Practical guides and insights for modern data practitioners
You might ask yourself why I write about starting to use Azure for the Data Platform professional? Especially when a lot of Data Platform professionals already use the Azure Portal and take the knowledge of how to use it for granted. However, I found out that using the Azure Portal is not as common as … Read more
I thought I would provide some study tips for SQL Server and Azure exams. Mostly because this has been a popular topic both online and in real life. Hopefully, this will help ease the burden with yourselves. For those of you who aren’t aware I have gained a fair few certifications in these areas. In … Read more
Previously, I have had issues when I’ve added R Services to an existing SQL Server instance on Windows Server core. So, I thought this post would help others. To be thorough, I have checked this on two separate combinations of Windows Server Core and SQL Server. Firstly, a custom Windows Server 2016 and SQL Server … Read more
Introduction In this post I want to cover running SQL Server within Hyper-V on your own laptop. For many years I’ve used virtualization to host Virtual machines on my own computers. In fact, before Hyper- V was free within Windows I used VirtualBox. Previously a former employer joked about the fact I had my own … Read more
After dealing with a few issues for a client and seeing a few questions on SQLHelp I thought I better do this post. Here’s my take on patching SQL Server on Windows essentials. Main points discussed in todays post are as below. Quick recap Important information about SP’s and CU’s When to apply these patches … Read more
Hello and welcome to my T-SQL Tuesday contribution for this month, based on automating a complex Database refresh. For those of you who want to know more about this month’s T-SQL Tuesday topic “Automate all the things” you can click here. I’ve been a big believer of automation for a long time now. The main … Read more
Introduction In this post I cover part 4 of a series about maintaining your larger databases better if you use SQL Server. It covers personally recommended free tools you can use. I decided to cover free tools because in general people prefer things that are free. With this in mind, I wanted to recommend ones … Read more
In this post I cover personally recommended SQL Server DMV’s, part 3 of a series about maintaining your larger databases better if you use SQL Server. I’ve done this post about personally recommended DMV’s because they can help you maintain your larger databases better. If you’ve yet to read the other parts of this series, … Read more
I have decided to do an overview of Azure Stack for the SQL Server Professional in today’s post. Because in my previous post about SQL Server related services in the cloud I mentioned about Azure Stack. One thing I have noticed when I have presented my latest session is that not many people know about it. In fact, the … Read more
Introduction In this post I thought I would talk about SQL Server related services available with the top four providers. Because in my previous post I talked about cloud infrastructure options when looking at providers. As I mentioned in my last post those providers are Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) … Read more