excel dropdown filter. Figure 1 illustrates one of those benefits whereby the Timeline filter allows end-users to easily apply a filter (i.e. using a scroll bar) again a PivotTable. It also has useful annotations that describes what you have filtered on – in this case, we have chosen sales period between February and March 2011. Read more »
Indexing SQL Server Temporary Tables January 31, 2017 by Ahmad Yaseen SQL Server Temporary tables are a special type of tables that are written to the TempDB database and act like regular tables, providing a suitable workplace for intermediate data processing before saving the result to a regular table, as it can live only for the age of the database connection. Read more »
Options for Partitioned Tables and Indexes in SQL Server January 31, 2017 by Gerald Britton Introduction I work for a large, multinational financial institution. Like most companies in this field, ours is conservative and subject to much regulatory oversight. The first has meant that we’re slow to adopt new technologies. We need to be really, really, really sure things won’t break, customer accounts won’t vanish or lose their balances and that the regulators will not raise any red flags. Everything we do is subject to the scrutiny of our internal auditors, even something that seems simple, like rerunning a production job that failed because the host compute was down. I really mean everything! Read more »
How to create a simple SQL Server database login dialog using PowerShell January 30, 2017 by Nemanja Popovic In this article, we’ll be creating a SQL Server login form, as shown in the example below, using PowerShell to accept user input. We’ll show the code behind the form, how to capture the user input and utilize it: Read more »
Integration Services Performance Best Practices – Writing to the Destination January 26, 2017 by Koen Verbeeck With this article, we continue part 1 of common best practices to optimize the performance of Integration Services packages. As mentioned in the previous article “Integration Services (SSIS) Performance Best Practices – Data Flow Optimization“, it’s not an exhaustive list of all possible performance improvements for SSIS packages. It merely represents a set of best practices that will guide you through the most common development patterns. Read more »
Using Variables in Dynamic SQL January 26, 2017 by Aamir Syed Before we delve into these SQL concepts, note that I like to do all my development in SQL Management Studio. So if you want to follow along go ahead and open that up. Read more »
How to generate random SQL Server test data using T-SQL January 26, 2017 by Daniel Calbimonte Introduction In this article, we will talk about generating random values for testing purposes. I once had a customer with software that worked fine in the demo with 30 rows, but after some months, the software had more than a million rows and it became very slow. The problem was not SQL Server, the problem was the application, which was not designed for tables with millions of rows. The customer sued to the software provider and lawyers were needed to create a resolution. If the provider had tested the software with millions of rows, this problem would have never happened. Read more »
Integration Services Performance Best Practices – Data Flow Optimization January 26, 2017 by Koen Verbeeck In this article, we’ll present a couple of common best practices regarding the performance of Integration Services (SSIS) packages. These are general guidelines for package design and development which guarantee a good performance in most use cases. However, there are always exceptional cases and outliers. The mantra of “measure twice, cut once” also applies here. Thoroughly test any changes to your packages to conclude that a change made a positive effect. This means not only running the in the designer, but also on the server. Also, this article is not an exhaustive list of all possible performance improvements for SSIS packages. It merely represents a set of best practices that will guide you through the most common development patterns. Read more »
Are SQL Server database triggers evil? January 25, 2017 by Daniel Calbimonte Introduction There is a lot of talk about how bad triggers are, how you should never use them, etc. I wanted to spend some time reviewing fact vs fiction and do an objective analysis of SQL Server database triggers (both DDL and DML), warts and all. We will review alternatives and compare them with triggers to determine advantages vs disadvantages of each approach. Read more »
Using Memory-Optimized Tables to Replace SQL Server Temp Tables and Table Variables January 24, 2017 by Ahmad Yaseen TempDB usage can be considered as a performance bottleneck for workloads that use temp tables and table variables intensively resulted in heavy IO usage. A valuable alternatives for the temp table and table variable are SCHEMA_ONLY Memory-Optimized tables and the Memory-optimized Table Variable, where the data will be completely stored in the memory without the need to touch the TempDB database, providing the best data access performance. SCHEMA_ONLY Memory-Optimized table and the Memory-optimized Table Variable are stored only in the memory with no related component in the disk. It involves no IO activity or TempDB utilization. It can also participate in the transactions without the need to log the transactions. Read more »
