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Question of the Day

Getting BCP for Linux

The Voice of the DBA

The Evolution of AI

I saw a study recently where an AI system was used to analyze code and trying to decide if authors were good. The conclusions were things we'd expect, and quite a few people laughed about this on Twitter. After all, if AI comes to the obvious answer, is it useful? Perhaps, but it's also a little disappointing.

I've felt that way about AI for some time. Years ago I went through an AI demo for the Titantic data set, coming to the conclusion that the lower you were in the ship, or poorer, the more likely you were to have died. I went through a tutorial with Microsoft on flight data, trying to determine why flights were late. It turned out the later they left, the more likely they were to be late arriving.

While this might seem silly, and perhaps obvious, I think that's OK. We don't expect these early AI systems to be better than humans, at least I don't. However, what I do expect is that they can do at least as well as humans, and having them return results that we could figure out is a good step. To me, this also gives me confidence that a computer can be used to analyze a complex problem or situation.

There is more evolution coming in the AI and ML worlds. I have no doubt that these systems will improve, and likely find niches where they are valuable and very helpful in making decisions. The world is gathering more and more data, and it's becoming hard for humans to analyze it, and maybe more importantly, react quickly. The rate at which data can change is overwhelming, especially for humans. I think that we will need computing systems to help process the vast amounts of data we continue to accrue.

While I don't know that I want AI/ML systems making decisions for me, I do think they can help reduce the burden of looking over data and help humans to better focus their analysis in certain areas. A symbiosis of computing software using AI, data, and a human to closely watch it is what I think will really help us become even more efficient and focused in our particular organization.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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

Featured Contents

How Bad are Bad Page Splits?

Mike Byrd from SQLServerCentral

A look at bad page splits and how they affect your database.

SQL Server Checkpoint Monitoring with Extended Events

Additional Articles from MSSQLTips.com

In this article Aaron Bertrand looks at how to use SQL Server Extended Events to monitor performance of checkpoints for databases not using indirect checkpoints.

Database Build Breakers: Avoiding Constraint Violations during SQL Server Deployments

Additional Articles from Redgate

Phil Factor shows you how to prevent constraint violations from ‘breaking the build’, during SQL Compare deployments, by ferreting out any conflicting rows in advance, and developing a script to fix the data.

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Are You Still Worried About Data in the Cloud?

Grant Fritchey from The Scary DBA

There really are technology stacks and business use cases that should never be moved off of big iron. Then there’s the rest of us. Chances are very high if...

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Stop #AzureDataStudio from opening a connection screen on startup

Kenneth.Fisher from SQLStudies

When I’m working with a tool I like a clean startup. And by that I mean don’t automatically open anything. ... Continue reading

Question of the Day

Today's question (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor):
	Getting BCP for Linux
I have a Linux workstation that I am using for some SQL Server development. I installed Azure Data Studio, but that did not come with bcp. How can I get the bcp utility for Linux installed?
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)

Casting Tiny Numbers

What happens when I run this code?

DECLARE @val_tinyint tinyint = 100;
PRINT(CAST(@val_tinyint AS VARCHAR(2)));

Answer: * is returned

Explanation: Since we cannot cast 100 to a 2 digit character value, an asterisk (*) is returned. Ref: Truncating and Rounding Results - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/functions/cast-and-convert-transact-sql?view=sql-server-ver15#truncating-and-rounding-results

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 - Development

Taking a single 80 character piece of Text and converting to columns in a table. - Hi, I have a 80 character piece of text that I wish to convert to a table structure that represents that data. Is there a simple way to take those 80 characters and basically insert them into the table structure without doing multiple substring commands for the individual columns. Thanks in advance Andrew

DDL triger to grant select permission for new table/view - Dears, Plz help with this topic- I need to grant permission for new table/views created in one schema when this are just created Thanks in advance, Hadrian

Resultset in a format - I have the following tables: create table #EmployeeSystemsMaster(EmployeeSystemID int, EmployeeSystemName nvarchar(150)) insert into #EmployeeSystemsMaster select 1, 'Core Banking' union select 2, 'Treasury' union select 3, 'Retail Banking' union select 4, 'Corporate Banking' union select 5, 'Anti Money Laundering' union select 6, 'Trade Finance' select * From #EmployeeSystemsMaster create table #NationalityMaster(NationalityID int, NationalityName nvarchar(150)) insert into […]

