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Daily Coping Tip

Avoid saying “I should” and make time to do nothing.

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.

The Last SQL Server Service Pack

I wrote The Last Service Pack a few years ago, thinking that SQL Server 2016 SP2 might end all large updates. At the time, Microsoft was moving to a Cumulative Update process, with the aim of releasing small patches for each version every couple of months. They've done a good job of that, and SQL Server 2017 now has CU 26 with more coming.

With little fanfare, we got Service Pack 3 for SQL Server 2016 recently, with a long list of fixes.  Even Pedro Lopes notes this is the final service pack for any version. That means I expect that in the next few years, I'll start to encounter people working with technology who have no idea what a service pack is or what those are used for.

Visual Studio has "updates". VS Code and ADS just tell you constantly they need an update, with no deal designation about versions. SSMS has slowed their pace of changes, but the tool really just gets a new version every few months. With Windows we get a large update periodically, but those seem to be called a May 2021 update (or something similar).

I wonder if we are moving towards the era of commercial software being continuous, with updates being released continuously and available for install by customers. Certainly this is the way many of us build software inside organizations, constantly enhancing and fixing code and deploying it out. We often don't give our customers much choice in whether we deploy changes, and I suspect commercial software is going this way in many instances.

I not-so-fondly remember digging into Service Pack changes and trying to test them against applications, sometimes for weeks before a deployment across an estate. These days, I tend to apply cumulative updates a few weeks late, after ensuring I don't see many reports of issues on the Internet. I don't mind keeping up to date, but I don't like to be the first one to do so.

I don't know that I care if Service Packs go away. I've gotten comfortable with Windows updates, Cumulative updates, and even the random changes in VSCode/ADS that seem to come monthly. I don't see applications crashing often enough to stop trusting most vendors. Hopefully that feeling continues.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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

 
 Featured Contents

Data Retention Policies, Often Forgotten

Jim Youmans-439383 from SQLServerCentral

Plan for data retention from the start.

Estimating Data Compression Savings in SQL Server

Additional Articles from Glenn's SQL Server Performance

This video demonstrates a set of queries for estimating data compression savings in SQL Server. It also covers how to make an informed decision on whether data compression makes sense for your data and workload or not.

Databricks Delta Change Data Feed

Additional Articles from MSSQLTips.com

In this article we cover how to implement a batch Databricks Change Data Feed process through an end-to-end exercise.

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Setting Permissions on Files Inside a Container for SQL Server

aen from Anthony Nocentino Blog

This post will walk you through setting file permissions on database files copied into a container. The SQL Server process sqlservr running in containers runs as the non-privileged user...

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Using environment variable files for SQL Server in containers

dbafromthecold@gmail.com from The DBA Who Came In From The Cold

There are a whole bunch of environment variables that can be used to configure SQL Server when run in a Docker container. You can check out the full list...

 

 Question of the Day

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

 

Changing a the Linux port

I am running SQL Server 2019 on Linux and want to have the port changed on startup to be 51433. What can I do to accomplish this?

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)

Changing a Container Collation

I am starting up SQL Server 2019 in a Linux container. I want to change the collation from the default case insensitive to case sensitive. What parameter do I use to do this from the Docker command line?

Answer: -e "MSSQL_COLLATION=SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS"

