It is when you use R in SQL Server with one of the huge range of packages that comes with it that you can begin to appreciate the power of the system. With a package such as ggplot there are many 'knobs one can twiddle' in order to get spectacular and informative visualisations. Rob Sheldon continues his beginners series for R in SQL Server by showing how to refine the output to get it as you need it.
2017-10-25
3,267 reads
One crucial aspect of all databases is the transaction log. The transaction log is used to write all transactions prior to committing the data to the data file. In some circumstances the transaction logs can get quite large and not knowing what is in the transaction log or how much space is being used can become a problem. So how to you determine how much of the transaction log is being used and what portions are being used?
2017-10-24
4,163 reads
Microsoft has added a ton of new features in SQL Server 2017, including expanded operating system support, Graph database capability, Python support, and more. Join Greg Larsen as he explores nine of these new features.
2017-10-23
5,498 reads
Azure Data Lake stores petabytes of data and analyzes trillions of objects in one place with no constraints. Data Lake Store can store any type of data including massive data like high-resolution video, medical data, and data from a wide variety of industries. Data Lake Store scales throughput to support any size of analytic workload with low latency. Read on to learn more.
2017-10-20
3,483 reads
How does one get a truly random sample of data of a certain size from a SQL Server database table. Well, there are simple non-portable tricks one can use, such as the NewID() function, but then refining those can be tricky. Take the Rand() function for a start. Can it really provide you with a truly random number? Why doesn't the TABLESAMPLE clause give you a set number of rows? Joe Celko scratches his head a bit, explains some of the issues and invites some suggestions and tricks from readers.
2017-10-19
3,623 reads
There is already a template on the Azure marketplace for setting up an AlwaysOn Availability Group. In just a few easy steps you can get a working AlwaysOn Availability Group setup, configured and running - this post describes the steps to quickly set it up.
2017-10-18
3,292 reads
Erik figures out why SQL Server really doesn't like combining these two things in a query plan.
2017-10-17
3,790 reads
Python is new to SQL Server 2017. It is intended primarily to allow the use of Python-based machine-learning within SQL Server, but it can be used for far more than this, with any Python libraries or Frameworks. To provide an example of what is possible, Hitendra shows how to use the feature securely to provide intelligent application caching, where SQL Server can automatically indicate when data changes to trigger a cache refresh.
2017-10-16
5,024 reads
Many undergraduates have misunderstood the name 'Students' in the t-test to imply that it was designed as a simple test suitable for students. In fact it was William Sealy Gosset, an Englishman publishing under the pseudonym Student, who developed the t-test and t distribution in 1908, as a way of making confident predictions from small sample sizes of normally-distributed variables. As Gosset's employer was Guinness, the brewer, Phil Factor takes a sober view of calculating it in SQL.
2017-10-12
3,767 reads
Implementing SQL Server Failover Clustering in Azure virtual machines differs in several aspects from its on-premises implementations. These differences reflect some of the unique characteristics of the storage and network infrastructure services in the Microsoft cloud environment. In this article, Marcin Policht looks at the networking aspects of clustered deployments of SQL Server 2016 in Azure.
2017-10-11
2,735 reads
By Ed Elliott
Running tSQLt unit tests is great from Visual Studio but my development workflow...
By James Serra
I remember a meeting where a client’s CEO leaned in and asked me, “So,...
By Brian Kelley
If you want to learn better, pause more in your learning to intentionally review.
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Long Name
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Eight Minutes
Comments posted to this topic are about the item T-SQL in SQL Server 2025:...
I run this code to create a table:
When I check the length, I get these results:
A table name is limited to 128 characters. How does this work?