Data platform

SQL Server supports exporting data-tier applications (BACPAC). It means that database is packaged to one file with schema and data. It’s not same as SQL Server backups but to backup smaller databases it works pretty well. Those who don’t want to mess with local backup storage can use cloud services like Azure Blob Storage to keep database backups. Here’s the example how I automated backup of one not so big database using free tools SqlPackage and AzCopy.

When working with stateless sessions in NHibernate we need some way to see generated SQL but we cannot use simple tricks as custom NHibernate interceptor to log SQL queries. As I’m using mostly NHibernate LINQ these days I was interested in how to get SQL out from LINQ query without actually executing it. Here’s my solution.

Logging SQL created by NHibernate ORM is useful when debugging new features of application. SQL logging in NHibernate is a little bit tricky and not so straightforward as it is with Entity Framework Core. This blog post demonstrates how to write SQL created by NHibernate to ASP.NET Core loggers using NHibernate interceptor.

Times ago I blogged about micro ORM-s. I have been busy through all Covid-19 times learning technical side of DDD and during that I met again my old friend Dapper. There are applications where Dapper is used to query read-only data without overhead coming with ORM-s. Also there are simple applications where for one or another reason developers decided to keep as close to raw SQL as possible. This blog post is brief introduction to Dapper anbd how to use it in ASP.NET Core applications.

One nice feature that NHibernate has is future results. It is technically a capability to put queries on hold until data is actually asked. When data is asked then all queries are sent to server as one batch. This blog post shows how to use future results with NHibernate.

Entity Framework Core 5.0 comes with SQL-based brother to ToString() method for LINQ-queries. This method is called ToQueryString() and it returns provider-specific SQL without connecting to database server. This blog post shows how ToQueryString() method works.

Visual Studio database projects have been one of my important tools since Visual Studio 2010. Database projects were not easy to use with build servers ten years ago. Today things are different. It’s super easy to use database projects to update staging and live databases from Azure build and release pipelines. This blog post shows how to do it.

I discovered lately one killer feature of SQL Server – keeping data and log files on Azure blob storage. There are scenarios where we may want to go with blob storage instead of buying and building up our own stable and reliable storage. This blog post introduces how MSSQL data and log files work on Azure blob storage.

My previous blog post Querying MySQL from SQL Server using linked server introduced how to link MySQL database to MSSQL and how to write queries that gather data from local and linked server. This blog post demonstrates how to get data mixed from those sources to Entity Framework Core.

SQL Server has interesting feature calles Linked Servers. It’s about linking other databases to SQL Server and using their data like it’s local. There are many powerful open-source systems written on PHP and they are mostly using MySQL as database. This blog post shows how to link MySQL database to SQL Server and how to use linked server in SQL queries.

My last bold statement was that we don’t need custom unit of work and repository classes with Entity Framework Core. One issue remained unsolved and it was querying part of repositories (yeah, those custom querying methods). After some experiments to get querying interface of repositories to DbContext I worked out something that I kind of like. I managed to make DbContext to work like classic unit of work that hosts repository instances. Here’s my experiment and the solution I worked out.

Last year I had some projects where I had to embed Power BI reports to ASP.NET Core applications. There were easy cases that solved practically with copy-paste but I also had more complex situation where server-side code was needed because application uses custom authentication instead of Azure AD. This blog post covers both scenarios for embedding Power BI reportis to ASP.NET Core applications.

I have never seen a real-life project where object-relational mapper generates 100% of needed SQL. There have always been those special cases when custom SQL commands are needed. In this post I will demonstrate how to run custom SQL commands in Entity Framework Commands and how to read data from database without DbSet and query types.

I’m building build and release pipeline on Azure DevOps for one of my projects. We want to automate testing and deployments to staging environment. At staging environment we want to use copy of production database to make sure that testers are working with latest data. Here’s how to make Azure SQL database copy on Azure DevOps using Azure PowerShell.

I know there are advanced tools like SQL Server Profiler and NHibernate Profiler but often I want to see NHibernate queries just in debug window to have overview of what’s going on. It’s specially important when improving some legacy application where previous developers had not much idea how NHibernate works. Here’s the simple solution I’m using to get SQL generated by NHibernate to Visual Studio debug window.

After my first experiments with Query Specification pattern on Entity Framework Core I came to interesting idea – why not using extension methods that wrap query specifications or add directly some more conditions to IQueryable the way that queries are easy to read. Here’s my experiment and thoughts of fluent readable queries.

My previous blog post No need for repositories and unit of work with Entity Framework Core showed how Repository and Unit of Work patterns are already implemented in Entity Framework Code (and NHibernate) and how we can use IDataContext generalization to get ORM-s behind same interface. As I’m still trying to find out what’s the best place where to isolate queries without exposing IQueryable I started playing with Query Specification pattern.

After working again on codebase where Entity Framework Core was used through repository and unit of work patterns I decided to write eye-opener post for next (and maybe even current and previous) generations about what Entity Framework has to offer in the light of these to patterns. In many cases we don’t have to move away from database context approach but stick with it even more than we first planned. Here’s how many useless repositories and units of work born and here’s also how to avoid these and go with implementations offered by Entity Framework Core.

NHibernate has been my favorite ORM for long time. Although it’s more complex for beginners than Entity Framework it’s more matured and many developers consider it to be practially an industry standard. NHibernate works with ASP.NET Core too. This blog post shows how to use NHibernate in ASP.NET Core MVC applications.

Azure CDN is one of Azure services that doesn’t provide charts and metrics in service overview page. For me these charts are important because they help me to optimize delivery of my blog artifacts. This blog post describes how I visualize Azure CDN diagnostics logs using InfluxDB, Grafana and simple data collector.

Entity Framework 2.2 introduces query tags that make it easier to find specific queries from logs and output windows of Visual Studio. When running application on development box it’s possible to live without query tags. We can set breakpoints to see SQL generated from LINQ queries. But how to find queries from log files in multi-threaded or multi-user scenarios?