How SQL Server Indexes Store Data (2023-11-11 DBW)

Database Weekly for November 11, 2023 Problems displaying this newsletter? [View online](. [Database Weekly]( The Complete Weekly Roundup of SQL Server News by SQLServerCentral.com Hand-picked content to sharpen your professional edge Editorial  No Degree Needed For most of my career, I've seen many companies that hire white-collar workers, including their IT staff, require a college degree or the equivalent experience in the military. Often this has been something the Human Resources department has made a requirement in their job descriptions and requests to recruiters. This was a filter that stopped many talented people from even getting an interview. That hasn't stopped a lot of people from pursuing careers as developers or IT staffers, and I've had many friends who have had successful careers without a degree. The world has been changing, especially since the pandemic, and many companies are no longer requiring any sort of university degree for candidates. There are still a lot of job descriptions that "prefer" a degree, but even that is changing rapidly. I hope at some point that we stop looking at degrees as anything other than a bit of experience in working through a project and not as any sort of qualification for a particular job. This week there was an article about [seven ways to become a software engineer without a degree](. The ways are: learn to program, earn a cert, contribute to an OSS codebase, write documentation, find employers who don't care, be a freelance developer, and go to a bootcamp. Of these, a few seem redundant learning to code is probably needed to contribute to OSS or freelancing. Of these, I overall like the advice. Being self-motivated or driven is a skill that many employers appreciate. Showing that you are producing something useful in the world is a good way to create opportunities. It's also a sign that you'll work to be productive and not expect to avoid work after getting hired. I know I prefer people who go figure things out rather than those who wait for someone else to tell them what to do. I don't recommend bootcamps, however, unless you are very motivated to take whatever you learn and then expand on it with OSS contributions or other tasks that showcase and expand knowledge. Finding a job is challenging at times, and certainly impressing someone enough to hire you is a task. A degree can help, especially with those who might be prejudiced towards university experience, but more and more people recognize that college doesn't necessarily prepare you to be productive or a great employee. You can prove that to people yourself with some work, some documenting your efforts, and some good soft skills to explain what you know. Steve Jones - SSC Editor [Join the debate, and respond to the editorial on the forums](  The Weekly News All the headlines and interesting SQL Server information that we've collected over the past week, and sometimes even a few repeats if we think they fit. AI/Machine Learning/Cognitive Services [Crafting an AI Policy That Safeguards Data Without Stifling Productivity]( From Dark Reading: Dark Reading News Analysis Companies must recognize AI's utility, while setti... [10 Best AI Meeting Assistants & Tools for Note Taking]( From Past News - RSS Feeds Compare the best AI meeting assistants and tools make, so you can easily document everything that is said during meetings. The post 10 Best AI Meeting Assistants & Tools for... Administration of SQL Server [The Value of Skill: A Comprehensive Database Performance Health Check]( From Journey to SQL Authority with Pinal Dave Here are the details Comprehensive Database Perfor... [SQL SERVER – Aligned and Non-Aligned Indexes for Partitioning]( From Journey to SQL Authority with Pinal Dave In the context of partitioning, it's essential to understand the concepts of aligned and non-aligned indexes. Let us learn about it today. First appeared on SQL SERVER – Aligned and... [A quick look at SQL Server UTF-8 collations]( From Sunday morning T A client asked me about SQL Server collations, and if they should consider the new UTF8 collations (new since SQL Server 2019). I tried to hide my blank stare... [How SQL Server Indexes Store Data]( From Erik Darling Data How SQL Server Indexes Store Data  Going Further If this is the kind of SQL Server stuff you love learning about, you’ll love my training. I’m offering a... Azure Databricks, Spark and Snowflake [Git