 | | The Complete Weekly Roundup of SQL Server News by SQLServerCentral.com | | Hand-picked content to sharpen your professional edge |
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Has AI Changed Software Development? I saw a piece that asked the question about AI and software development, specifically ChatGPT, a year after its release. Has software development changed? It's a question I've been trying to ask for myself, though I do think the way AI works for lots of code is fundamentally different than how it works for databases. Databases need a lot of context, with schema and relationships, whereas a lot of other code can be structured in a more narrow sense, focused on an algorithm rather than specifically needing to reference other objects. That's not to say that a generative AI can write application code better than database code. I think in both cases it can be helpful or hurtful. As I read the article, I find myself agreeing that AI has changed software development. It's a tool, and it can be useful. It can help structure code, point out issues, and help with building tests. That being said, I also agree with this sentence in the article: "...given that to write anything resembling maintainable code with AI, you'll need some level of expertise in programming." Everything I've seen from AIs still requires a review from a human that understands if the AI is on the right track in approaching the problem. I've written this a few times (and discussed it with others) that I think an AI produces junior level code in many cases, and it takes a subject matter expert to decide if that's OK for the situation. However, I feel that AI does a few things really well. First, it's a great search engine, able to understand multiple prompts in a row that narrow in the thing I might spend much more time searching for. It also does some nice predictive things in guessing what code is needed next. In most application languages, this is helpful. In SQL, not so much, since the SQL language lays code out in a way that makes it harder to predict things. The LINQ structure of from, where, select is much more cleaner in many ways. If only RDBMSes natively executed LINQ... If you've tried AI, what has worked, what prompts give you help? Is there anything especially time-saving you've found? I, and many others, are looking to understand where it can help us. Steve Jones - SSC Editor Join the debate, and respond to the editorial on the forums |
| The Weekly News | | 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. |
| Vendors/3rd Party Products |
Flyway connects to database using JDBC, but when we're automating Flyway with PowerShell, we can't use JDBC directly to get access to the metadata we need to add useful reports and other functionality to Flyway's build and migration processes. This article demonstrates how to get what we need using ODBC from our PowerShell scripts, via a DSN. |
The best ways to reverse or accelerate your way out of the problems caused by a failed database migration. |
| AI/Machine Learning/Cognitive Services |
While generative AI tools won't be replacing developers, they have already made a major impact on software development. |
Reading Time: 4 minutes In this post I want to share some results I got from asking Copilot about the DP-600 exam for Microsoft Fabric. More specifically, I... |
| Administration of SQL Server |
Dealing with SQL Server's error Msg 10928 is critical for database administrators. This error, indicating that the request limit for the database has been reached, can halt operations. Recently, a... |
Today, I got a service request with the following error message: .Net SqlClient Data Provider,SqlErrorNumber=11002,Class=20,ErrorCode=-2146232060,State=0,Errors=[{Class=20,Number=11002,State=0,Message=A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was... |
While a private endpoint and vNets are preferred, sometimes we need to configure Azure SQL Database or Azure Storage to allow use of public endpoints. In that case, an... The... |
| Career, Employment, and Certifications |
My good friend Gina Menorek shared this article fr... |
I hate coming up with ideas for editorials, but my last editorial of the year gives me a very simple topic just staring me in the face: New Year’s Resolutions.... |
| Conferences, Classes, Events, and Webinars |
Buy your on-demand ticket today to get access to hundreds of high-quality sessions across all 5 tracks at PASS Data Community Summit 2023. It’s a great way of learning at your leisure if you weren’t able to join us in person last year. On-demand access is available for non-attendees to purchase for $1295. This will grant you access to all session recordings until November 17, 2024. |
The key finding from Redgate’s annual ‘State Of’ survey is that there’s a need for skill diversification to keep up with the pace of technological advances. How will this skills gap affect you? Join Redgaters Steve Jones, Ryan Booz and Beca Parker for a free livestream on January 23rd as they share what you can do to thrive in this changing landscape. |
The latest online on-demand course that I've been ... |
Today, I encountered a unique service request from a customer inquiring about alternative methods to script out a table and all its dependencies in Azure SQL Database. Traditionally, several... |
In the realm of business and leadership, one statistical phenomenon often goes unrecognized yet significantly influences our understanding of performance and success. This is the concept of reversion to the mean (also called regression to the mean). |
| ETL/SSIS/Azure Data Factory/Biml |
This continues and finishes my two-part series on ... |
In this article, we look at how to use Azure Databricks and Azure Data Factory to build a modern data production pipeline. |
In the previous blog in this series, we learned how to produce, read and interpret execution plans. We learned that an execution plan provides information about access methods, which PostgreSQL use to select records from a database. Specifically, we observed that in some cases PostgreSQL used sequential scan, and in some cases index-based access. |
