Deepthi Goguri's SQL Server Blog

Byte Size Thought: Breaking the Spell of Unquestioned Beliefs

March 12, 2026March 13, 2026 by Deepthi Goguri, posted in Byte Size Thoughts

Suddenly one random day, we are born and by the time we learn to smile, we are introduced to our first words, mama and papa. Beautiful, right?

By the time you learn to crawl and then walk, you are slowly taught where to step and how far you can walk.

By the age of three, you are already into learning what good behavior is and what is not.

By the age of five, school taught you how to obey, how not to question back, and how to ask permission to do anything before actually doing it. Within the limits of what knowledge has been shared in the school, credits and grades are given based on how well you do on the given test. If you get good grades, awesome. You are loved by your teachers and by other kids.

You are taught what to think and not how to think.

If you obey each and every rule, you are obedient and a kind person. If you live on your terms, that’s bad and irresponsible. You spend all your school with the mindset of learn what is taught, take exams, get good grades, play if you get some additional time, eat, sleep, repeat.

But as per elders say, once you complete the school and get good grades, you end up in great college and so you can be happy for the rest of your life. So, you get good grades and end up in so called great university. You expect to be happy but all you see is a pileup of reading material and the complexity of exams only went to next level.

Well, elders come again and say, college days are always tough, but only if you could do your undergrad, you will be just fine, like something is already wrong at the current state. So, you believe something is fundamentally wrong with you. You believe that there is a road that needs to be travelled so you can end up in a place where happiness awaits you.

You are taught all your life, starting with your name, the place and the country you were born, the culture you are born into, which religion you should follow, what can and cannot be done in your culture, what is considered good and bad in your culture, and how to behave depending on whether you are a girl or a boy.

We trusted every bit of information we were told but never questioned any because we started learning even before we were able to speak, since childhood. We can’t even ask any questions at the time. So, we followed. We followed and believed everything all along, and are so used to believing everything we have been taught. Without even knowing, we have fallen into the trap of the belief system that society has created even before we were born.

If we are deep down into these belief systems, we will be living all our lives in that small bubble, never questioning if what we believe is actually true in the first place.

Question everything. Until you see the truth yourself, everything should be questioned.

I have been questioning a lot for a couple of years and realized some things in life. I do not want to keep this to myself, but I wanted to share with my community here. So, I started this blog series called “Byte Size Thought”. In this series, you will see all my crazy thoughts in a short format. These are general, random feelings I would like to share with you all. I hope you will love it, and we can all learn from each other by questioning and staying curious to see things clearly.

Do not be afraid to stand alone, fearing the tribe. Once you start seeing things clearly, True Freedom begins!

That’s all from me for today. Thank you for reading!

Power BI January 2026 Update Enforces Stricter Certificate Validation

March 12, 2026March 13, 2026 by Deepthi Goguri, posted in Solutions

When trying to connect to a SQL database within Power BI Desktop January 2026 met with certificate chain trust error when trying to connect to the SQL Database using database DNS. Below is the error:

Microsoft SQL: A connection was successfully established with the server, but then an error occurred during the login process. (provider: SSL Provider, error: 0 – The certificate chain was issued by an authority that is not trusted.)”

Recently, after we applied the January 2026 Power BI Report Server update, we received several complaints from our developers building reports that they are having issues connecting to on-premises SQL Servers. After digging into the issue, I found that Power BI automatically attempts to encrypt connections (even when SQL Server is set to “Force Encryption=NO”, which is the option we had on the SQL Servers). We use CNAME entries for each database to have its own DNS name entry. For this reason, we didn’t create the SSL certificate. We can only chose one certificate per instance of SQL Server and in the case of having multiple database DNS entries, this option is not possible. Because of not having the certificate assigned to SQL Server, connection isn’t trusted on client machines where the Power BI Desktop is hosted. so the connection fails.