Integration Repo in Databricks Workspaces for Developer Collaboration]( From MSSQL Tips With the introduction of Git Integration Repo in D... Azure DevOps [Power BI Project (PBIP) and Azure DevOps CI performance tests]( From Kevin Chant Reading Time: 6 minutes In this post I want to co... Azure SQL [Lesson Learned #451:Deep Dive into Physical and Logical Reads in Azure SQL Database: Hands-On-Lab]( From Azure Database Support Blog This week, I addressed a customer's request to und... [Azure SQL Database Elastic Jobs preview refresh]( From Azure SQL We are very excited to announce a significant “refresh” to the current Azure SQL Database Elastic Jobs preview! This refresh brings several new capabilities that were highly requested by... Career, Employment, and Certifications [Who’s Hiring in the Microsoft Data Platform Community? November 2023 Edition]( From Brent Ozar Unlimited Is your company hiring for a database position as ... [7 Ways to Become a Software Engineer Without a Degree]( From IT Pro - Microsoft Windows Information, Solutions, Tools Here are seven effective strategies that can lead ... Cloud - Azure [Latency metrics for disks and performance metrics for temporary disks on Azure Virtual Machines]( From Azure Updates New latency metrics on OS, data and temporary disk... [Azure Monitor Logs archive provides up to 12 years of retention]( From Azure Updates Azure Monitor Logs extends archive retention to up... Computing in the Cloud (Azure, Google, AWS) [Moving SQL Server To The Cloud: Modernizing Stack Overflow for Teams]( From Simple Talk Earlier this year, we migrated the entire Stack Ov... Conferences, Classes, Events, and Webinars [Live Redgate Product Launch: Transform your software delivery with Test Data Management]( Don’t worry if you missed Redgate’s live stream announcement at PASS Data Community Summit - you can join David Gummer, Chief Product Officer at Redgate, and Alex Yates, Senior Solutions Specialist at Redgate, live on the 29th of November to learn: How test data management can benefit you in your role How you can reap benefits including accelerated data provisioning, and improved quality and speed of application releases Top takeaways from the exciting launch at PASS Data Community Summit 2023 How Redgate have worked to simplify the challenges of managing and getting your hands on quality (yet compliant) test data [How to join the free PASS Data Community Summit Livestream from around the world]( PASS Data Community Summit have announced that they have handpicked 16 sessions to livestream, for free, from this year’s event. These sessions have been chosen because they represent topics of interest to the broader data community. The benefit of livestreaming a selection of sessions means that data professionals from around the world will have the opportunity to hear the latest announcements from Redgate, Microsoft, Intel, AWS and community experts. [PASS Data Summit 2023]( From SQLServerCentral Blogs Appreciate everyone who has reached out asking if ... [Advice for 2023 PASS Data Community Summit Attendees]( From SQLServerCentral Blogs Edwin Sarmiento has a great First Timer Guide for the PASS Data Community Summit, which is updated for 2023. He’s been compiling this since 2016, and it’s worth reading.... The... DMO/SMO/Powershell [How To Convert PowerShell String Data to Integers]( From IT Pro - Microsoft Windows Information, Solutions, Tools Learn how to deal with string data that needs to b... Data Visualisation [pre-reads are risky business]( From Storytelling with Data  ... Database Design, Theory and Development [Video: Database Normalization–6th Normal Form]( From 36 Chambers – The Legendary Journeys THE VIDEO THE SYNOPSIS In this video, explain what... HA/DR/Always On/Clustering [Step-by-step Installation of SQL Server 2022 on a Windows Server 2022 Failover Cluster - Part 1]( From MSSQL Tips Learn how to build a Windows Failover Cluster usin... Hardware [Crucial X10 Pro Portable SSD Review: 20 Gbps Performance in a Budget Offering]( From AnAndTech The portable SSD market has seen rapid growth over... [Seagate's HAMR Update: 32 TB in Early 2024, 40+ TB Two Years Later]( From AnAndTech Hidden deep in Seagate's financial report released late last month was a brief roadmap update for the company's heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology. As noted in the latest update,... [Micron Introduces 128 GB DDR5-8000 RDIMMs with Monolithic 32 Gb Die]( From AnAndTech The path