This is my 100th blog post here at LessthanDot! (I'm not lying, check for yourself) I started blogging at the end of 2012, almost 3 years ago and it has been an amazing ride so far. I've apparently gathered almost 1.5 million views (I don't really trust that figure :)) and 260 comments. My most popular blog post is Stupid me #3 – Building the script component with almost 100,000 views.
This is an archive of the posts published to LessThanDot from 2008 to 2018, over a decade of useful content. While we're no longer adding new content, we still receive a lot of visitors and wanted to make sure the content didn't disappear forever.
Here is an overview of the articles I published in the second quarter of 2015. INTENSE SCHOOL Book Review: Query Tuning & Optimization by Benjamin Nevarez MSSQLTIPS I’ve been busy writing tips! Purging Entity Members in SQL Server Master Data Services Using the Transaction History in SQL Server Master Data Services Introduction to Power Query for Excel Extracting a SharePoint List with Power Query Query Folding in Power Query to Improve Performance SQL Server 2016 Features in CTP2 More tips about SQL Server 2016 are in the pipeline!
No no, I didn't say temporary, but temporal! SQL Server 2016 introduces a great new feature called Temporal Tables. Or in other words, system-versioned tables. We'll see what catches on. In a gist, such a table keeps track of the history of its rows by the use of some audit columns (start and end date) and a history table. Sounds a bit like the love child of Change Data Capture and a Type 2 dimension.
A while back a give a session at the element61 Microsoft Business Analytics Day, a free event where the capabilities of the Microsoft BI platform is demonstrated alongside client testimonials. I gave a session called "Drilling across Analysis Services cubes using Power Query", which talked about how you can use Power Query to do a drill across analysis over multiple SSAS cubes. Drilling across combines facts from multiple fact tables through their conformed dimensions, something that is not possible if your data is split up against multiple cubes.
In my career, I’ve been fortunate enough to meet many smart, talented, caring, and wonderful people. In a blogging slump, I casually tweeted that perhaps I could start interviewing some of those people, and Josh Fennessy replied that he’d had the same thought recently. We hatched a plan to interview each other and blog it! Josh (website| twitter | linkedin) is a friend who lives across Lake Michigan. He’s a Solution Architect at Blue Granite, president of the West MI SQL Server User Group, speaker, and dad.
Microsoft is all about rapid release cycles nowadays. We already experienced this with Power BI, where monthly new features and improvements have been added. Now SQL Server appears to get the same treatment: SQL Server 2016 CTP 2.1 has just been released. There is nothing groundbreaking in this release – which can be considered as an upgrade of CTP2 – but there are some additional functionalities and improvements in the database engine.
A little while back SQL Server 2016 CTP2 was announced and I have spent some time playing with it (read: spent hours creating a VM because there were hundreds of Windows updates). It seems I have already found a very small bug while creating a new database: Apparently they forgot to rename the compatibility level 🙂
Last week was a successful sixty-seventh T-SQL Tuesday! I asked bloggers to tell me why they loved Extended Events, why they hated it, what their favorite tricks were, or what they had recently learned. I learned several new tips and tricks! Here’s a recap of the blogs. Huge thanks to all the bloggers who took time out of their week to help me – and you! – learn. Andrew McDermid – "
ITPROceed has come to an end and what a great event it was. Kudos to the organizers and all the other speakers! My session went pretty well, at least from my point of view, although I had to rush my demos a bit since there was only a 50 minute time slot. I prepared for 1 hour of course 🙂 I saw some pretty interesting stuff about Azure SQL DB and I really liked the session about Azure Stream Analytics.
I presented “Level Up Your SQL Server Index Knowledge” on Wednesday, June 10 for NEWDUG. I had a great audience that asked lot of questions and shared war stories. Presentations with lots of questions and discussion are my favorite! For those of you interested, the slides and demos can be downloaded here.