Last week I demonstrated a fast binary search approach to quickly slice through large unindexed tables. I love the approach, but it fell short in two key areas – drop-in usage, and proper boundary handling. Why Let’s recap what we’re doing here: Large append-heavy tables – like logs or audits – often don’t have a useful index […]
I know, clickbait right? Hear me out. Searching vast log or audit tables without indexes is painful. Narrowing down a specific time range often means scanning millions or billions of rows. But that doesn’t have to be the case. Approach This approach is designed for tables with two particular characteristics: The combination of these characteristics […]
Last week we looked at utilising Teams to make notifications more collaborative. This week I want to show how we can add more visual and interactive elements by adopting Adaptive Cards. What are Adaptive Cards? Adaptive Cards are structured messages which can be used across various Microsoft services as alternatives to plain text. They use JSON […]
Whether running Data Factory, Synapse, or Fabric pipelines, things go wrong – and the de facto response is to send an email. We’ve looked at sending emails from pipelines before, but at scale they can become noise and are easy to ignore. A more effective option is to surface alerts where collaboration already exists, such as Teams. […]
SSIS packages provide great flexibility for integration between systems, but when they go wrong you can end up digging through logs or reports because every package logs differently. A standarised framework for tracking failures can drastically cut down troubleshooting time. I reminisced recently about old code, I said “it’s not enough to make it work correctly. It […]
Last week, Database Instructions landed for GitHub Copilot as part of the SSMS v22.3 release. Database Instructions piggyback on extended properties to give Copilot specific context about database objects, which can in turn improve its responses. For me though, this is much more than a step closer to succumbing to AI. I see this as […]
This month, Pat asks us to consider how our code has aged. Like fine wine, or old milk? A common time to revisit old code is when something breaks. I was contemplating Pat’s question this week when a field length change had caused a truncation issue in an old SSIS data flow. Some code doesn’t age […]
For many over the years, they didn’t choose their role. The Accidental DBA was a recognised path into the profession. With platforms and skills changing, I thought it worth asking – are those days behind us? This route to DBA was straightforward. As Brent concisely put it nearly a decade ago – “stand near the database”. That […]
If you’ve tried to get header rows to repeat or scroll as you move through your paginated reports, you may have felt the frustration of getting them working correctly. Whether it’s Reporting Services, Power BI, or Fabric, the flavour doesn’t matter. The properties on the tablix should provide the functionality, but they’re not reliable. In this post […]
Part of the joy of new experiences is making mistakes and learning from them. For this month’s invitation, Louis Davidson asks us to share one of those mistakes to help others learn. The lesson I learned: don’t let order become meaning TL;DR: Don’t reuse numeric sequences for things they’re not designed for. With the prevalence of identity columns on tables, it […]
Andy Brownsword 