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Question of the Day

Executing Python from SQL Server

The Voice of the DBA

The Non Profit Cloud

I ran across someone awhile ago that works with a nonprofit charity. The organization was seeking to move some of their IT infrastructure to the cloud. This person was wondering if Azure had any discounts or programs for charities, and it didn't appear there was any type of program when I looked. That was disappointing as many charities work hard to help those affected in some way, but budgets and money are always tight.

I wish I'd know at the time that Microsoft had announced a program that can help. They are donating $1 billion over five years to nonprofits and university researchers. Their goal is to reach 70,000 nonprofits and help them use IT to better serve their causes. This is part of the Microsoft Philanthropy segment of the company and it's a welcome change to me. I support Microsoft and use their software, but I also am glad to see them looking at more than profits and incorporating some social responsibility into their work.

I'm sure charities appreciate the assistance, though this isn't without some costs. Moving applications to the cloud can be expensive in terms of software development, and certainly there are ongoing costs. I'd like to think that the ability to scale resources to meet demand works better in the cloud, and certainly there are some software products Microsoft has that charities will find cheaper in the cloud over time.

The donations will also help many university projects, which I'm guessing will both gain insights from data analysis in the cloud, and hopefully also help Microsoft (and the rest of us) better understand what techniques for working with data work well and don't work well in the cloud. I know the Azure SQL Data Warehouse looks interesting to me, especially in terms of building a DW in a way that doesn't require large on premise investments. I'm hoping to get a chance to take some SSC data and experiment with it there in a limited basis, turning off the systems when I don't have time to work with them.

I'm glad to see Microsoft supporting nonprofit organizations, and I hope that I see more GiveCamps and other efforts from software professionals to likewise support organizations that are aligned with their own values.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Join the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums

Featured Contents

Stairway to Advanced T-SQL Level 7: Ordering Your Data Using Ranking Functions

Greg Larsen from SQLServerCentral.com

In SQL Server there are 4 different ranking functions: RANK, DENSE_RANK, NTILE, and ROW_NUMBER. These ranking functions were introduced in SQL Server 2005. In this stairway level I will be reviewing each of these different ranking functions, and will show you how to use them by providing a few examples.

Data breach notifications don’t need to be scary

Additional Articles from Redgate

Ever since the GDPR was introduced, the subject of data breach notifications has worried a lot of people. How do you write one? What do you need to include? What will the ramifications be? Will it make your customers run for the hills? Will it get you fired?

Collect SQL Server Index Usage Information for all Instances with PowerShell

Additional Articles from MSSQLTips.com

In this tip we look at a PowerShell script you can use to collect index information for all of your SQL Server instances that you manage.

SQL Server Transaction Log Management eBook Download

Free eBook: SQL Server Transaction Log Management

Press Release from Redgate

When a SQL Server database is operating smoothly and performing well, there is no need to be particularly aware of the transaction log, beyond ensuring that every database has an appropriate backup regime and restore plan in place. When things go wrong, however, a DBA's reputation depends on a deeper understanding of the transaction log, both what it does, and how it works.

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Query machine name of the sql server instance - the hard or the harder way

SQLPals from Mission: SQL Homeostasis

I was at a client where they are using non-Microsoft clustering technology to achieve the high availability of SQL Server instances....

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Leadership Part 2: Talent acquisition and Employee Retention

jphillips 46546 from Another SQL Geek

The two most costly human capital expenses an organization will have is the onboarding and offboarding of staff. Just take a moment to think about that and if your...

Question of the Day

Today's question (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor):
	Executing Python from SQL Server
I use sp_execute_external_script to call a Python script from SSMS connected to SQL Server. That script has a print() statement to STDOUT. Where do my results appear in SSMS?
Think you know the answer? Click here, and find out if you are right.

Yesterday's Question of the Day (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor)

What's the CMK?

In Always Encrypted, we have a Column Master Key that is used to perform encryption. What type of key is this?

Answer: A certificate

Explanation: The Column Master Key is a certificate that is used to encrypt the Column Encryption Key. Ref: Always Encrypted - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/security/encryption/always-encrypted-database-engine?view=sql-server-2017

Discuss this question and answer on the forums

Database Pros Who Need Your Help

Here's a few of the new posts today on the forums. To see more, visit the forums.

