The Complete Weekly Roundup of SQL Server News

Hand-picked content to sharpen your professional edge

All the headlines and interesting SQL Server information that we've collected over the past week, and sometimes even a few repeats if we think they fit. These headlines are gathered throughout the week and are posted in real time at the website. Check there for information throughout the week or enjoy this weekly summary of the SQL Server world.

Vendors/3rd Party Products

Do you visit simple-talk.com? - If the answer to that question is yes, we want your feedback on the site. And if the answer to that question is no, we still want your feedback on the site! Complete this 17-question survey letting us know what you really think, and at the end you can choose to enter a competition to win a $100 Amazon gift card....(more)

Quick SQL Prompt Tip – using the CDB snippet - There are a number of built-in snippets for SQL Prompt, and many of them are very simple, but they can greatly speed up your T-SQL coding if you learn what they are. Data Platform MVP Steve Jones shows how to make best use of the popular CDB snippet, for CREATE DATABASE statements, to save you time, but also ensure databases are created with the standard settings your organization may have, every time....(more)

Tech News : General Interest

My heart depends on your code - Marie Moe shares her experience with being the host of a vulnerable medical implant, and why she started a hacking project to investigate the security of her own critical infrastructure....(more)

Google DeepMind could invent the next generation of AI by playing Starcraft 2 - Google’s DeepMind branch, which is dedicated to developing sophisticated Intelligence, is teaming up with the makers of Starcraft 2 to further its research on AI....(more)

Your Boss Knows You Are Looking for a New Job - A start-up is offering an online tool that cruises company systems and big data sources to identify how many employees are looking for a job, and which ones are looking. ...(more)

SQL Server on Linux

SQL Server on Linux: Boring - As a concept, SQL Server on Linux is thrilling. Due to this, the OS doesn’t stand in the way of taking advantage of everything that SQL Server offers. Because we have Linux, we have opportunity for all sorts of new fun....(more)

Restoring a SQL Server backup on Linux - Can you restore a backup from a Windows instance of SQL Server to a Linux instance?...(more)

Installing SQL Server vNext on Red Hat Enterprise Linux in Azure - Interested in trying out SQL Server on Linux? Thomas LaRock walks through how to get started....(more)

Security news and thoughts

Why Fingers Make Handy, if Not Foolproof, Digital Keys - It sounds like a great idea: Forget passwords, and instead lock your phone or computer with your fingerprint. It's a convenient form of security -- though it's also perhaps not as safe as you'd think....(more)

Handling people's personal data is sensitive business - If personal data is publicly available, does that give anyone the right to aggregate it?...(more)

Product Upgrades and Releases

SQL Describe Beta - SQLDescribe is a Windows desktop Dot Net (3.0) application that is used to enter and maintain descriptions of your Microsoft SQL Server database objects....(more)

PowerPivot/PowerQuery/PowerBI

PowerShell to Test a Query - So you want to do some tuning, but you’re not sure how to test a query on it’s performance. Not a problem. Here’s a very rough script that should help with testing....(more)

Performance Tuning SQL Server

Index Scans: Not Nearly As Bad As You Might Think - When you look at your execution plans, don't write off index scans straight off the bat....(more)

Query Data Store Data - The data in the Query Data Store is what makes all the magic happen. From collecting the aggregate performance metrics of a query to the various plans in use by that query to being able to force a plan, it’s all controlled by the data within the Query Data Store system tables....(more)

Microsoft News

Microsoft's SQL Server Next: What's under the covers - How does Microsoft plan to bring parity to its SQL Server releases for Linux and Windows as it moves forward? Its 'Drawbridge' library OS virtualization technology is playing a role....(more)

Events to attend

SQL in the City Streamed - Register now for Redgate's free virtual event offering a wealth of SQL Server sessions for you to live-stream on December 14 and 15....(more)

Accessible database DevOps training - DLM Consultants believe in equipping people to manage their own Database Lifecycle Management (DLM – aka Database DevOps). Our DLM Workshops are a series of three training days designed to teach the fundamentals of DLM. Since we believe the best way to learn is to do, during each workshop every attendee will implement what they’ve learned in their own VM sandbox, hosted by us. New classes scheduled for 2017....(more)

Database Design, Theory and Development

DevOps and Database Lifecycle Management - Database Lifecycle Management (DLM) aims to provide a roadmap of of what is required, and when, to deliver and maintain effective databases that can respond quickly to business change. How does the DevOps movement, as it applies to Databases, fit into this? William Brewer explains how DevOps provides the organisational change between delivery and operations to make important parts of the process easier to introduce....(more)

In-Memory NonClustered Indexes, much cooler than disk based - The new In-Memory engine is now available on every edition of SQL Server, including Express, so there is no excuse not to start exploring this feature....(more)

Data Mining/Data Analysis

Using DAX Editor - This article describes how to improve the productivity when you editing DAX measures in a SSAS Tabular model by using the DAX Editor for Visual Studio....(more)

Computing in the Cloud

ETL in the Cloud with Azure - With Cloud adoption taking off and Microsoft investing heavily in Azure and Cloud tech, there are many ways to get started with cloud-based ETL....(more)

Career Growth

Giving back with code - From code in answers on Stack Overflow to R packages or full programs, there’s a lot of code being written and given away. This post examines some of the reasons why the people writing all that code do it, why you should consider giving back with code, and how you can get started....(more)

Blogs

A brief history of version control - The fledgling computer industry did not invent version control. It merely adopted practices that were already well established in other industries. In part one of three, Wibke Carstensen takes a look at where it all started....(more)

Blogs : SQL Server 2016

SQL Server 2016 SP1: Known issues - The SQL Product team has identified the following known issues which users may encounter after installing SQL Server 2016 SP1....(more)

The Brighter Side of SQL Server’s future - Erik Darling looks at the most exciting of 2016 SP1's "bunch of cool new tricks"....(more)

SQL Server 2016 SP1: Things you should know - With the release of SQL Server 2016 SP1, a number of programmability features which were only available in Enterprise Edition are now enabled in Standard, Web, Express and LocalDB editions of SQL Server 2016....(more)

Developers Choice: CREATE OR ALTER - SQL Server 2016 SP1 introduces a new CREATE OR ALTER language feature....(more)

Azure SQL Database

Azure Functions to Schedule SQL Azure operations - If you want to schedule jobs in Azure but don't fancy digging through PowerShell, this methodology should help....(more)

Articles : Administration

Do You Have Check Constraints On Your Start and End Dates? - Are you missing any check constraints? Run this query to check....(more)

How to build multiple database versions from the same source: object filters - Over time it often becomes necessary to apply updates to certain individual data centers. The right, but hard, way to do this would be to make the required changes to a ‘master’ database, in version control, and then deploy them out to all data centers. Alex Yates shows how to reestablish a single canonical database....(more)

Analysis Services / BI on the MS Stack

Referenced Queries And Caching In Power BI And Power Query - Power Query (in both Excel and Power BI Desktop) utilizes a "persistent cache", stored on disk, when refreshing queries. But what exactly does that mean? ...(more)

Administration of SQL Server

Retrieving Query Store query performance data through sp_WhatsupQueryStore - This blog post goes into detail on how you can use sp_WhatsupQueryStore to easily and quickly retrieve query performance data from the Query Store....(more)

What’s the Difference Between Estimated and Actual Execution Plans? - Estimated and actual execution plans can vary wildly in performance, so it pays to know how they're calculated....(more)

You Can't Cage The DBCC Beast - A baked-in index maintenance script causes issues....(more)