T-SQL Tuesday is a monthly blog party for the SQL Server community. It is the brainchild of Adam Machanic (b|t). This month’s edition is hosted by Kevin Chant (b|t), who has invited us to share our fantasy SQL feature.
From Jeff, The Ironic DBA (Dallas DBAs Apprentice):
I haven’t been poking around in production servers very long, and so far my main responsibility is customer server reviews. I’ve blogged a couple of times about tweaking existing scripts to massage the date output from the Error Logs and Job History for readability.
One of the obstacles I’ve identified working with SQL Server is the sheer depth of the product. There’s so much to learn it’s hard to get up to speed quickly. With Microsoft’s recent advances in AI, I see a potential area where they could add a nice little feature inside SSMS.
Take a look at this video from @Patrick Leblanc (b|t) (one-half of Guy in a Cube) where he demonstrates a Power BI feature called “Column from Examples”—specifically where he plays around with datetime formatting at about 2:15.
Essentially, Power BI uses PowerQuery to let you provide examples for column formatting and then uses the underlying PowerQuery AI to figure out what you want. Then, it writes the appropriate M Language formula for you.
A similar, but relevant, implementation within SSMS would be a pretty cool time saver. SSMS already writes T-SQL scripts for you anytime you use a wizard, so having it write T-SQL commands that output a desired style of formatting isn’t too far outside the realm of possibility.
What are some other ways you could see PowerQuery implemented within SSMS?
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