SQL Server 2016 - Administration

[Sp_Detach_db vs SET OFFLINE] and [sys.Master_Files vs sys.Databases] - There is SO MUCH that I DON’T know… Testing a db move to new drive on local with local admin rights and sysadmin permissions, win10 and SQL 2016 dev -- Detach Script -- ALTER DATABASE [test001] SET SINGLE_USER WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE EXEC master.dbo.sp_detach_db @dbname = N'test001' Records for this database are gone from both databases […]

How to make DBCC CheckDB faster ? - Hi All We are running DBCC CheckDB in our server during low activity time. However it takes 2 until 3 hours to complete and CPU usage is 95 - 100 % during that time I want to make the process faster and reduce CPU usage if possible FYI : CPU = 2 - Development Server […]

SQL Server 2016 - Development and T-SQL

Creation of clustered primary key only utilizes 1 CPU core - Hi all, I am once again facing an interesting issue with multi-threading in SQL Server 2016. But first of all, this is the setup: we are using the Enterprise Edition (SP2) on a 24 core single CPU socket server with 5 PCIe NVME SSDs (2 TB each). Filegroups are distributed on all 5 indpendent SSDs. […]

SQL 2012 - General

List of Dataabases from all the servers - Hi, We have 100+ servers and each servers contains few databases and i would like to get the all database list by each server/instance. Server1 DB1 DB2 DB3 Server2 DB1 DB2 DB3 DB4

SQL Server data masking - Can you able to mask data in sql server 2012? If yes, would it be easy to mask few tables or the complete database?

SQL Server 2019 - Administration

Question upgrading - Hi, I see the post of going from 2012 - 2019 but we were wondering if we should go to 2017 or 2019. Currently, we only have about 20 users and do not do anything with warehousing; of course, both could change down the road. Someone said that they found it to be much less […]

SQL Server 2019 - Development

CREATE LOGIN FROM Windows (AD account): Login failed for user - Hi, I have made with Server 2019 an VirtualBox test environment on my Workstation. I have : Active Directory Controller SQL Principal SQL Failover Web 01 Web 02 I develop an automate application that do this : Installation : Create Active Directory Windows Account Create Database on Principal with Failover Install Web Application on Web […]

Reporting Services

SSRS 2019 over SQL Server 2016 Instance - Hello, I was wondering if such implementation is possible, can you install SSRS 2019 using the ReportServer DB hosted on a 2016 SQL Server instance? TIA.

SMO/RMO/DMO

SMO Certificate Export - FailedOperationException - Greetings, Given this Powershell SMO method call... $_cert.Export("$CertificateLocation\$_cert_name.cer", ` "$PrivateKeyLocation\$_cert_name.pvk", ` $_secret) where $_cert is a Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Certificate object and the arguments are plain strings (not secure strings). When I execute the code it returns a FailedOperationError. I can't figure out why it is failing. I have tested all the paths in the script to ensure […]

Analysis Services

Sharepoint 2019 and power pivot - We are migrating from Sharepoint 2013 on-prem to Sharepoint 2019 on-prem. In SP2013 we had Excel power pivot files (connection to SSAS multidimensional cube). A user used to open the file in SP, used it, also could save modified file and everything worked ok. From Sharepoint Server 2019 it seems that support for Power Pivot […]

Integration Services

SSIS configuration best practices - Hello, I installed SQL integration services with a SQL engine, however the SSIS will be running packages for all other machines to do ETL processes with SSIS packages. just trying to find out what is best configuration practices I can do for the SSIS server to help with performance, storage, security etc.? thanks in advance

Anything that is NOT about SQL!

SSC Fantasy Football 2020 - Placeholder for the 2020 league. Congrats to the 2019 winners: First - Ditka (Patrick) - $100 Second - SSC Ravens (Luis) - $75 Third - Orange Engineers (Ray) - $50 I'll do the same prizes next year. Everyone from 2019 has first crack at the league (12 teams), but if you're interested in joining, leave […]

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