Articles

External Article

Generating Plots Automatically From PowerShell and SQL Server Using Gnuplot

When you are automating a number of tasks, or performing a batch of tests, you want a way of automating the production of your plots and graphs. Nothing beats a good graphical plot for giving the indications of how the process went. If you are using PowerShell and maybe also SQL Server, it pays to use a command-line plotting tool such as Gnuplot to do all the hard work. It turns out to be handy for a range of data jobs, turning PowerShell into a handy data science tool.

2017-05-29

3,301 reads

External Article

Using striped backups with SQL Clone

If you’re a Redgate SQL Backup customer, occasionally you’ll need to convert your SQL Backup (.sqb) files to the native SQL Server backup format (.bak), perhaps to perform native database restores on a server where SQL Backup isn’t installed. This produces a striped backup, because each thread used when making the backup will produce a separate file. Can we use a striped backup produced in this way, or indeed any striped backup, as the source for a SQL Clone image? Short answer: we can! Let’s see how that works.

2017-05-29

2,237 reads

External Article

Getting Started with Azure SQL Data Warehouse - Part 4

Azure SQL Data Warehouse is a new enterprise-class, elastic petabyte-scale, data warehouse service. Join Arshad Ali as he discusses round-robin and distributed tables, and how to create them. He also discusses how partitioning works in SQL Data Warehouse and looks at the impact of choosing the right distribution key. As a bonus Arshad shows you how to leverage PolyBase to quickly and easily import or export data from SQL Data Warehouse.

2017-05-25

3,392 reads

External Article

Azure Networking for SQL Server DBAs

The network is important to any DBA because so much performance is dependent on I/O, because of the importance of security, and ensuring that everyone get the right access. DBAs generally need not become experts in Azure networks, but it helps to understand the concepts and language. If you are running a SQL Server Virtual Machine in Azure, then VNets, Subnets, Network Security Groups, VNet peering and VPN gateways are all worth knowing about in order to to keep SQL Servers running smoothly.

2017-05-23

3,526 reads

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Question of the Day

A Fun Computer Quote

Which movie featured this quote?

"All programs have a desire to be useful."
Happy April Fools!

See possible answers