A Solution for the Bin Packing Problem (2020-05-14)

 SQLServerCentral Newsletter for May 14, 2020 Problems displaying this newsletter? [View online](. [SQL Server Central]( Featured Contents - [A Solution for the Bin Packing Problem]( - [A Hybrid Approach to Database DevOps]( - [How to ACTUALLY save money in the cloud with SQL Server]( - [From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Running SQL Server on my Mac with Docker]( - [From the SQL Server Central Blogs - SSMS Quick Tip]( Question of the Day - [XEvent Targets]( The Voice of the DBA  Daily Coping Tip Today do something to care for the natural world 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. Remote Sharing and Learning Lots of technical people have spent time learning something on a computer. The idea of remote learning isn't new to many of us that have watched events online for some time. Many of us have had the chance to watch some remote session from [Microsoft](, [Redgate](, or some other software vendor. We might learn online from some site like [Pluralsight](, or maybe we even attend some of [the virtual chapters]( that PASS supports. At this time, more of us than ever are remote from others, not just for learning, but most of our daily work, meetings, reviews, discussions, and more. Learning to be effective and ensure you still perform at the level your employer expects can be a challenge. I ran across a piece on [how to run great workshops](, which I think contains some good advice for many meetings, not just workshops or training sessions. Much of the advice in the piece revolves around prep and practice. Ensure your tools work, have documents available, ensure everyone can connect and access the technology. We tend to do a lot of group work in my company, and I've found that being remote is sometimes a challenge. Everyone is now remote, and we've adapted well. I attend some of the group standups, where each team shares some progress. We've gotten good at switching presenters and keeping things on track, though this is more a one-way delivery of information rather than a discussion. While we can share documents, it is hard to sometimes tell what things people are looking at or referring to when they are speaking. Asking the question is helpful, but it can also be intimidating for some people to ask for clarification. Communication is a challenge when people are remote, and over communicating can be important. Having a summary, or a recording to re-watch can be invaluable in ensuring that everyone can access the same information. I attended a conference a little over a month ago that used a shared whiteboard, which I thought was a great idea. I wonder if that would be more or less useful in some of our meetings. Having someone take notes is good, but being able to review to ideas on a whiteboard is something I've used to explain or clarify things in live meetings. A virtual one might be nice to use, though with some easy way to tie together thoughts from different individuals. We sometimes group edit Word or Excel docs, but that often has us looking at different sections of the document, not the same one. We need to learn to get better and working together remotely. It's a skill that will matter more and more over time. After this pandemic ends, I suspect many more organizations will adopt more remote work, which means more remote meetings. Learning to effectively present and absorb information from virtual events of all sorts is going to matter more in the future. Steve Jones - SSC Editor [Join the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums](   Featured Contents [A Solution for the Bin Packing Problem]( Alessandro Mortola from SQLServerCentral A detailed description of a technique for the the solution of the Bin Packing Problem, that involves a recursive CTE and Window functions [A Hybrid Approach to Database DevOps]( Additional Articles from Redgate A flexible approach to Database DevOps where the team maintain the current state of the database in version control, during development, and then at key stages generate and test the migrations script that will deploy the changes to the target database, safely. [How to ACTUALLY save money in the cloud with SQL Server]( Additional Articles from MSSQLTips.com We have all heard migrating to the cloud can save you money and there are several ways moving your SQL Server workloads to the cloud can save your organization money. But, there are also missteps that can eat away at the savings, performance and even your availability creating instead an expensive, ineffective, difficult to manage cloud infrastructure. From the SQL Server Central Blogs - [Running SQL Server on my Mac with Docker]( John Morehouse from John Morehouse | Sqlrus.com My day to day work machine is a Windows 10 HP laptop. It remains docked at my desk where it happily helps me to go about my daily business. ... From the SQL Server Central Blogs - [SSMS Quick Tip]( Daniel Janik from Confessions of a Microsoft Addict Today’s quick tip is for SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). From time to time when I’m speaking I’ll get a question on how I pulled up help for a...   Question of the Day Today's question (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor):  XEvent Targets What is a target in Extended Events (XEvents)? 