to high-capacity RDIMMs for servers has primarily been through 3D stacking (3DS) of DRAM dies using Through-Silicon Vias (TSVs). However, this has presented significant challenges in packaging... MDX/DAX [New Power BI DAX Functions - RANK and ROWNUMBER]( From MSSQL Tips This tip will provide fundamental information on R... Microsoft Fabric ( Azure Synapse Analytics, OneLake, ADLS, Data Science) [(Livestream Replay) Why OneLake is a BIG DEAL in Microsoft Fabric - with Pawel Potasinski)]( From Havens Consulting DESCRIPTION One of the key pillars of Microsoft Fabric is that it’s lake centric and open. At the core of this pillar there’s OneLake - a single, unified storage... [Microsoft Fabric: Capacity Options and Cost Management, Part 1; The Basics]( Microsoft Fabric is a SaaS platform that allows users to get, create, share, and visualise data using a wide set of tools. It provides a unified solution for all our data and analytics workloads, from data ingestion and transformation to data engineering, data science, data warehouse, real-time analytics, and data visualisation. In a previous blog post, I explained the basics of the Microsoft Fabric data platform. [Fabric Data Warehouse News you need to know]( From Simple Talk Microsoft Fabric, including the Data Warehouse, evolves faster than we can analyze and write about it. Here I’m summarizing the most recent news I looked at. Clone Table We... Oracle/PostgreSQL/MySQL/other RDBMS [Efficient Time-Series Data Handling: Exploring TimescaleDB in PostgreSQL]( TimescaleDB is an open-source time-series database extension for PostgreSQL. It is designed to efficiently manage and query time-series data, offering features such as automatic data partitioning, data retention policies, and specialized time-series functions. [Creating an Azure PostgreSQL cluster and connecting to it]( From Simple Talk One of the technologies that my new job brought wi... Performance Tuning SQL Server [A Big Blind Spot In SQL Server’s Missing Index Requests]( From Erik Darling Data A Big Blind Spot In SQL Server’s Missing Index R... [Fixing Performance Problems With Key Lookups In SQL Server]( From Erik Darling Data Fixing Performance Problems With Key Lookups In SQ... [Why Common Table Expressions Don’t Fix Performance Problems In SQL Server]( From Erik Darling Data Why Common Table Expressions Don’t Fix Performance Problems In SQL Server  Going Further If this is the kind of SQL Server stuff you love learning about, you’ll love... PowerPivot/PowerQuery/PowerBI [Exploring Power BI Run-Length Encoding With DMVs]( From Chris Webb's BI Blog Recently I was involved in an interesting discussi... [Computing MTD, QTD, YTD in Power BI for the current period]( From Sqlbi This article describes how to use the DAX time int... [Computing MTD, QTD, YTD in Power BI for the current period]( From Sqlbi How to use the DAX time intelligence calculations ... [Three Techniques for Curating the User Experience in Power BI!]( From Havens Consulting Video by: Reid HavensLearn about three primary tec... Product Reviews and Articles [Friday Flyway Tips – Adding the Type of Database Project]( From SQLServerCentral Blogs There was an update to Flyway Desktop which lets y... [Deploying Different Sequence Objects to SQL Server Databases Using Flyway]( From Product learning – Redgate Software Consider a customer who needs to deploy sequence o... [Running Database Assertion Tests with Flyway]( From Product learning – Redgate Software A database assertion test aims to check that data within a relational database conforms to specific business rules. This article demonstrates how to run these assertion tests automatically in... [Running a Command Line SQL Compare Comparison]( From SQLServerCentral Blogs Recently a customer was looking to automate some of their SQL Compare checks, but they wanted to do this in a dynamic way, since they needed to do this... The... Product Upgrades and Releases [General Availability: Azure Advisor recommendation improves the reliability of Azure Disks with Zone Redundant Storage]( From Azure Updates Enable disks to tolerate zonal failures without ca... [Amazon Aurora MySQL zero-ETL integration with Amazon Redshift is now generally available]( From AWS News Blog “Data is at the center of every application, process, and business decision,” wrote Swami Sivasubramanian, VP of Database, Analytics, and Machine Learning at AWS, and I couldn’t agree more.... [Azure Data Studio 1.47 is now available]( From