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Daily Coping Tip

Make a list of things you’re looking forward to doing during a break from work

I also have a thread at SQLServerCentral dealing with coping mechanisms and resources. Feel free to participate.

For many of you out there working in a new way, I'm including a thought of the day on how to cope in this challenging time from The Action for Happiness Coping Calendar. My items will be on my blog, feel free to share yours.

Beating the Cloud Vendors

I find the cloud in 2020 to be very interesting. I run into plenty of technical professionals that still dismiss it or think that moving to the cloud is a recipe for disaster. They are sure their internal systems are better, more cost effective, and better built than anything a cloud vendor can sell their organization.

They might be right. I do think that this can be true.

I also think that the cloud is a fairly unstoppable trend for the world, so you better be able to answer Brent's question: what do you do better than the cloud? Even if your company isn't planning on moving or pushing you to think about it, this could be a good exercise. In fact, it might be a fun team building exercise over lunch or on a late Friday afternoon when things are slow.

It does mean that you need to learn something about the cloud, which is a very nebulous term. There are IaaS and PaaS services, lots of networking options, plenty of automated tasks built in and even more services available that you might ever want to install. There is also very confusing pricing, limited hardware choices, and a feature mix that could be different from what's available on premises.

The cloud gives you lots of flexibility in some ways, and little in others. Vendors provide certifications and instrumentation and logging that you might not want to build. Or maybe you've built it already. What equipment or contracts that you have might not be cost effective to change now, but when you think about renewing or replacing them, you might have a much different view.

I can almost guarantee that your management, especially finance, will think about this differently than you do.

Depending on what I'm doing, I think the cloud is either amazing or maddening. Some of that is me, and some is truly the cloud and how I use it. You can beat the cloud vendors, but you might not want to. If you do, be prepared to prove it.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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

 
 Featured Contents

Loading data in Azure Synapse using Copy

sucharita1.das from SQLServerCentral

Learn how to create a Synapse resource and upload data using the COPY command.

SQL Prompt Snippets to Drop Columns and Tables and Handle Associated Dependencies

Additional Articles from Redgate

Louis Davidson provides a pair of SQL Prompt snippets that will help you deal with dependencies, whenever you need to drop columns or tables.

Connecting to a SQL Server Docker Container Running in macOS

Additional Articles from SimpleTalk

Since SQL Server is supported in containers, you can now run a SQL Server instance in your macOS without dual-booting or running a virtual machine. In this article of the series, Carlos Robles demonstrates how to connect to the SQL Server once it’s running.

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Using Docker Volumes for SQL Server in Linux

John Morehouse from John Morehouse | Sqlrus.com

No, not that kind of volume! Over the past couple of blog posts, I have been talking about the versatility of deploying SQL Server with Docker.  This combination is...

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - The Ironic DBA—My First Year as a DBA [Part 1]

Kevin3NF from Dallas DBAs

Whoo! It’s been six months since my last post. There are reasons for this, none of which are probably valid, but it’s the way it is. I’ve been a...

 

 Question of the Day

Today's question (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor):

 

Serverless Compute Cost

I define my Azure SQL Database Servless edition settings like this: Max vCore: 8 Min vCore: 4 This should ensure good performance for my system. If the database is in use, and not paused, what would my charge be if my usage during an hour was 1 vCore worth of work?

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)

Unique Clustered Columnstore Index

In SQL Server 2019, can I create a unique clustered columnstore index?

Answer: No

Explanation: No. A columnstore index is designed to be organized by column and achieves it's benefits from the compression of the same values being used over and over. Columnstore indexes do not allow constraints, including unique constraints. Ref: CREATE COLUMNSTORE INDEX - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/statements/create-columnstore-index-transact-sql?view=sql-server-ver15  

