I find that I'm using containers more and more to get things done with SQL Server. They're so easy to set up for testing, spin 'em up, do stuff, turn 'em off, done. So, as I learn more and more about them, I figured it was time to start to share that learning here on the blog. First up, I'm NOT an expert on this topic. The two best people I know currently on this are Anthony Nocentino and Andrew Pruski. Those are the people you really should be learning the details from. I'm going to try to start to cover the introductory level of containers, Docker, and, at some point in the future, Kubernetes (maybe) and other orchestrators. However, I know that as my knowledge of how to work…
Schemas are a very useful tool for managing the objects in your database. From security through process, through placement, schemas provide you with another tool to control how your database behaves. Schemas The tables created so far in this blog series have all been attached to a schema, dbo. Depending on how you login to the server and the security settings for your user, this is usually the default schema. A schema is simply a container in which you place objects. Once placed there, a schema is a method for managing the objects it contains. Schemas give you a simple way to control placement of the objects on filegroups. Schemas are a very easy way to manage security. The use of schemas becomes extremely important as your database becomes more…
I've been putting together a new PostgreSQL session called "Performance Monitoring for the Absolute Beginner." There are several ways to get an understanding of how well your queries are running in PostgreSQL, but, frankly, all of them are a bit of a pain to someone coming from the land of Extended Events (ah, my one true love). Because of this, I saw it as an opportunity to help those just getting going in PostgreSQL. I'll be presenting it for the first time at Postgres Conference in Orlando on March 19, 2025. Come on by. Anyhoo, wouldn't it be nice to maybe have a shortcut, an easier way to look at this information? Well, there is. Redgate has been working on a completely free tool for leveraging just this sort of…
Hello all! This post is nothing but a simple request. Please, if you have a few spare minutes, meander on over to this link and fill out the State of the Database Landscape Survey for 2024. Yeah, it's for Redgate Software, my employer. But, really, it's for everyone. Why is it for everyone? Because, every time we do one of these surveys, we don't sit on the data, we share it. Here are the results from the 2023 survey, published earlier this year. Yeah, but, I hear you opining, what does this really do for me? Well, let's talk about it. Consuming Survey Results On the one hand, who cares. Gotta get to work. Reading about what other people are doing has no bearing on me. True. To a degree.…
I've had people come up to me and say "PostgreSQL is open source and therefore license free. Why on earth would I put PostgreSQL in Azure?" Honestly, I think that's a very fair question. The shortest possible answer is, of course, you don't have to. You can host your own PostgreSQL instances on local hardware, or build out VMs in Azure and put PostgreSQL out there, some other VM host, or maybe in Kubernetes containers, I mean, yeah, you have tons of options. So why PostgreSQL in Azure, and specifically, I mean the Platform as a Service offering? Let's talk about it. PostgreSQL in Azure Let's assume for a moment that you're PostgreSQL expert (I'm not, but I do play one on TV). You know exactly how to set up…
In case you don't know, I've been writing a series of articles over on Simple-Talk as I learn PostgreSQL. It's all from the point of view of a SQL Server person, expanding into a new technology. In other words, a true story. I thought I'd take a moment here on my own blog to talk about the tools I'm using and why I chose those. AWS RDS Let's establish up front, I'm lazy. Very lazy. So yeah, I'm trying to learn this new technology, but I'm going to find as many ways to use the knowledge, skills & tools I already have as I can. Now, I first started learning PostgreSQL because I wanted to learn more about how Flyway works. Further, as I also needed to learn how to…
As I've been working more with PostgreSQL, I've found that I'm basically pretty happy just issuing SQL commands to get work done. However, it's handy to have an actual programming environment to work from. A few reasons for this. First, and probably most important, a good programming environment has easy connections to source control. Also, you'll get, hopefully, some help with type-ahead for the code you're writing. Finally, having a visual of the stuff in your database can be handy while working on it, so a GUI is nice. I use Azure Data Studio for most of my PostgreSQL work. Azure Data Studio and PostgreSQL I'm not sure exactly when support for PostgreSQL was added. The two years I've been poking around with PostgreSQL, Azure Data Studio (ADS) has supported…
I have long been a fan of Azure Data Studio, but one shortcoming has kept me from truly adopting it: Query Plans in Azure Data Studio. Sure, there was a plug-in you could install. Also, you could use a somewhat truncated version of Plan Explorer, but all I wanted was for SQL Server Management Studio plans to be query plans in Azure Data Studio. Go and get version 1.35 of the tool. Right now. DUDE! You have 1.35 of Azure Data Studio? Cool. Now, go to the menu bar. Click on "File." Click on "Preferences". Click on "Settings". Now, type the following into the search box: workbench editor enable preview. You should see this: Check the box below where it says "Workbench > Editor: Enable Preview" just like I have…
While I have not yet signed the contract, I have submitted an outline and proposal for a new version of my book on query performance tuning. Most of the information in the existing book is still very valid and immediately applicable. However, some of the information is out of date. Other pieces can be tweaked to tell a better story. A little bit of it is just wrong or has aged out of applicability. Because of all this, I'm not simply going to update the existing book. Instead, this time, it's a complete, from scratch, rewrite. All the way. I'm planning to drop entirely the chapters on hardware. I'm doing this for a bunch of reasons. One, hardware has changed radically over the years. Of all the information in the…
In my last post I showed some shortcomings of Extended Events, however, it is possible to use Live Data with Azure. Let's explore exactly how that works. To get started, you'll need to follow the directions here to get set up with Azure Storage as the output target of your Extended Events session within your Azure SQL Database. There is a little bit of prep work, but it's all laid out in Microsoft's document. I found the Powershell to be a bit sketchy, but it shows you what's needed. The T-SQL just works. Live Data With Azure Once you've created an Extended Events Session that is output to Azure Storage, you've done most of the work. The trick is really simple. Get the Azure Storage account set up with a…