Voice of the DBA

Tag: SQLNewBlogger

Custom Quarantine PoSh Prompt
Since I’ve been quarantined at home and working in my office, every day is the same. I can’t go to the gym, or coach, or go to the restaurant, or much of anything. As a result, I regularly, forget what day it is.

Yes, it’s on my phone, but that’s not always open and visible. It’s on my watch, but I have to swing up my wrist and hope it lights up. Or reorient my wrist to see it.

I have Rainmeter running, which is nice, and I have a summary in the upper corner of my screen, but often I have something covering this.

The time is in the toolbar, but I sometimes hide toolbars to record things. Basically, I forget what day it is and I’m looking for a few hints I can use to make this easier. As I play with PowerShell regularly, I thought it would be good to update my prompt slightly.

Plus, it would be good PoSh practice.

Setting a profile. I’ve seen a few posts on customizing the prompt, and they all say I need a function, called prompt, in my profile. I found this article, which gave me a good idea. Put the time in the prompt.

I then had to figure out how to get to my profie. It turns out “notepad $PROFILE” in a PoSh prompt will get you there. If you don’t have a profile, you’ll see this:

Say yes, and then add some code. I had to look up the Format options and experiment a bit to decide how I wanted things to look.
```
function prompt {
        $lastResult = Invoke-Expression '$?'
        if (!$lastResult) {
                Write-Host "Last command exited with error status." -ForegroundColor Red
        }
        Write-Output "${msg}$(
                # Show time as 12:05PM and day of week
                Get-Date -Format "dddd HH:mm"
                # Show current directory
        ) $(Get-Location)> "  
}
```
I saved this and now when I get a new PoSh prompt, I get this:

Now I easily know the day and time when I’m working in a PowerShell terminal. This also shows up in my Visual Studio Code terminal as well, since that’s just a PoSh environment.

SQLNewBlogger

This was a quick thing I did in about 5 minutes to customize my environment, and help me be more productive. A happy employee works smoother.

I decided to show off how I did this and spend a quick 10 minutes writing down and documenting what I did.
May 29, 2020
Using WAITFOR to Test Slow Code–#SQLNewBlogger
Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers.

One thing I needed to do lately was test how a calling program would respond to slow code. I decided to use a normal query, but add a WAITFOR() to simulate different delay levels. However, I had to look up the syntax for the call and I decided to blog about it.

WAITFOR DELAY

The WAITFOR call isn’t a function. I’ve written about that before. Instead, this is listed as a control-of-flow element in the language.

I have a rough idea of how this works. I use
```
WAITFOR DELAY
```
as the basic syntax. SQL Prompt helps me here, since looking this up is a pain and slow. I know there is a time element in here, but I always worry I’ll pick the wrong time and then sit for a long time testing.

The key is this format: hh:mm[[:ss].mss]

To delay for 2 minutes, I write this:
```
WAITFOR DELAY '00:02:00'
```
That gives me what I need, and using a string variable, I can control this delay programmatically.

SQLNewBlogger

This is a good example of learning a piece of code and writing about it. Short, simple, show how this one works in T-SQL. Add the why, show some code, and results. How you use it, and what you learned.

This was a 10 minute post.
May 27, 2020
Connecting to SSAS–#SQLNewBlogger

Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers.

In a previous post, I installed SSAS on a machine. Now I need to connect to it. This post covers a quick, how do I do that.

Do connect in SSMS, you can use the Object Explorer. If you click the down arrow on the Connect button, you’ll see choices.

If you pick SSAS, you get a similar connection dialog. The SSAS instance is named the same as your base instance. In this case, I had a named instance, so I enter the same name as I’d use for the database engine.

There’s not much to see, but I’m connected. My installation is working.

I could also connect with a query window. The toolbar has a couple choices.

For MDX:

For DAX:

For either one of these, the connection process is the same.

SQLNewBlogger

After the post where I installed SSAS, I needed to test it. Rather than add that to the post, I ran through the steps, grabbed sceenshots, and then wrote this post as a second one.

Focus on one thing, not multiple things, in a post.

May 20, 2020
Adding Analysis Services (SSAS) to your SQL Server instance–#SQLNewBlogger
Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers.

This is a fairly simple task, but recently I needed to test something in SSAS. I hadn’t installed this on my machine, so I had to add it. It’s simple, but worth a quick post.

The way to add SSAS (Analysis Services) to your instance is to run the setup program for SQL Server. When you do this, pick the Installation tab from the left menu.

From here, I want the first item (New SQL Server stand-along installation or add features to an existing installation). SSAS is a new feature.

When this starts moving, be sure you stop on the Installation Type screen and move the radio button to the “Add features” item.

The next screen is where you will check the Analysis Services box.

You will then get an SSAS config screen. In my case, I was testing something with the Tabular model. If you don’t know which to choose, you need to research this. Here are a couple links:
- BOL
- MSSQLTips
You also need an account here. I typically add my local account here for dev machines.

Don’t forget to reset the data directory if you need to do this.

That’s it. Let the setup run and you’ll have SSAS installed.

How do you check? That’s another post.

SQLNewBlogger

This is a really simple task, but it’s something that you should be familiar with. I needed to do this, and just documented my task, this one simple thing.

This can drive interviewers to ask about how I did this, why, what I tested, etc. This helps control the interview and the direction in which someone might query your knowledge.

As you do small tasks, write about the specific task. If you want to cover what you did after this task, write a second post.
May 13, 2020