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
DBCC CHECKDB output - I ran a DBCC on a database and it found some anomalies. Just looking for some insight as to how to interpret this output (the part of the output that was in red), what do you think? Do these indexes found below need to be rebuilt or reorganized, or perhaps I need to rerun DBCC […]
SQL Server 2017 - Development
View will not run from System Databases - I'm planning an upgrade to SQL 2017 standard edition from 2008 workgroup Edition. On a new Server with new OS. I'm restoring the DBs to the new server and keeping their compatibility levels (100). After restore I'm updating Statistics. The queries run slower on the new server. The new Server is not live so I'm […]
SQL Server 2016 - Administration
Why is sys.master_files showing the size of RBS files as 0? - Dear Everyone I hope you are all safe in these strange times. I am trying to find the size of the database datafiles, transaction log files and RBS files in my SharePoint database where filestreaming is enabled and I tried to run the query below but I get the size of the RBS files as […]
SQL Server 2016 - Development and T-SQL
No record in an UNION query - Sorry if the title is unclear. The following query is used in an Excel pivot table. It is an union of Cie1 and Cie2 companies.  The main criteria is to show the back orders (b/o) I would like that as soon  that either one has a b/o, both Cie1 and Cie2 will show, Currently, only […]
Sanity Check of (possibly) over-complicated query. - Background: We have a Document Management System which currently has 10 file servers configured in the DMS Database table DOCSERVERS. Relevant Columns: CREATE TABLE [MHGROUP].[DOCSERVERS]( [DOCSERVER] [NVARCHAR](32) NOT NULL, --internal DMS fileserver name reference [OS] [NVARCHAR](32) NOT NULL, [LOCATION] [NVARCHAR](254) NOT NULL, --\\hostname\share [ROOTPATH] [NVARCHAR](254) NULL --\root dir ) The user table DOCUSERS stores all […]
Sum Pivot by Dynamic Quarter - i have a report to create a prediction for 12 months (yearly prediction by month). example when will be the shipment date is base on input from user. the report will run by month. for example this month is July, shipment will only show July onward. i manage to create the dynamic pivot. how can […]
Administration - SQL Server 2014
Primary Data Files - Good day experts, I added a second mdf file to my database but the second file is not writing any data. Am i missing something? i am using standard 2014 edition and the settings are as below:   Thanks for your advise    
Development - SQL Server 2014
SSRS NaN Error - Good day Gents, I have an SSRS report that I'm working on, and one of my expression is returning a "NaN" when dividing by zero. Can you guys provide some insight on a workaround to the "NaN"? Below is my expression: =(Sum(Fields!Reciept.Value) + Sum(Fields!Balance.Value)) / Count(Fields!VisitID.Value)  
In where condition use column value which contains column name - Hi Team, Greetings! I have below table. let table name =Emp I need to query in the table like below. select * from Emp where (Here instead of writing country='India', I want to use the column business_rule directly so that i can get the records ) Thanks in advance!
SQL Server 2012 - T-SQL
Large difference in Actual rows vs Estimated rows - I have a small query between 2 tables that i can't seem to figure out why the actual vs estimated rows is so far off.  The actual is 66466, the estimated is 1268.13.  What info do you guys need to help me out?  Thanks.   Edit: attaching query plan for a start.
SQL Server Newbies
How to Setup/Configure AlwaysOn Availability Group in SQL Server - Hi, I am learning how to setup and configure the AlwaysON Availability group and have couple of questions. 1 - Is it possible to setup/do this  on single  windows machine. I wanted to do this on my own lab which has 2 named instances running. 2 - Do I have to install Windows clustering services […]
Reporting Services
SSRS 2017 Report parameters show on the top of the page not left - Hi I am migrating reports from SSRS 2012 to SSRS 2017. In 2012 the report parameters show up on the left of the page, in 2017 they show on the top. Is there anyway to specify the top of the page for parameters? Any help is appreciated Thanks
How to do a Matrix properly - Hi everyone I have some events data with related delegates.  The events have two parameters (Category and Region - an event only has one of each of these), I've created datasets and parameters for these lists and they appear to be working fine.  I have a row group of Event Name and a column group […]
Integration Services
Binary(Document) Extraction using SSIS - derived column - Hello all - I'm reaching out for some pointers regarding a task I have pending: I have a specific task whereby I have to extract some files out of a database(Varbinary) column. I've done this on a couple of occasions using an SSIS package - albeit in a pretty simplistic manner.   For all intents, it […]
SQLServerCentral.com Website Issues
"Stairway Series" page exposes article revisions - I clicked on the "Stairway Series" link below an article title and it brought me to the main "Stairways Series" page: https://www.sqlservercentral.com/categories/stairway-series As I scrolled down, I noticed that there were 3 entries for one of my articles: "Stairway to SQLCLR Level 2: Sample Stored Procedure and Function". One of them is listed as "Stairway […]
 

 

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