There is also no option shown in the Power BI Desktop advanced options to check the box for Trust Server Certificate. The kind we have in SQL Server Management Studio.

So, how do you resolve this when you can’t install the certificate on the SQL Server? There is a way we can resolve this. We can add the environment variable on all the client windows machines using the PowerBI Desktop.

I have found these steps on Microsoft website (please see the resources section down below) but I didn’t understand why we were seeing these issues all of a sudden after the January update. I contacted Microsoft support and they mentioned it that with Jan 2026 update, the connections are enforcing strict certificate validation. So, here I am following their suggestion.

Steps

Connect to the Windows machine. In the search bar at the bottom > search settings > system > about > Advanced system settings > Environmental variables

Click on the New under the Environment Variables > create new variable with name PBI_SQL_TRUSTED_SERVERS. In the variable value (usually, the value shown in your datasource of the direct query report)- give the FQDN (example – mysvr.microsoft.com) or Servernames seperated by commas (example – contososql, contososql2) or Machinename with the * at the end if you want to include all the SQL Server instances on the machine (example – contososql* which includes contososqlinstance1, contososqlinstance2 and so on). Click OK.

Repeat the same by creating the same variable with value in the System Variables too. Click OK.

Restart the Power BI Report Server and now try to connect to the report and you should be able to open it.

Set this environment variable on Windows machines using the powershell script to make the process simple.

In Windows PowerShell, type this in the console and hit enter. [System.Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable(‘PBI_SQL_TRUSTED_SERVERS’,’*.contoso.com’, ‘User’)

Restart Power BI Desktop

This will help connect normally. Works on all your machines including Jan 2026 versions.

Test this on one machine first, then you can deploy via Group Policy for all affected machines. With the January 2026 update, Power BI enforces stricter certificate validation. When using SQL Server 2022 with Server DNS or AG listeners, the server certificate must match the DNS name exactly. Earlier versions allowed this without strict checks, so this is a security change. If the database DNS are used, adding the environmental variable is the best option.

Resources:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-query/connectors/sql-server#limitations-and-considerations

Thank you for reading!

T-SQL Tuesday #196: My Boldest Career Moves

March 10, 2026 by Deepthi Goguri, posted in T-SQL Tuesday

Thanks, James Serra for hosting March month of T-SQL Tuesday! You can find the invitation here.

There are some life-changing decisions I had to make in my life, sometimes willingly and sometimes for the good, even when my heart doesn’t want to, but for the greater good. I would like to share here some of the decisions that made a major impact on my life.

From Pharamcist to Computer Technology

I am not a science person at all. I had to become a pharmacist for my Dad’s wish. With all the love in the world, my dad wanted me to chose a career which I hated. He only wished me well and sincerely thought I would have a better life if I could pursue a career in science. He regrets it now, but I know how much my Father loves me, so I forgave him. I learnt a lot through the journey though. I changed my career later and applied to do my master’s degree in Computer Technology here in the USA. For the first time ever, I learnt SQL in my Master’s degree. I loved it, and I decided to become a Database Administrator. Here I am, I love the work I do. This decision was not easy for me. Not knowing if I will be able to survive in technology, I made a decision that changed my career forever. At the time, the only thing that was running in my mind was I had only one choice and I need to take the leap. If I fail, I fail, but there is no going back. I applied to many universities, many rejected me as there is no link between pharmacy and Computers. Universities don’t want to take the science students into computers. One professor, Peter Ping Liu, understood my problem and stood as my Ally. He believed that I can survive with hard work and gave me a chance. I can never forget him in my life. He was my first Ally. Thank you so much, Professor Liu.

