Microsoft SQL Server

This topic provides SQL Server data source setup and configuration information.

Supported Versions

Dremio supports SQL Server 2012 and later.

note

Ensure that your Dremio cluster has access to the appropriate port for your SQL Server source. By default, this is port 1433.

Dremio and SQL Server

Predicate Pushdowns

Dremio delegates the execution of these expressions and functions to the database being queried, often dramatically improving query performance. It can also offload entire SQL queries that include one or more of these expressions and functions.

*, +, -, /, %
<, <=, <>, =, >, >=, !=
AND, NOT, OR, ||
ABS
ACOS
ADD_MONTHS
ASIN
ATAN
ATAN2
AVG
CAST
CEIL
CEILING
CHAR_LENGTH
CHARACTER_LENGTH
CONCAT
COS
COT
DATE_ADD
DATE_SUB
DATE_TRUNC_DAY
DATE_TRUNC_HOUR
DATE_TRUNC_MINUTE
DATE_TRUNC_MONTH
DATE_TRUNC_YEAR
DEGREES
E
EXP
EXTRACT_DAY
EXTRACT_DOW
EXTRACT_DOY
EXTRACT_HOUR
EXTRACT_MINUTE
EXTRACT_MONTH
EXTRACT_QUARTER
EXTRACT_SECOND
EXTRACT_WEEK
EXTRACT_YEAR
FLOOR
IS DISTINCT FROM
IS NOT DISTINCT FROM
IS NOT NULL
IS NULL
LAST_DAY
LCASE
LEFT
LENGTH
LIKE
LN
LOCATE
LOG
LOG10
LOWER
LPAD
LTRIM
MAX
MEDIAN
MIN
MOD
MONTH
PERCENT_CONT
PERCENT_DISC
PI
POSITION
POW
POWER
RADIANS
RAND
REPLACE
REVERSE
RIGHT
ROUND
RPAD
RTRIM
SIGN
SIN
SQRT
SUBSTR
SUBSTRING
SUM
TAN
TIMESTAMPADD_DAY
TIMESTAMPADD_HOUR
TIMESTAMPADD_MINUTE
TIMESTAMPADD_MONTH
TIMESTAMPADD_QUARTER
TIMESTAMPADD_SECOND
TIMESTAMPADD_YEAR
TIMESTAMPDIFF_DAY
TIMESTAMPDIFF_HOUR
TIMESTAMPDIFF_MINUTE
TIMESTAMPDIFF_MONTH
TIMESTAMPDIFF_QUARTER
TIMESTAMPDIFF_SECOND
TIMESTAMPDIFF_WEEK
TIMESTAMPDIFF_YEAR
TO_DATE
TRIM
TRUNC
TRUNCATE
UCASE
UPPER
YEAR

note

Since SQL Server has no boolean type, project operations that contain SQL expressions which evaluate to true or false (e.g., SELECT username, friends > 0), and filter operations that include boolean literals in a filter (e.g., WHERE currentAccount = true) cannot be executed as pushdowns.

Initial Connection

Depending on the number of tables in your SQL Server source, the final step of adding it to Dremio can take anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes as the source's metadata is processed. However, this is a one-time cost and further queries to the source will not incur additional metadata reads.

Dremio Configuration

General

Connection

Name	Description
Host	SQL Server host name.
Port	(Optional) SQL Server port number. If you do not specify a port number, SQL Server is queried to retrieve the port that the named instance is listening on.
Database	(Optional) Database name

Authentication

Authentication Type includes:

• No authentication
• Master Authentication.
  • Username -- SQL Server user name.
  • Password -- SQL Server password.

Advanced Options

• Show only the initial database used for connecting: If selected, hides the other DBs that the credential has access to.
• Record fetch size: Number of records to fetch at once. Set to 0 (zero) to have Dremio automatically decide. Default: 10
• Maximum idle connections: The total number of connections allowed to be idle at a given time. By default, this is set to 8.
• Connection idle time (s): The amount of time (in seconds) allowed for a connection to remain idle before the connection is terminated. By default, this is set to 60.
• Query timeout: The amount of time (in seconds) allowed to wait for the results of a query. If this time expires, the connection being used is returned to an idle state.
• Enable legacy dialect

Reflection Refresh

• Never refresh -- Specifies how often to refresh based on hours, days, weeks, or never.
• Never expire -- Specifies how often to expire based on hours, days, weeks, or never.

Metadata

Dataset Handling

• Remove dataset definitions if underlying data is unavailable (Default).
  If this box is not checked and the underlying files under a folder are removed or the folder/source is not accessible, Dremio does not remove the dataset definitions. This option is useful in cases when files are temporarily deleted and put back in place with new sets of files.

Metadata Refresh

• Dataset Discovery -- Refresh interval for top-level source object names such as names of DBs and tables.
  • Fetch every -- Specify fetch time based on minutes, hours, days, or weeks. Default: 1 hour
• Dataset Details -- The metadata that Dremio needs for query planning such as information needed for fields, types, shards, statistics, and locality.
  • Fetch mode -- Specify either Only Queried Datasets, All Datasets, or As Needed. Default: Only Queried Datasets
    • Only Queried Datasets -- Dremio updates details for previously queried objects in a source.
      This mode increases query performance because less work is needed at query time for these datasets.
    • All Datasets -- Dremio updates details for all datasets in a source. This mode increases query performance because less work is needed at query time.
    • As Needed -- Dremio updates details for a dataset at query time. This mode minimized metadata queries on a source when not used, but might lead to longer planning times.
  • Fetch every -- Specify fetch time based on minutes, hours, days, or weeks. Default: 1 hour
  • Expire after -- Specify expiration time based on minutes, hours, days, or weeks. Default: 3 hours

Sharing

You can specify which users can edit. Options include:

• All users can edit.
• Specific users can edit.

Running Queries Directly on SQL Server Through Dremio

Dremio users can run pass queries through Dremio to run on SQL Server. Doing so can sometimes decrease query execution times. For more information, see Querying Relational-Database Sources Directly.

For More Information

• See SQL Server Data Types for information about mapping to Dremio data types.