In 1964, the Beatles added something interesting to one of their songs. I Feel Fine started out with a twang of feedback. It wasn’t planned to happen, but by a happy accident, the first use of feedback in a song was created (and it wouldn’t be the last, which you know if you have ever heard of Jimi Hendrix.) Of course, the feedback I want to discuss today has nothing to do with audio looped circularly through a speaker, amp, and microphone. Instead, I want to talk about the feedback we get from others about the work we do. |
Seagate's IronWolf Pro lineup of hard drives for network-attached storage units has consistently offered good value for money, particularly at the highest capacity points. I purchased two 22TB IronWolf... |
LaCie's portable storage drives have enjoyed a fan following, particularly among creative professionals valuing both performance and product design / appearance. After Seagate's acquisition, the brand has continued to... |
This article describes how to join tables in DAX when there are no relationships in the data model. The data lineage plays an essential role in this scenario. In... |
How to join tables in DAX when there are no relationships in the data model. The data lineage plays an essential role in this scenario. |
Video by: Reid HavensWalk through a client case-study with me as I identify and optimize repeating DAX patterns. The end result having less lines of code, simpler logic, and... |
| Microsoft Fabric ( Azure Synapse Analytics, OneLake, ADLS, Data Science) |
This article is a two-part article. The first part briefly introduces the world of JSON and why I consider reading and writing simple JSON documents a valuable asset. The second part is about extracting data from some of Power BI’s REST APIs. I will fill in the second part later. |
Microsoft recently announced the general availability of Microsoft Fabric, which contains all (or most) cloud Data analytics services from Microsoft. This is a good opportunity to compare it with another popular data platform, which is also available in Azure (and other cloud services) – Databricks. |
In November 2023, I shared how to start learning M... |
Every year, on the anniversary of the first-ever p... |
Last week I struggled to load and process the data. I was frustrated and a good bit disoriented. This week has been mostly backing up (again) and getting a... |
| PowerPivot/PowerQuery/PowerBI |
Introduction You have probably created various auxiliary tables, columns or metrics during report development. Before the final deployment of the report into production, it is necessary to delete these auxiliary... The... |
Introduction In this blog, you will find valuable resources to help you better understand the Power BI Embedding feature. Whether you are looking for ways to integrate Power BI into... The... |
| Product Reviews and Articles |
A brief review of the book “Chart Spark” by Al... |
The best ways to reverse or accelerate your way out of the problems caused by a failed database migration. The post Failed Flyway Database Deployments: Roll Back or Fix Forward?... |
In my December 22 blog, I first introduced the classic parametric quantile regression (QR) concept. I then showed how one could use the qeML package to perform quantile regression nonparametrically, using the package’s qeKNN function for a k-Nearest Neighbors approach. A reader then asked if this could be applied to random forests (RFs). The answer is yes, and this will be the topic of the current post. |
Hey there, fellow R enthusiasts! Today, we’re diving into the realm of time series, where data dances along the temporal dimension. To join this rhythmic analysis, we’ll first learn how to convert our trusty data frames into time series objects—the heart of time-based exploration in R. |
THE VIDEO THE SYNOPSIS In this video, we will run through detailed configuration recommendations for SQL Server on Linux. We will also find out where you can find your... |
I’ve always enjoyed developing small applications to make life easier, but they were sometimes more of the “cowboy” variety. They didn’t go through the full development process that they... |
I needed to show a customer how to migrate from Azure DevOps to GitHub recently, and to smooth this process, we needed to repoint the origin remote. Another post... The... |
| T-SQL and Query Languages |
In the previous post we looked at the functions TRY_CAST, TRY_CONVERT, and TRY_PARSE and how they compared. I wrapped up and said that my preference for new developments would be to use... |
Convenience Like having a built-in type to make dynamic SQL more easily managed, it would also be nice to have some mechanism to manage dynamic searches. Of course, what... |
Packing intervals is a classic SQL task that involves packing groups of intersecting intervals to their respective continuous intervals. In mathematics, an interval is the subset of all values... |
There are plenty of times I’m called upon to fix data. To do this, I must know what dependencies are in the database. Foreign keys are a crucial aspect... The... |
Video Star A common-enough practice to limit search results is to write paginated queries. You may give users the ability to specify how many rows per page they want... |
As part of spending waaaaaay to much time trying to solve the 2023 Advent of Code challenges, I came across multiple instances where I had to dust off some... |
Linux’s effectiveness positions it as a crucial player in the evolving landscape of distributed computing. |
A helpful summary of which US retail stores are using facial recognition, thinking about using it, or currently not planning on using it. (This, of course, can all change... |
Dr. Codd first described the relational model in a paper in Communications of the ACM (CACM 13 No 6; June 1970). Some more work followed up after that by other people, giving us normal forms and other things we have taken for granted for 50+ years. |
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