From Introvert to International Speaker

I am an Introvert even now. I like spending time alone and do great in 1:1 interactions, but I struggle to speak in front of large groups. At the darkest times in my professional career, I had to choose to speak just to regain my confidence. The New Stars of Data conference by Ben Weissman and William Durkin gave me the opportunity to speak for the first time. I had low self-esteem during that time, and I didn’t know how to stand up for myself. I didn’t have words to share what I was going through at the time. Speaking was not something that I willingly chose; it was just a way out of the struggles I faced due to a toxic manager from my previous company. I vigorously presented day and night at user groups throughout the world. It was mostly virtual, but each time I presented, I picked up a piece of my lost self. At least, I thought that way. When you have no other choice, you choose to gain strength from anything that will help you survive. At the time, speaking was my breath.

From Chaos to Inner Journey

I always felt something was missing, but didnt know what it was and I didn’t dare to look into myself. There comes a phase in life for many of us where we want to literally run from ourselves because of the internal conflict. I tried running away from myself all the time. Anytime I felt any uncomfortable emotion, I always tried to find a temporary escape, like eating, to escape the feeling of anxiety. I used to ruminate on the things I don’t have any control over. I had enough running away from myself and there came a point where I decided not to. I decided to look within myself. It was a scary place I never wanted to visit but I slowly tapped into looking inward to face my wounds. Trust me when I tell you this, I was not able to stay a few minutes with myself. I tried this multiple times to be able to sit with myself for few minutes. This is an endless journey but I was able to meet my inner child, who was struggling to get love. This was the no.1 bold move in my life, to look into myself. Though this internal journey is chaos but for the first time in my life, I am attending to myself. It may take years, decades and heck, it may take my whole life but it is totally worth it. If not us, who will understand us better than ourselves?

This was an emotional post from me. I hope you understand. I am being very vulnerable here, and I don’t mind sharing how I feel.

Well, that’s all from me today. Thank you for reading!

Microsoft Power BI Report Server January 2026 Update- Issue and the Fix

March 2, 2026March 2, 2026 by Deepthi Goguri, posted in Solutions

Deepthi Goguri

Deepthi is the Founder of dbanuggets and a SQL Database Administrator. As a Microsoft MVP, she helps SQL communities by sharing her expertise in resolving SQL Server problems globally.

I recently updated all the PowerBI Report Servers to the January 2026 update. You can find the download link here and the feature summary here.

Picture Source

I first updated the lower environments and then prod, but since most of the reports were used only in production, I didn’t see the issue coming. So, the issue with this release was that crash dump files were generated in the logfiles (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Power BI Report Server\PBIRS\LogFiles).

Excessive Crash Dump files generated in the logfile folder

Due to the Excessive Crash Dump files generated on two nodes of the cluster (two-node scale-out deployment), the D drive, where these logfiles are generated filled up the space very quickly. We deleted the files manually until we had a quick fix for the issue.

I had contacted Microsoft support for help on this issue. They suggested to update the configuration file (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Power BI Report Server\PBIRS\LogFiles\ASEngine\msmdsrv)for the flag from <CreateAndSendCrashReports>1</CreateAndSendCrashReports> to <CreateAndSendCrashReports>0</CreateAndSendCrashReports> to stop creating these dumps. After making this change, I restarted the PowerBI Report Services. I made this change to both the nodes.

I didn’t see any crash dumps generated after making the change.

After that, Microsoft also reported the issue, and they released the fix mentioned on the Microsoft website here. You can download the February 25, 2026 release from here.

Before updating your PowerBI Report Servers, make sure to follow the steps below. All the steps below are needed in case you need to roll back the change.

Take a snapshot of the Server if it is a VM
Take a backup copy of rsreportserver.config file located C:\Program Files\Microsoft Power BI Report Server\PBIRS\ReportServer folder
Take a full backup of ReportServer and ReportServerTempDB database (Both database backups are a must if you need to revert back the update)
Take the backup of the encryption key and store the secret in a safe location for later use. I usually save it in Secret Server.

Summary:

Roll back plan is really important during situations like this. I had to update the update documentation with all the steps I mentioned above just in case if we had issues with the updates and we need to have a fix immediately. In this case, Microsoft provided the quick fix but what if it takes time for the fix to be released and the only way to roll back? Without the proper backups, rollback will be impossible.