MS SQL Server Blog Just in time for Microsoft Ignite and the PASS Data Community Summit, version 1.47.0 of Azure Data Studio is available with some great new features and a number of... [Public Preview: Azure SQL updates for early-November 2023]( From Azure Updates  R Language [Lesser-known reasons to prefer apply() over for loops]( there are still lesser-known reasons to prefer apply() functions over for loops, which we will explore in this post. [A Comprehensive Guide to Calculating and Plotting Cumulative Distribution Functions (CDFs) in R]( In the realm of statistics, a cumulative distribution function (CDF) serves as a crucial tool for understanding the behavior of data. It provides a comprehensive picture of how a variable’s values are distributed across its range. In this blog post, we’ll embark on an exciting journey to unravel the mysteries of CDFs and explore how to effortlessly calculate and visualize them using the powerful R programming language. [Useful functions for dealing with object names]( My sticky note filled up quickly after I only added setNames() on it, with related functions for dealing with object names, in base R and beyond! Security News and Issues [Atlassian Bug Escalated to 10, All Unpatched Instances Vulnerable]( From Dark Reading: Dark Reading News Analysis Active ransomware attacks against vulnerable Atlas... [CISOs Beware: SEC's SolarWinds Action Shows They're Scapegoating Us]( From Dark Reading: Dark Reading News Analysis In a rapidly evolving cybersecurity landscape, CISOs must take proactive measures to safeguard their careers and mitigate risks associated with their roles. T-SQL and Query Languages [Connect 4 game with T-SQL]( From TomazTsql T-SQL Code for the popular game of “Connect 4”... [Creating a Self Referencing FK in a CREATE Statement–#SQLNewBlogger]( From SQLServerCentral Blogs I had written about a FK in a CREATE TABLE stateme... [How to write efficient TSQL]( From SQLServerCentral Blogs This is an article on How to write efficient TSQL.... [Retrieving SQL View Definitions]( From Callihan Data I recently faced a situation where I had to track down the definition of a particular SQL view for various databases. I didn’t want to click through each database... [Unpivoting Multiple Sets of Columns in SQL Server using CROSS APPLY]( From MSSQL Tips Learn how to unpivot data or sets of data with SQL... [Unpivoting multiple sets of columns]( From SQLBlog.org UNPIVOT works great when you're populating a single output column, but I talk about how CROSS APPLY can work better in more complex scenarios. [The NTILE Function]( From Simple Talk The SQL NTILE() is a window function that allows you to break a table into a specified number of approximately equal groups, or . For each row in... [Time Series Data Mining Example with T-SQL when Adding New Data]( From MSSQL Tips Learn about working with time series data using T-SQL code and how to add additional data to the data set for more in-depth data mining. Tech News [Big Tech's Growth Status in Doubt With Weaker Sales Outlooks]( From IT Pro - Microsoft Windows Information, Solutions, Tools Tech stocks are on shaky ground. The seven biggest... [Advanced Linux User Management: A Guide for IT Pros]( From IT Pro - Microsoft Windows Information, Solutions, Tools If you are looking to set up well-orchestrated Linux environments, this guide explains the essential concepts and practices for advanced user management. The Lighter Side [Gaming the Electric Grid – Basics]( From Glenn Berry Introduction Although residential solar photovolta... [Past PASS Data Community Summit Photographic Memories]( From Simple Talk I wanted to write a post about going to the Pass Data Community Summit this year, and everything I started to write sounded cheesy. So I started thinking (finally),... Tools for Dev (SSMS, ADS, VS, etc.) [Use Visual Studio Code Extensions in Azure Data Studio]( From 36 Chambers – The Legendary Journeys This topic came up on Shop Talk Monday night and I figured I would write a quick blog post because it caught people there by surprise. Visual Studio Code...  [RSS Feed]( 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. This newsletter was sent to you because you signed up at SQLServerCentral.com. Note: This is not the SQLServerCentral.com daily newsletter list, and unsubscribing to this newsletter will not stop you receiving the SQL Server Central daily newsletters. 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