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Bulk insert issue with UTF-8 fixed-width file format
Fellow Canadian Doran Douglas brought this issue to my attention recently, and I wanted to share it with you as well. Let’s say you have a file in UTF-8 format. What this means is that some of the characters will be single-byte, and some may be more than that. Where this becomes problematic is that[…]
Dates and Times in SQL Server: AT TIME ZONE
Continuing the series on dates and times in SQL Server and Azure SQL Database, this week we look at the hint AT TIME ZONE. In Azure SQL Database, the regional settings of the database are set to UTC by default. It is also advisable to store dates and times in UTC format on our on-premises[…]
Repair Visual Studio for Mac: Extension node not found in path
A few months ago I ran into a problem after updating Visual Studio for Mac, where it would not start. The actual error message (which I retrieved from a log file) said: Extension node not found in path: /MonoDevelop/Core/WebCredentialProviders Knowing what I know about complex software, it was unlikely that reinstalling Visual Studio would do[…]
A software architect replaces a relational database with a relational database
Content warning: This is the second (and final) rebuttal essay about why someone is wrong on the Internet. It is no doubt biased. It might go into technical detail. Parts of it may be wrong. It may contain flippant remarks and editorialising. There are links to external references that may distract the reader. Last time,[…]
Relational databases aren’t the problem
Content warning: This is the first of two rebuttal essays, about why someone is wrong on the Internet. It is no doubt biased. It might go into technical detail. Parts of it may be wrong. It may contain flippant remarks and editorialising. There are links to external references that may distract the reader. I am[…]
Do you even PowerShell, bro? An ode to dbatools and dbachecks.
Shall I compare thee to Management Studio? Thou art more scriptable and consistent. Those out-of-memory errors do tend to lose hours of work. And I mean, SSMS doesn’t run from the command line. Sometimes I get those line-endings errors, Not to mention IntelliSense bombing out; And figuring out which tab I was in can be[…]
Why you should not use SELECT *
A shorter post this week, but an important one. Last week, Erik Darling commented on my post saying that we shouldn’t use SELECT *, which was both amusing and accurate. Amusing, because a number of the example T-SQL queries in that post made use of this construct. Why not? Why was Erik’s comment accurate? A[…]
Don’t do these things in SQL Server
Recently Brent Ozar posted a link to the PostgreSQL “Don’t do this” page, which I am shamelessly reproducing below, re-tailored for a SQL Server audience. Don’t use -P with sqlcmd sqlcmd is a cross-platform interactive command-line utility that allows you to connect to a SQL Server (or Azure SQL Database) instance and perform database operations.[…]
Repair SQL Server on Linux after an Ubuntu distribution upgrade
SQL Server 2017 is supported on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Long-Term Support), however that version of Ubuntu Linux is now more than two years old, so you may be tempted to update Ubuntu to a more modern release such as Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver). Unfortunately (as of this writing), SQL Server 2017 is not supported[…]
Data lakes and swamps, oh my
I was lamenting to my friend and fellow MVP Shamir Charania (blog | Twitter) that I didn’t have a topic for this week’s blog post, so he and his colleague suggested I write about data lakes, and specifically Azure Data Lake. What is a data lake? This is what Wikipedia says: A data lake is[…]