Explanation: The collation can be set with an environment variable in a Linux container. To set these, you use the -e parameter and the value. Inside quotes, you would set the variable and then the value with an equals sign. The environment variable for collation is MSSQL_COLLATION. Ref: Configure SQL Server settings with environment variables on Linux - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server-linux-configure-environment-variables?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 2016 - Development and T-SQL
Surprising results when analyzing Bltzcache results.... - Blitz Cache reveals that the 50 most expensive queries run against the production servers are raw statements, not wrapped in stored procedures, and earlier, Blitz revealed plan cache instability, with most plans being compiled in the last 24 hours despite the server having last been restarted a fortnight back.  We have memory pressure which we […]
Result set different after breaking up case expression in where - I'm back again with more dumb questions. This time I am dealing with refactoring a single select with nested case expressions in the where clause. I'm trying to optimize this, and in attempting to do so, I broke up the query into multiple selects w/ union alls. This does run quite a bit faster, but […]
Sending Locking Alert - I have 2 tables the first one holds the dbwait information(locks), and the second table holds the db sessions related to the locks. I'm in build block stage where I have the files loading to SQL, and will make updates to the Table Defs(PK,Index) after some testing.  Just trying to work thru the logic of […]
Export empty JSON with headers & footers - Hello, I have inherited a process that utilises an SSIS package and related stored procs that creates a JSON file. The file we create looks like - A number of objects in an array in a nested hierarchy. If we have no data from our process at present we create an empty file. What I […]
Administration - SQL Server 2014
SQL server becomes slow after running dbcc checkdb - We are having an issue of SQL server slowness and I’m unable to find out why. After the dbcc checkdb job completes the other processes like the ETL jobs, other maintenance jobs just run for a longer time. we are having performance issues that we are forced to restart the server whenever this happens. This […]
how much memory that we need for SQL - Hi All, Our server has a Datawarehouse database is like 600 GB ( 500 GB for data file only ) and memory is ONLY 8 GB ( 5 GB for SQL ) . There are only 2 Databases and the other database is very small (58 MB) SQL edition is SQL 2014 I feel The […]
SQL 2012 - General
Adding a PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED - Is there a T-SQL way to add the following to an existing table that already has data in it?: PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ( [CALL_ID] ASC, [DATE] ASC, [TIME] ASC, [CALL_TYPE] ASC, [DOMAIN] ASC )WITH (PAD_INDEX = OFF, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON) ON [PRIMARY] ) ON [PRIMARY] TEXTIMAGE_ON […]
SQL Server 2019 - Administration
How migrate on SQL database to AWS - Can any one tell step by step procedure to How migrate on-premises SQL  server  database to AWS.
Back up and restore Synchronized database - Hello I have 2 database servers one as a primary and another as a secondary. I have synchronized them through availabity group settings. The vendor of the database wants to do some updates on the database locally which means i have to take a back up of the database and send them the back up. […]
SQL Server 2019 - Development
Index design on large and "wide" tables - We have a database of some statistical measures for some entities per day. I can't share the full schema, but trying to simplify so one still can follow the generic idea. The basic design is following: CREATE TABLE dbo.StatisticsTable ( statisticsType INT, timePeriod INT, entityID INT , statisticalMeasure1 NUMERIC(19,12) ... , statisticalMeasureN NUMERIC(19,12) primary key […]
Issue with the change of the column precision to be 2 decimal places - Hello, I need to  change the % sales vs forecast column precision to be 2 decimal places instead of whole numbers. The confusing part is that I already have a format function and 'Po' as a '%" at the end, so I am trying to understand how I can make a % with two decimal […]
Results-To-Text , Programatically - I sometimes run queries against an IBM DB2 database, using an  old Navigator tool that has limited functions. In some cases I want the results in 1 pane, so I can do various string searches with CTL-F. Typical # of result rows is less than 1000. It's probably equivalent to SQL 7 as far and […]
How to return a range value based on the first day of year and the value of row - Hello, i have a table called Events, the value of that table like as bellow : create table Events ( id int, code_events varchar(10), Events varchar(10), Events_start datetime, Events_end datetime ) insert into Events values(1,'AC_83','Event 1','2020-07-15','2020-07-30') insert into Events values(2,'AC_84','Event 2','2019-06-01','2030-07-30') insert into Events values(3,'AC_86','Event 3','2020-07-15','2022-12-15') insert into Events values(4,'AC_83','Event 1','2020-09-15','2025-04-30') insert into Events values(5,'AC_87','Event […]
Reporting Services
Data Driven Subscription by Email? - Hi, Try to find an example of a data driven subscription Via Email. What I would like to do is run a report with each row has an employee associated with a client. I would like to send via email only the clients associated with the client .   Thanks
Analysis Services
MDX Filter() for a calculated measure - Hi folks, I am still quite new to MDX and have severe problems with the following task (beg your pardon for German language): The measure [Leistung] is aggregated on the database as max(). Another, calculated measure [Leistung Zeitpunkt] is needed , wich delivers the date belonging to the maximum-value. I have tried to achive this […]
 

 

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