That’s all from me for today. Thank you for reading!

T-SQL Tuesday #190 – Learning a Technical Skill

September 9, 2025September 9, 2025 by Deepthi Goguri, posted in T-SQL Tuesday

Deepthi Goguri

Deepthi is the Founder of dbanuggets and a SQL Database Administrator. As a Microsoft MVP, she helps SQL communities by sharing her expertise in resolving SQL Server problems globally.

September 2025 Month of T-SQL Tuesday is hosted by Todd Kleinhans, asking us to write about “Mastering a Technical Skill”. Thank you Todd for hosting this month of T-SQL Tuesday.

I would like to write about my learning about Microsoft Fabric recently. I have been a Database Administrator all my career and recently started learning Fabric by signing up to Amit Chandak’s Microsoft Fabric Bootcamp.

I really appreciate Amit for doing this for the community. This bootcamp is totally free and has been taught both in English and Hindi (the Indian national language). We can also access all the videos on Amit’s YouTube channel here.

Since I registered for this boot camp, I have had the chance to watch a couple of sessions about Fabric and am looking forward to catching up with the rest of the ongoing sessions. It is always good to learn about the technology that you are already familiar with, but want to go deeper into learning more about. I have been working with Power BI and Fabric for quite some time, but I am more into the administrative side of things. I believe listening to experts through the community-led bootcamps is an excellent way to learn a new or existing technical skill and get good at it.

There is always something new to learn in fast-moving technology, and having resources like these bootcamps is a great way to learn from experts. Not only bootcamps, but many online free conferences are going on throughout the year, and it is a great way to take advantage of these resources to learn new technologies.

By the way, I am one of the co-organizers for the upcoming free online conferences- Future Data Driven Summit (September 24th) and DataBash 2025 (September 27th). If you are interested in learning new technologies or you would like to dive deep into the topics that you are already familiar with, I highly suggest you register for these conferences. If you would like to know more about the topics and speakers, please visit the website to learn more.

I am happy to write this T-SQL Tuesday post, and thanks to Todd for the invitation!

Thank you for reading!

T-SQL Tuesday #181 – SQL Database in Microsoft Fabric

December 10, 2024December 10, 2024 by Deepthi Goguri, posted in T-SQL Tuesday

Thanks to Kevin Chant for inviting us to write this month’s T-SQL Tuesday. This month is special, as Kevin mentioned due to the Festive Tech Calendar, which I have been speaking about for a couple of years now. Every day of the December month, a new recording or a blog post will be released for you to view. If you are not following their youtube channel yet, you must subscribe to get the wealth of information on the latest and the greatest features in Microsoft space.

As Kevin invited us to write about our most exciting feature, I would love to write about the SQL Database in Fabric.

Note: This is a new feature that was announced in the Microsoft Ignite 2024 in November.

As per Microsoft docs,

“SQL database in Microsoft Fabric is a developer-friendly transactional database, based on Azure SQL Database, that allows you to easily create your operational database in Fabric. A SQL database in Fabric uses the same SQL Database Engine as Azure SQL Database.”

As you read, this is a transactional database that can be created in fabric and can be replicated to Data Lake for the analytical workloads. The other main goal is to help build AI apps faster using the SQL Databases in Fabric. The data is replicated in near real time and converted to Parquet, in an analytics-ready format. This database can be shared with different users without giving them the access to the workspaces but giving the access to the database will automatically give them the access to the SQL analytics endpoint and associated default semantic model. You can use the SQL database in Fabric for the data engineering and data science purposes. The other cool thing is, you can use the built-in git repository to manage your SQL database.

As you know Microsoft Fabric is a software as a service (SaaS) platform that combines data engineering, data science, and data warehousing into a unified analytics solution for enterprises. All of these services within the fabric can access the SQL Database in Fabric through the Data Lake for analytical purposes.

