DBCC CHECKDB – Msg 7928, Level 16, State 1, Line 3 The database snapshot for online checks could not be created.

Do you execute DBCC CHECKDB on your Azure SQL Database? From past experience I know some people do, I would suggest not to bother. Why?

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Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud

Microsoft and Oracle recently announced a joint cloud partnership (I have seen the word multi/cross-cloud to explain this) which I found very fascinating to read. It is currently in preview and the idea is to have an integrated cloud experience between Oracle Cloud and Microsoft Azure. A private dedicated connection is obviously needed and whilst knowing more about Azure, looking at the below diagram it makes sense (from an architecture POV) as the Oracle equivalent of ExpressRoute is FastConnect which is needed.

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Azure SQL Database Clustered Columnstore Index

You can read about columnstore indexes here (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/blog/transforming-your-data-in-azure-sql-database-to-columnstore-format/). I won’t rehash the material but high level, these index types are optimized for analytical queries and high compression of data (up to 100x). This format is perfect for the large data sets that can be efficiently compressed using this format and analytical queries with complex calculations that use subset of the table columns.

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SQL Server Management Studio

Hopefully you know that SSMS is a separate install from the main SQL Server install. You can find the binaries from Microsoft (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/ssms/download-sql-server-management-studio-ssms) Using SSMS version 18.2, whilst playing around with the options I noticed a dark theme was available, easy to say I got a little excited, then I didn’t.

darktheme.JPG

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