Congratulations to our August top 10 contributors! Alberto Morillo and Visakh Murukesan maintain their top positions. This Leaderboard initiative was started in October 2016 to recognize the top Database Systems contributors on MSDN forums. The following continues to be the points hierarchy (in decreasing order of points):... Read more

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlserverstorageengine/2018/09/25/august-2018-leaderboard-of-database-systems-contributors-on-msdn/

SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines service offers the full control of VM and SQL Server and enables the simplest cloud migration path for SQL Server workloads. SQL IaaS Extension is installed on each SQL VM created through Azure Market Place by default. SQL IaaS Extension offers managed backup, automated security patching, connectivity configuration, AKV... Read more

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlserverstorageengine/2018/09/25/storage-configuration-guidelines-for-sql-server-on-azure-vm/

Last year SQL Server 2017 and Azure SQL Database introduced query processing improvements that adapt optimization strategies to your application workload’s run-time conditions.  These improvements included: batch mode adaptive joins, batch mode memory grant feedback, and interleaved execution for multi-statement table valued functions.   In the SQL Sever 2019 preview, we are further expanding query processing... Read more

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlserverstorageengine/2018/09/24/introducing-batch-mode-on-rowstore/

Azure SQL Managed Instance is fully managed and secured SQL Server Database engine hosted in Azure cloud, placed in your private Azure VNet. In order to access your Managed Instance, you need to create VM in your VNet where you will access the instance using SSMS. Azure portal makes this process much easier. Once you... Read more

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlserverstorageengine/2018/09/21/the-easiest-way-to-create-azure-vm-that-can-access-your-azure-sql-managed-instance/

Azure SQL Managed Instance is a fully managed SQL Server hosted in Azure cloud. Although it supports many SQL Server features, there are some constraints compared to SQL Server that you manage. One of the constraint that might be an issue is the fact that SQL Agent keeps a limited history of job executions that... Read more

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlserverstorageengine/2018/09/20/persisting-job-history-in-azure-sql-managed-instance/

Azure SQL Database Engineering team (@azuresqldb) represented by Lindsey Allen,  Joachim Hammer, Drazen Sumic, Ajay Jagannathan, Kevin Farlee, Xiaochen Wu, Jakub Szymaszek, Mladen Andzic, Srdan Bozovic, Dhruv Malik, Alain Dormehl will be in full force speaking at several sessions at the Microsoft Ignite (#MSIgnite) conference (Microsoft’s ultimate annual technology event). The conference will take place... Read more

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlserverstorageengine/2018/09/17/meet-the-azure-sql-database-team-at-microsoft-ignite-conference/

Azure SQL Database is a fully managed latest stable version of SQL Server Database Engine hosted in Azure cloud that has several built-in features that protect and manage your data. These features may autonomously perform various maintenance tasks instead of you, so we call them built-in intelligence. Currently, there are many services and products that... Read more

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlserverstorageengine/2018/09/12/what-is-built-in-intelligence-in-azure-sql-database/

Azure Command Line Interface (CLI) is a command line library that enables you to quickly and easily work with your Azure SQL Managed Instances. In this post, you will see some basic CLI commands that can be used with Managed Instance. You can run Azure CLI commands using Azure portal, shell.azure.com, Azure mobile app, your command prompt on your... Read more

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlserverstorageengine/2018/09/03/working-with-azure-sql-managed-instance-using-azure-cli/

Azure SQL Database Managed Instance enables you to use most of the SQL Server features in fully managed cloud environment. One of the features is database mail system that enables you to send emails directly from Managed Instance. In this post we will see how to setup mail profile and send emails in Managed Instance.... Read more

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlserverstorageengine/2018/08/31/sending-emails-in-azure-sql-managed-instance/

Azure SQL Database Managed Instance is a fully managed SQL Server Database Engine hosted in Azure cloud that provides most of the Azure SQL Pass and SQL Server functionalities, such as linked servers and built-in free secondary read-only replicas. In this post you will see how to use linked servers to connect to readable secondary... Read more

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlserverstorageengine/2018/08/27/create-linked-server-to-readable-secondary-replica-in-managed-instance-business-critical-service-tier/