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) Counting the Groups in R I have this dataframe in R: > head(sales) Date Day Month Year Customer_Age Age_Group Customer_Gender 1 2013-11-26 26 November 2013 19 Youth (<25) M 2 2015-11-26 26 November 2015 19 Youth (<25) M 3 2014-03-23 23 March 2014 49 Adults (35-64) M 4 2016-03-23 23 March 2016 49 Adults (35-64) M 5 2014-05-15 15 May 2014 47 Adults (35-64) F 6 2016-05-15 15 May 2016 47 Adults (35-64) F I want to get a count of the distribution of rows by Age_Group. What function should I call? Answer: count(sales["Age_Group"]) Explanation: The count() function can take a single column and it will give counts by the distinct values for that column. Ref: count() - [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 2017 - Administration [Very odd behavior with parameter sniffing, overall poor performance post CU19]( - Hey all, Seeing something very strange. Overall performance on a SQL 2017 instance has dramatically worsen since CU19 was installed. Have historical records on nightly processing that shows that post CU19, report execution times went through the roof. One in specific, used to run consecutively in 1 minute. After CU19, it jumped up to 10 […] [Replication]( - I am thinking to configure Always on or replication from two databases to 1 single database for reporting and consolidating the dbs . Current prod is on sql 2016 and planning to configure the reporting server with SQL 2017 and configure Always on between SQL 2016 primary and SQL 2017 secondary. My understanding is lower […] [Connection time out SQL 2017]( - Hi Team, I am getting this message while I try to connect to a new SQL Sever 2017 server : Connection Timeout Expired. The timeout period elapsed while attempting to consume the pre-login handshake acknowledgement. This could be because the pre-login handshake failed or the server was unable to respond back in time. The duration […] SQL Server 2016 - Administration [Keep track of who accessed\modified the database except application user\login]( - Hi, SQL version: sqlserver2016 standard . I am looking to keep track of the details for audit purpose who access to database, from which machine , and data modifications. event_time Client Machine Name\IP UserName\Loginname server_instance_name database_name schema_name object_name SQL statement Any help here ? Thanks.   [AD group access - persists after removed?]( - I have a strange problem regarding an Active Directory group that has access to a database. We have a AD group called APP_OP that was created a long time ago to give users access to specific databases used by an in-house application. So basically we created the group as a login on the server and […] [What Are Your Thoughts on Sections 302, 401, and 409 regarding Data Integrity]( - DELETED. [SQL Server Native client]( - Hi, Installed SQL Server2016 standard on Windows server2016 Standard, Later i observed that SQL Server2012 Native Clients also installed along with that. Is it safe to uninstall ? do i need to keep as it is ? Thanks. SQL Server 2016 - Development and T-SQL [Import documents Saved in AccessDB into SQL server]( - I wonder if anyone has tried to do this Having been asked to examine the ability to upscale a database from the AccessDB one of our teams had developed I started looking at the information in it In one of the columns they have stored "Supporting Documentation" such as word documents and emails with a […] SQL Server 2019 - Administration [Cannot create cloud witness for Windows cluster on Azure]( - All Windows firewalls are actually turned off. The Windows Cluster is the 1st step for my SQL AG setup but can't make it work. Any suggestions? Where else can I check? SQL Server 2019 - Development [MacOs User connection to SQL Server from Excel]( - We have a financial reporting tool , which gets data from SQL server via stored procedure and works fine on Windows computers. (Please forgive me if I am using the wrong terms in the next few lines, I am neither IT nor native speaker): If they work on a Windows netbook, they logon on their […] Reporting Services [Performance Dashboard and Server Dashboard]( - Hello All,  I am wondering if anyone has been able to successfully recreate or find the RDL file for the Server Dashboard? I have been able to publish the Performance Reports Dashboard but upper management wants to only see what the server dashboard has to offer. This is a add-on that Microsoft allows you […] [Date parameter input in UK format but at run-time changes to US format]( - Hi all I'm sure I've found a solution to this problem before but it may just have been updating the Language on the report to en-GB, which I've done on this report. I have a fetchxml report (yes I know...) where processingdate <= @ProcessingDate. The parameter input is in UK format but whilst running it's […] SQLServerCentral.com Website Issues [User Forum is Terrible]( - Today is not the first time I've had problems with the SQL Server Central forums since they were changed (not sure how long its been).  The new/current view is like a dumbed down view of a more complex user forum. There also is no FAQ or HOW-TO for the forum at least not that i […] COVID-19 Pandemic [Daily Coping 6 May 2020]( - Today’s tip is take a step towards one of your life goals, however small. My thoughts: Sarbanes-Oxley [What Are Your Thoughts on Sections 302, 401, and 409 regarding Data Integrity]( - MOVED TO SQL 2016 Administration section   [RSS Feed]([Twitter]( This email has been sent to {EMAIL}. To be removed from this list, please click [here](. If you have any problems leaving the list, please contact the webmaster@sqlservercentral.com. 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