💎🏭SQL Reloaded: Microsoft Fabric's SQL Databases (Part II: Under the Hood)

The first tests performed with Microsoft Fabric's SQL databases (see previous post) revealed that with small exceptions many of the objects and administration scripts I built for SQL Server 2005 up to 2022 worked until now with minimal changes, though the tests made focused only on the standard basic functionality - the use of user-defined functions, stored procedures, views, respectively DMVs. As usual, the devil probably hides in details.

First of all, one can easily check current database's configuration settings:

-- database configuration values
SELECT cnf.configuration_id
, cnf.name
, cnf.description
, cnf.value 
, cnf.minimum 
, cnf.maximum 
, cnf.value_in_use 
, cnf.is_dynamic 
, cnf.is_advanced 
FROM sys.configurations cnf
WHERE value <> 0 
--WHERE name LIKE 'data%'
ORDER BY cnf.name 

Querying the sys.databases revealed that there seems to be only one system database available, namely the master database used to retrieve the definition of the system objects. In what concerns the various properties, it's probably important to check the compatibility level, the collation name, and other settings that apply:

-- database information
SELECT db.database_id
, db.[name] AS database_name
, db.recovery_model_desc 
, db.log_reuse_wait_desc 
, db.[compatibility_level] 
, db.page_verify_option_desc 
, db.collation_name
, db.user_access_desc
, db.is_change_feed_enabled
, db.is_data_lake_replication_enabled
FROM sys.databases AS db

Output:

database_id	database_name	recovery_model_desc	log_reuse_wait_desc	compatibility_level	page_verify_option_desc	collation_name	user_access_desc	is_change_feed_enabled	is_data_lake_replication_enabled
1	master	FULL	NOTHING	160	CHECKSUM	SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS	MULTI_USER	False	False
26	AdventureWorks01-...	FULL	NOTHING	160	CHECKSUM	SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS	MULTI_USER	True	True

Unfortunately, it's not possible to change a database's collation, though other collations on individual columns are supported [2].

There is no tempdb listed, though querying directly the objects from tempdb by using 3-part references allows to retrieve their content. For example, the following query retrieves the various database files available currently:

-- SQL database: tempdb files 
SELECT dbf.file_id
, dbf.name file_name
--, dbf.physical_name
, dsp.name file_group
--, type 
, dbf.type_desc file_type
--, dbf.growth growth_kb
, Cast(dbf.growth/128.0  as decimal(18,2)) growth_mb
--, dbf.is_percent_growth
--, dbf.max_size max_size_kb
, Cast(NullIf(dbf.max_size, -1)/128.0  as decimal(18,2)) max_size_mb
--, dbf.size file_size_kb
, Cast(dbf.size/128.0 as decimal(18,2)) file_size_mb
, dbf.state_desc 
, dbf.is_read_only 
FROM tempdb.sys.database_files dbf
     LEFT JOIN tempdb.sys.data_spaces dsp
       ON dbf.data_space_id = dsp.data_space_id
ORDER BY dbf.Name

Output:

file_id	file_name	file_group	file_type	growth_mb	max_size_mb	file_size_mb	state_desc	is_read_only
1	tempdev	PRIMARY	ROWS	256.00	32768.00	16.00	ONLINE	False
11	tempdev10	PRIMARY	ROWS	256.00	32768.00	16.00	ONLINE	False
12	tempdev11	PRIMARY	ROWS	256.00	32768.00	16.00	ONLINE	False
13	tempdev12	PRIMARY	ROWS	256.00	32768.00	16.00	ONLINE	False
14	tempdev13	PRIMARY	ROWS	256.00	32768.00	16.00	ONLINE	False
15	tempdev14	PRIMARY	ROWS	256.00	32768.00	16.00	ONLINE	False
16	tempdev15	PRIMARY	ROWS	256.00	32768.00	16.00	ONLINE	False
17	tempdev16	PRIMARY	ROWS	256.00	32768.00	16.00	ONLINE	False
3	tempdev2	PRIMARY	ROWS	256.00	32768.00	16.00	ONLINE	False
4	tempdev3	PRIMARY	ROWS	256.00	32768.00	16.00	ONLINE	False
5	tempdev4	PRIMARY	ROWS	256.00	32768.00	16.00	ONLINE	False
6	tempdev5	PRIMARY	ROWS	256.00	32768.00	16.00	ONLINE	False
7	tempdev6	PRIMARY	ROWS	256.00	32768.00	16.00	ONLINE	False
8	tempdev7	PRIMARY	ROWS	256.00	32768.00	16.00	ONLINE	False
9	tempdev8	PRIMARY	ROWS	256.00	32768.00	16.00	ONLINE	False
10	tempdev9	PRIMARY	ROWS	256.00	32768.00	16.00	ONLINE	False
2	templog		LOG	64.00	216256.00	16.00	ONLINE	False

By removing the reference to tempdb from the query, one can get the same information for the current database. For the SalesLT were created only two database and one log file. 

There seems to be no msdb database, used primarily by the SQL Server Agent for scheduling alerts and jobs. This implies that the functionality based on it won't work and one needs to find alternatives!

Looking at the feature comparison from [2], the most important are the lack of support for always encrypted, auditing, bulk inserts, change data capture (CDC), elastic queries, full-text search, in-memory optimization, ledger, OPENROWSET. In addition it supports cross-database three-part name queries via the SQL analytics endpoint [2].

Until now, the most annoying fact is that in the web UI results are returned in different "pages", and thus makes it a bit more challenging to navigate the output. However, using a cursor to iterate through the results and saving the content to a table solves the problem (see link). The last query from the post was used to retrieve the system objects together with the number of records returned. 

Happy coding!

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References:
[1] Microsoft Learn (2024) Frequently asked questions for SQL database in Microsoft Fabric (preview) [link]
[2] Microsoft Learn (2024) Features comparison: Azure SQL Database and SQL database in Microsoft Fabric (preview) [link]