Ever wonder all the reasons that we use databases instead of file systems? While we don’t think of it too much anymore, the first reason that databases came into existence was to remove redundancies. The first source of redundancy back in the dark ages, when I was just beginning the program, was a product called … Read more
Container orchestration has become a cornerstone of modern application deployment. For beginners stepping into the world of modern application deployment and orchestration, understanding the essence and significance of Kubernetes is essential. A container is a compact and self-contained package comprising essential components like code, runtime, libraries, and system tools necessary for running an application. Container … Read more
In our data hungry world, knowing how to effectively load and transform data from various sources is a highly valued skill. Over the last couple of years, I’ve learned how useful many of the data manipulation functions in PostgreSQL can supercharge your data transformation and analysis process, using just PostgreSQL and SQL. For the last … Read more
If you haven’t migrated your workloads to a managed database platform yet, you’re probably still relying on SQL Server Agent for various maintenance and other scheduled tasks. Most of the time, these processes just work. But when it’s time to troubleshoot, it can be cumbersome to get to the root of some problems. In this … Read more
Serverless authentication methods refer to approaches for managing user identity and access without the need for traditional server-based authentication systems. Instead of relying on a dedicated server, authentication tasks are outsourced to cloud-based services or specialized third-party providers. This allows developers to focus on application logic while leveraging secure, scalable, and often managed authentication solutions. … Read more
Editor note: The call for speakers is open at on the Pass Data Community Summit 2024 Site, so join Jason in throwing your hat into the ring for this year’s Summit coming up in Seattle November 4-8! My Power BI Speaking Tour: This is the Way Over the past year, I decided I was going … Read more
In the previous article in this series, I discussed how to use a find statement to retrieve data from a MongoDB collection. However, the find method is not the only option for retrieving document data. Another important method is aggregate, which lets you group documents, perform calculations on those groups, and in other ways extract … Read more
String manipulation is an inevitable task for developers and data professionals alike. Despite all the best efforts to normalize databases, eventually we are faced with some sort of text-based data stored within a relational database and need to extract detailed information from it. Those of us who have tackled these challenges fully understand how code … Read more
Lately, I’ve seen many people struggling to upgrade their workstation to the latest version of SQL Server. The main source of the problem is usually the web installer/wrapper, which can fail for a variety of reasons that aren’t always made clear by the error messages. Today, I’m going to walk through one way you can … Read more
Naviagation, flow, and testing it all In this last segment of the series, we’ll delve into the crucial elements of navigation and flow, exploring further the part of web accessibility that ensures users can effortlessly navigate online content. Additionally, we’ll shine a spotlight on the indispensable practice of regular testing, an ongoing commitment that goes … Read more
In software development the concept of feature toggles are used to selectively turn on and off features. They are, for example, used to restrict some newly introduced features to a select group to see how these features work. While this concept has been long used for user-facing application code, it is also a practice that … Read more
One of the most useful constructs in SQL Server is the stored procedure. It gives you a way to do several things. First up, you can store code within the database. Next, you can parameterize queries so that you’re not hard coding or generating ad hoc queries every time you want to call them. You … Read more
This is for the folks who still have to log into remote machines and do work manually on the box. Yes, we still exist, and we will for as long as we’re still using physical servers in data centers and even IaaS. Not everyone has transitioned to server core and full-on PowerShell remoting for everything. … Read more
I was talking with a good friend that has an environment with terabytes of information and to create a homolog or dev environment to him is a pain. He comes to me with a solution : A PowerShell script that gets only the first 1000 lines of each table, creates the inserts and schema files … Read more
Over the past year, the topic of AI has really blown up in the general public. However, AI was already something very important to most corporations, but the Large Language Models (LLM) made it extremely fashionable. When something becomes fashionable, a lot of people try to ride the wave with no care about the truth … Read more
As discussed in Part 1, by segregating our focus on developing code that behaves as expected from the focus on developing code that will be well structured, we have achieved the ability to eliminate wasteful and error prone manual chores. That by itself is a really big win, and I often use that aspect of … Read more
A colleague of mine once asked about cancellation tokens in AWS. This question got me thinking about this problem and got me curious on whether there is any support. Turns out it is an interesting topic with lots of pitfalls. If you don’t know about cancellations tokens, they are used in C# are used to … Read more
Nikola Ilic, best known as Data Mozart, published a great article and video about how to make semantic model data available in Microsoft Fabric. This allows the data to be used in lakehouses or data warehouses. One major question that arises is, “should we use a top-down or bottom-up (or both) approach in Microsoft Fabric?” … Read more
Every year, Redgate surveys technologists to ask a big question (through lots of little questions, naturally.) This year’s question was about their current data platform configuration and usage. Just before it was released, I read the results, and I have to say, some of the things I learned amazed me…until I thought a bit more … Read more
MongoDB provides an efficient environment for storing document data at scale. However, most of your interactions with MongoDB will not be related to storing data but rather to querying data. The better you understand how to retrieve the data you need, the more effectively you can interact with MongoDB and support your data-driven applications. To … Read more