When we couldn’t confirm a guest speaker by recording time, Eugene, Kevin, Amanda, and I decided the show must go on, so we went into the ideas vault and pulled out a couple of listener questions we hadn’t answered.  In this episode, we talk about how to create your own documentation, SSMS installs, SOS_Scheduler_Yield and Eugene gives us an update on SQL Bits and the conference crud he picked up along the way. The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2023/03/29/episode-263-sql-server-this-n-that. Have fun on the SQL Trail!

Learning new technology can be difficult—especially when it’s a technology in an area you are not familiar with.  In this episode, Eugene walks us through some of the challenges he has faced getting started with Azure Synapse.  We hope that this episode might be helpful to those trying to learn new features. The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2023/03/15/episode-262-learning-azure-synapse-pt-1. Have fun on the SQL Trail!

It would appear Microsoft has run out of words to use for new features/products, so they are just going to recycle existing words for a bit of fun at our expense.  In this episode we explore the Azure Data Lakehouse—which is not a data lake, nor a traditional data warehouse and Books Online (BOL) refers to it as Databricks Lakehouse.  Luke Moloney walks us through how combining the flexibility of data lake storage with some ACID transaction and data governance gives organizations looking to analyze their data a new option.  The hope is the cost to build, store, and analyze data will be easier and more approachable for organizations who don’t want to go with the traditional data warehouse model.  This still feels like an Enterprise feature to me but let me know if your organization would be interested in this approach.  As always, special thanks to Luke and the folks at Microsoft for making themselves available to us. The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2023/03/01/episode-261-the-data-lakehouse. Have fun on the SQL Trail!

We’re back with another SQL Server 2022 feature—Contained Availability Groups.  Have you ever failed over to a secondary node and then found a job or login missing?  This new Enterprise-only feature aims to solve this problem by ‘containing’ all the objects—master, msdb, AND the availability database all in one group so you can manage everything you need when you have to fail over.  Brandon Leach returns after more than 200 episodes to give us the lowdown on this new feature and walk us through where you should start planning your upgrade. The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2023/02/15/episode-260-contained-availability-groups. Have fun on the SQL Trail!

We kick off the new year discussing a new feature in SQL Server 2022 called Transact-SQL snapshot backups. Good luck with the Google search on this feature--we know we had fun. 😊 These are not the snapshot backups you were frustrated with in 2005. We talk a little bit about who will be interested in this feature and what scenarios it will come in handy. The hardware vendors seem particularly excited about this future as they can now introduce snapshots without needing a third-party application like Veeam to do that for them. We predict more collaboration between the database administrator and the hardware administrator with this feature. We also get a couple of use case scenarios from the community that we share in this episode. Are you looking forward to using snapshots more effectively in your environment? Please let us know your thoughts! The show notes and video for this episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2023/01/18/episode-259-t-sql-snapshot-backups/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!

As we close out the year, we take a look back and think about all those SQL Server 2022 episodes we didn’t record this year—and then make the goal to increase this count in the new year. 😊 We discuss some of the Cardinality Estimation changes in this version and the scenarios in which this may affect other features. I ask Kevin and Eugene what technologies they will be focusing on in the year ahead and how many books Kevin is going to try and write. From all of us at SQL Data Partners, we wish you and yours a Happy New Year! The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2022/12/28/episode-258-leave-2022-enter-2023. Have fun on the SQL Trail!

Have you ever thought about working for yourself? It can be very enticing for some, and in this episode, we talk with John Sterrett about the pros and cons of running your own organization. We tackle some of the reasons you might get started and we share some of our experiences of working in our own organizations. Each person’s journey is going to be different and as hard as it will be, you need to ensure you don’t allow others success or failure to overly influence your decisions. As the work environment has shifted in the last two years, it may that be some of the previous ‘whys’ no longer apply. If you have thoughts around this, let us know!! The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2022/11/30/episode-257-the-business-of-working-for-yourself. Have fun on the SQL Trail!

Seven years ago, I started the SQL Data Partners Podcast. We have now arrived at Episode 256, and we dedicate this episode to you, the community. Thanks to everyone who has joined us along the way, and we hope to continue providing content you can enjoy on the go while still connecting with your SQL Server community. While we originally thought we might focus on SQL Server 2022, we really found there are just lots of great topics to be covering in the future. We hope you enjoy this special community edition of the SQL Data Partners Podcast. The show notes and video for this episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2022/11/03/episode-256-the-community-episode/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!

One of the biggest challenges with developers using object-relational mapping (ORM) tools is the bad queries or procedures they create. Sure, most tools can create CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete, Upsert) procedures, but what about the extremely advanced safe dynamic Search stored procedures? My bet is they are super inefficient and could be improved. In this episode of the SQL Data Partners Podcast, we talk with Kevin Martin, the creator of sp_CRUDGen, about how his procedure can help your developers create better CRUD-type stored procedures. As always, we are super excited about sharing what our great community is working on, and we think there will be value in the work Kevin has put together. Have you used sp_CRUDGen? We’d love to get your thoughts. The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2022/10/05/episode-255-automate-complex-crud-with-sp_crudgen/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!

Would you be interested in a tool to help you do code review checks and provide developers guidance on best practices? In this episode of the SQL Data Partners Podcast, we talk with Kevin Martin, the creator of sp_Develop, about how his procedure can help you review naming conventions, table conventions, data type conventions, SQL code conventions, data issues, and even configuration issues. Kevin was approached about writing a best practice document but ended up writing a stored procedure you and I can use to help our environment. We love sharing what community members have done and hope you enjoy this conversation with Kevin on the tool. He is looking for folks to help him build out items, so if you have a suggestion, be sure to include it in GitHub. The show notes and video for today's episode can be found at https://sqldatapartners.com/2022/09/21/episode-254-code-smell-checks-with-sp_develop/. Have fun on the SQL Trail!