Why release SQL Server as a Linux, as well as Windows, application? It baffled many DBAs when it was announced, though most shrugged and decided that it must be part of Microsoft’s long-term wrestling match with Oracle. When Microsoft previewed an early version of the Linux SQL Server on Ubuntu and Red-Hat, with ‘core relational … Read more
Azure App Service has got more versatile because it can now run Linux. Not only can you run Web App for Containers, and publish Docker containers to Azure, but there is built-in support for ASP.NET Core, Node.js, PHP and Ruby on Linux. This allows you to host microservicess on a fully-managed platform. Christos Matskas explains.… Read more
For some of us, DevOps means startups, cloud, fast-moving social media applications and Extreme Programming (XP). What about large corporate IT initiatives, Digital Transformation projects, and business process re-engineering? Can DevOps be relevant and appropriate? Mohammad Rizvi argues from experience that it most certainly can be.… Read more
By being able to run R from SQL Server, you have available to you not just a convenient way of performing analysis on data but also a wide range of more specialized graphical facilities. Rob Sheldon illustrates the point by demonstrating how you can create sparklines that can then be embedded in reports.… Read more
A microservice architecture can provide great benefits to certain types of applications that have pronounced troughs and peaks in demand, such as web-based shopping apps. With containerization, there is the promise of deploying containerized services in a matter of seconds to deal with demand. Has the Docker ecosystem now reached the level of maturity to allow this type of application to become standard practice?… Read more
When designing web applications, it is a good idea to be cautious about the way you handle the time of day and calendar. It can get complicated when you have servers in different time zones and the user of the time-sensitive application may, or may not, want his local time, including daylight-saving adjustments, to be assumed. Problems pop up unexpectedly, so maybe it is better to tackle the issue up-front. Dino Esposito explains.… Read more
With the latest release of Hyper-V, Microsoft has made some great improvements to their Hypervisor. For many reasons, Hyper-V has become a major player in virtualization. In this article, Nicolas Prigent describes new Hyper-V updates and enhanced Hyper-V features that were introduced with Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016.… Read more
Although Azure Data Warehouse is part of the bright new jewellery of the Microsoft Data Platform, the old Data Warehouse rules still apply where data imports are concerned. When it comes to data import, it pays to choose the fastest import method first and prepare your data first to ensure that it is compatible with your choice. The subtlety is in the details, as Feodor explains.… Read more
There are a number of different ways that you can host SQL Server. RDS SQL Server, for example, uses SQL Server within AWS as a simple database service, much like a more versatile alternative to MySQL. Obviously, it is a compromise, in that you lose many of the extras beyond the database. Laerte Junior answers those questions about RDS that people seem to assume you know the answers to, but which you may be too shy to ask.… Read more
Over the years, Phil was struck by the problems of reading and writing JSON documents with SQL Server, and wrote several articles on ways of overcoming these problems. Now that SQL Server 2016 onwards has good JSON support, he thought that the articles would be forgotten. Not so, they continue to be popular, so he felt obliged to write about how you can use SQL Server's JSON support to speed the process up.… Read more
The working life of the DBA can be punctuated by surprises, but they aren't generally nice surprises. This is especially true if the DBA is not checking and monitoring the databases for obvious things such as database corruption, and disk space. However, the really scary surprises are less obvious and provide fewer warning signs. Brent Ozar gives six scary surprises that can be avoided by the shrewd DBA.… Read more
How can you ensure that passwords conform to a policy, even if they are used for connecting applications to databases? Absolving them from the policy is a security risk and you don't want to trouble the users with password changes. Dennes Torres shows how to manage application users’ passwords in Entity Framework; so that no one, not even the database and IT administrators, knows the current password.… Read more
For the larger development project using Agile/DevOps, there will always be the problem of comprehensive tooling and reporting. An all-encompassing ALM Integrated Development Environment will have some of what you need but is unlikely to meet your special requirements; Neither will a DevOps toolchain. Where do you start? You'll need to specify up-front what those requirements are, as Mohammad Rizvi explains.… Read more
The C++/CLI is a dialect of C++ that is designed to work with the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI). It is a replacement for 'Managed C++' and makes every feature of the CLI easily accessible from C++. Mircea demonstrates the architecture that is involved in a C++/CLI wrapper that allows you to use both managed and unmanaged code, and to provide the choice of controlling memory directly.… Read more
Some time ago, Phil Factor wrote his booklet 'SQL Code Smells', collecting together a whole range of SQL Coding practices that could be considered to indicate the need for a review of the code. It was published as 119 code smells, even though there were 120 of them at the time. Phil Factor has continued to collect them and the current state of the art is reflected in this article. There are now around 150 of these smells and SQL Code Guard is committed to cover as many as possible of them. … Read more
When your application is running slowly, the reflex action is to blame the database queries. It is certainly true that some of the more extravagant delays can be fairly blamed on a missing index or unnecessary locking, but there are other potential villains in the drama, including the network and the application itself. Dan Turner points out that you could save a lot of time and money by working out for sure where the problems lie before diving into the detail.… Read more
Your Agile developers want MongoDB, or a similar document database: your Ops people are concerned about security and backup, and Governance are muttering about transactionality and data transfer between systems. Do you restrict your developers from rapidly-evolving the data design for their domain or do you embrace the joys of NoSQL unconditionally? If you accept a polyglot database environment, where the NoSQL lambs coexist with the relational lions, how do you provide tools and common database concepts that everyone can use and understand?… Read more