SQL Server 2017 - Administration

Overall Guidance and Suggestion of environment - First off thanks for your time and much appreciated in all suggestions or ideas. The environment i have is totally different than any i have ever been a part of and hoping that i can get some assistance. It will go against pretty much everything theory based and pretty much shooting from the hip. okay..here […]

SQL Server 2016 - Administration

Automate copy and restore of all PROD databases to a separate server - Hi, We are using ola hallengren backup script to backup databases backups. Now, I'm planning to automate copying those weekly full backups to a separate server and restore them. Can you please advise if there are any automated methods or scripts available to achieve this? Thanks, -jdc

SQL Server 2016 - Development and T-SQL

Trigger to update/Insert record - I have a table that resides on 2 different Servers with the same database name. I want to create a trigger that updates db2.table2 if db1.table1 has a record inserted or updated and visa versa, if db1.table1 gets updated or inserted then update db2.table2. The table has the same structure. How can i do this […]

T-SQL - Ways to get customized rows? - We have a table where we keep rows with vanilla settings for products, and customized rows per product per customer as they see fit to override. When a customer does not override, the vanilla rows with vanilla settings are selected but when customized rows exists for products and customers, the customized rows must be returned […]

Select today's date minus 6 months - I am pretty new to SQL Server. I have created date variables in Access but need to transfer them over to SQL. The syntax is different so I need a little push in the right direction. I am doing a query that selects a date between 6 months from today and 1 month from today […]

Administration - SQL Server 2014

Index fragmentation - hello to everyone , i notice in database tha some indexes the total fragmentation is more than 50%,60%... is this bad for the database performance.is there a way to reduse this percent, may be with rebuild index task?

Development - SQL Server 2014

How to programmatically find all non-English values across multiple tables? - I have lots of tables with nvarchar columns and want to change all of them to varchar. But the risk is I don't want to change when the values are indeed non-English. In our case they could be Japanese. I've already found some by visually examining select * from them. But how to find them […]

Declared datetime Parameter not working correctly in sql 2014 - We have a Data base we migrated to 2014 from 2008, everything is working fine except we have a stored proc that has the following it just hangs, but if I replace the parameter in the select statement with getdate() it works. or if i change the compatibility mode to 2008. when I am debug […]

SQL 2012 - General

Plan to migrate to new SQL server... - I've been tasked with moving our production SQL databases to a new server, and in order to minimize the impact on applications we've decided to try renaming the new server to be the same as the old server. So the plan I've come up with is as follows: Set up log shipping to the new […]

SQL Server 2008 - General

SQL Server Agent - Scheduled Jobs Log - Hello, Is there a SQL log somewhere that tracks date and changes made to a Scheduled Job? What I am trying to is determine when a specific Stored Procedure has been commented out within a Scheduled Job Step. My guess is that the logs will not be this detailed, but even Modification Dates would be […]

Reporting Services

Change Shared Data Source Programatically? - We have a shared datasource which mostly will point at a report db, but occasionally will have to switch to live data, is there a way to programmatically change the db its pointed at. Maybe as a step on failure/success of sql agent job? Thanks in advance. (I know I can do this […]

How to create/edit RDLC SSRS Reports - I'm relly hoping someone here has had to work with the RDLC version of SSRS reports because Ive had no luck on the MSDN forums with this. Its easy and I mean EASY to find everything about creating rdl SSRS report files but when it comes to the rdlc variant its like trying to find […]

ssrs 2012 performance issue - I have an ssrs 2012 report that takes along time to run. I would like to look at the execution plan to see what I can do to speed up the main part of a report. Can you tell me how I can look at the execution plan in the SSRS report and/or running the […]

SSRS 2016

How do I get SSRS to connect to an older version of MySQL? - Three weeks ago I was tasked with working on a SSRS report that to run against a MySQL database. Until that time I'd never done anything with MySQL, so that's a learning curve as well. The only way I know of connecting to MySQL is with an ODBC connection. (As an aside, if there's another […]

Integration Services

Tabular Model - Newbie Question - Hi All, I am looking after my first tabular model and was wondering if it is correct that you can only create DAX measures within the measure grid in model.bin file via Visual Studio. As the previous multi dimensional model I worked on used MDX for the measures. Thanks

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