Connecting PowerShell to SQL Server – Using a Different Account January 24, 2017 by Shawn Melton Introduction In a previous article on Connecting PowerShell to SQL Server I went over how you use various methods in PowerShell to connect to SQL Server. In those examples though I only touched on using the current user that is running “PowerShell.exe”. In this article I want to pick up and go over how you would use the same methods, but as a different account. I will cover using both Windows Authentication (where supported) and SQL Login authentication. Read more »
How to administer SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) subscriptions using PowerShell January 23, 2017 by Sifiso W. Ndlovu In the article Report Subscription Changes in SQL Server Reporting Services 2016, I covered several changes to standard and data-driven subscriptions that were introduced in the release of SQL Server 2016. However all of those changes related to administering report subscriptions using a GUI (i.e. Report Manager Portal, SSRS Configuration Manager). The release of SQL Server Core, SQL Server on Linux and enhancements on Windows PowerShell, reinforces the growing shift by Microsoft to have SQL Server professionals adopt scripting as one of the ways to carry out their daily tasks. In this article we continue to explore SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) subscription feature by discussing some of the Windows PowerShell commands that can be utilised to administer report subscriptions. Read more »
Best Practices for Configuring Newly Installed SQL Server Instances January 20, 2017 by Musab Umair Often we install SQL Server on clients or we get to clients where they have pre-installed SQL Server Instances. As a DBA we have the Primary responsibility of keeping the Database Up and Running. This responsibility leads to optimizing, performance tuning and many other stuff related to database’s internal objects. While keeping the other aspects in mind many of us have to go through the configuration of the newly installed or pre-installed but un-configured instances. Configuring SQL Server newly instances are not an easy task and a DBA might want to configure an Instance in many ways. Read more »
SQL Server Job Performance – Reporting January 19, 2017 by Ed Pollack Description Once collected, job performance metrics can be used for a variety of reporting needs, from locating jobs that are not performing well to finding optimal release windows, scheduling maintenance, or trending over time. These techniques allow us to maintain insight into parts of SQL Server that are often not monitored enough and prevent job-related emergencies before they become emergencies. Read more »
Using sp_server_diagnostics January 19, 2017 by David Alcock Troubleshooting SQL Server is all about gathering the right evidence. Ordinarily we utilise a variety of different methods and analyse their output to look for specific areas where we would focus our diagnostic efforts. We could for example, use the results of various DMVs to look at wait statistic and resource information to help us focus our investigation in a particular area of SQL Server. Read more »
SQL Server Job Performance – Tracking January 19, 2017 by Ed Pollack Description Keeping track of our SQL Server Agent jobs is a very effective way to control scheduling, failures, and understand when undesired conditions may be manifesting themselves. This is a brief journey towards a solution that provides us far greater insight into our jobs, schedules, and executions than we can glean from SQL Server by default. Read more »
Scaling out Reporting Services & changes in SQL Server 2016 January 18, 2017 by Craig Porteous Scaling out Reporting services to multiple nodes, in itself, is a relatively simple process. It’s when we come to solve problems and investigate performance that we begin to see there is a lot more going on under the hood that’s not clear through implementation. There are also some foundational elements that have changed in SQL 2016 with next to no guidance from Microsoft on the changes. Read more »
How to secure your passwords with PowerShell January 18, 2017 by Shawn Melton Introduction Do you have processes or scripts that require you to provide a password? Against the desires of your security officer, do you have to save those passwords in plain text, in your scripts? PowerShell offers a way that you can store a password or prompt the user for the information. You can then utilize that information to build what is known as a PSCredential. The majority of commands for PowerShell that support remote connections to servers (WMI, CIM, Invoke-Command, etc.), offer the ability to pass in a credential. While some only need the password, some need the full object to authenticate a user. This object in PowerShell can be made a few different ways based on your needs. I will go over a few options that are commonly used, but first lets discuss what makes up a PSCredential. Read more »