Azure SQL Database Managed Instance is SQL Server implementation on Azure cloud that keeps all database files on Azure storage. In this post you will see how Managed Instance allocates disks in the storage layer and why is this important. Azure SQL Database Managed Instance has General Purpose tier that separates compute and storage layers... Read more

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlserverstorageengine/2018/08/20/reaching-azure-disk-storage-limit-on-general-purpose-azure-sql-database-managed-instance/

Azure SQL Managed Instance enables you to run cross-database queries the same way you do it in SQL Server. It also supports cross-database ownership chaining that will be explained in this post. Cross database ownership chaining enables logins to access the objects in other databases on the SQL instance even if explicit access permissions are... Read more

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlserverstorageengine/2018/08/17/database-ownership-chaining-in-azure-sql-managed-instance/

Congratulations to our July top 10 contributors! Alberto Morillo and Visakh Murukesan maintain their top positions. This Leaderboard initiative was started in October 2016 to recognize the top Database Systems contributors on MSDN forums. The following continues to be the points hierarchy (in decreasing order of points):... Read more

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlserverstorageengine/2018/08/10/july-2018-leaderboard-of-database-systems-contributors-on-msdn/

Pearl Abyss is a Korea based game development studio established in 2009.  Black Desert Online, a PC-massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), is their main title in production published across the globe. On February 28, 2018, Pearl Abyss launched Black Desert Mobile on Microsoft Azure virtual machines utilizing 7,500 cores and 46 instances of Azure... Read more

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlserverstorageengine/2018/07/23/pearl-abyss-massive-scale-using-azure-sql-database/

Azure SQL Database Engineering Team (@azuresqldb) represented by (Ajay Jagannathan, and Sunil Agarwal) will be speaking at Data Platform Summit 2018 (#DPS10), Asia’s Premier Data & Analytics Conference taking place on August 9-11 in Bangalore, India. Data Platform Summit 2018 is a full 3-day conference with more than 100 breakout sessions, open talks, chalk talks... Read more

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlserverstorageengine/2018/07/22/azure-sql-database-team-at-data-platform-summit-2018/

Kevin Farlee Principal Program Manager, SQL Database We are pleased to announce the public preview of Approximate Count Distinct, the first of the Approximate Query Processing features.  Approximate Query Processing is a new family of features which are designed to provide aggregations across very large data sets where responsiveness is more critical than absolute precision. ... Read more

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlserverstorageengine/2018/07/16/approximate-count-distinct-enters-public-preview-in-azure-sql-database/

SQL Server 2017 and Azure SQL Database introduced native graph database capabilities used to model many-to-many relationships. The first implementation of SQL Graph introduced support for edges to represent relationships, nodes to represent entities and a new MATCH predicate to support graph pattern matching and traversal. We will be further expanding the graph database capabilities... Read more

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlserverstorageengine/2018/07/16/match-support-in-merge-dml-for-graph-tables/

Last year SQL Server 2017 and Azure SQL Database introduced query processing improvements that adapt optimization strategies to your application workload’s runtime conditions. These improvements included: batch mode adaptive joins, batch mode memory grant feedback, and interleaved execution for multi-statement table valued functions. In Azure SQL Database, we are further expanding query processing capabilities with... Read more

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlserverstorageengine/2018/07/16/public-preview-of-row-mode-memory-grant-feedback-in-azure-sql-database/

Last year SQL Server 2017 and Azure SQL Database introduced query processing improvements that adapt optimization strategies to your application workload’s runtime conditions. These improvements included: batch mode adaptive joins, batch mode memory grant feedback, and interleaved execution for multi-statement table valued functions. In Azure SQL Database, we will be further expanding query processing capabilities with... Read more

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlserverstorageengine/2018/07/16/public-preview-of-table-variable-deferred-compilation-in-azure-sql-database/

Azure SQL Managed Instance is a fully managed PaaS SQL Server Database Engine hosted in Azure cloud that is placed in Azure Virtual network, and you need to ensure that your network is properly configured. In this post your will see a PowerShell script that can validate the Azure network that you prepared for the... Read more

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlserverstorageengine/2018/07/12/validate-your-azure-network-environment-for-sql-managed-instance/