This feature is in Public preview now. You can test the SQL Database in Fabric for free for 60 Days. You need to have a fabric capacity.

Make sure to Enable SQL database in Fabric using Admin Portal tenant settings. For more details, you can follow this Microsoft doc.

You can query the database in fabric using the query editor, SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), sqlcmd, bcp utility and GitHub Copilot.

As this is a new feature, there are resources available on Microsoft Reactor youtube channel. There are series of videos being released by this channel since couple of days ago. Please look below for the list of the videos and dates they are released:

You can find the first video here

For more information, do not forget to read these blogs from Anna Hoffman and Slindsay

Resources:

Microsoft docs

Thank you for reading!

T-SQL Tuesday #178 Invitation – Recent Technical Issue You Resolved

September 3, 2024September 16, 2024 by Deepthi Goguri, posted in T-SQL Tuesday

Deepthi Goguri

Deepthi is the Founder of dbanuggets and a SQL Database Administrator. As a Microsoft MVP, she helps SQL communities by sharing her expertise in resolving SQL Server problems globally.

I am honored to invite you all to the September Month of T-SQL Tuesday blog party!

If you are new here and want to be part of the blog party every month, learn all about T-SQL Tuesday here.

Have you had any recent technological problems at work that you were able to fix? You might have tried very hard for days to figure out the answer to the technical issue you faced, but it turns out that a minor modification you made may have resolved the issue. Alternatively, the error message you see might be completely different from the solution you adopted to resolve the issue. Please blog for me about any problem, no matter how big or minor, that you may have encountered lately. I’d like to see all kinds of issues you’ve faced and how you fixed them.

I’ll share my latest experience here.

The DEV and UAT migrations for the SSRS migration project I was working on recently went well, but when we opened the webpage URL, we noticed the following HTTP address problem. ReportServer services servers and databases are housed on separate servers. The servers were set up correctly, the SSRS service delegation was established, and the Report Server service accounts had the appropriate rights to the Report Server databases. Days passed before I was able to work with the Server team member to resolve the problem—that is, we missed creating an SPN for the Report Service server using the Server name. The problem was fixed by adding the SPN made for the service using HTTP and the Servername. We also had to change the authentication configuration file to RSWindowsNegotiate instead of RSWindowsNTLM.

Until this problem was resolved, we had seen weird errors from an application running the reports, testing the data sources showed the login failure error message – “Login failed for user ‘NT AUTHORITY\ANONYMOUS LOGON'”.

This article really helped us pinpoint the issue.

Kindly submit your piece by Tuesday, September 10th, and leave a comment below. Also, post it to your social media platforms like Linkedin and Twitter with a hashtag #tsql2sday.

I’m excited to read posts from many SQL Family members.

T-SQL Tuesday 177: Managing Database Code

August 13, 2024September 16, 2024 by Deepthi Goguri, posted in T-SQL Tuesday

Deepthi Goguri

Deepthi is the Founder of dbanuggets and a SQL Database Administrator. As a Microsoft MVP, she helps SQL communities by sharing her expertise in resolving SQL Server problems globally.

Thank you Mala for hosting T-SQL Tuesday for August month. Mala asked us to write about the Database version control and what tools we use to manage our database code. Please find the original invite here.

Earlier in my career as a DBA, the database code was managed with comments in the code to know who changed what, when, and the purpose of the change. It was tough to manage the code since many developers forgot to put in these comments properly. This is not a reliable way to maintain the code.

Then we decided to use the source control. Version control is where your changes in the code are tracked over time as versions. If in case you need to roll back to the previous version, you have the correct version in place as a point-in-time snapshot to retrieve that version back to rollback with much ease. Version control also helps with the collaboration of work by multiple developers working on the same project. There were several tools in the market. You can find the list here.

We used Redgate Source Control with the DevOps Git repository. Redgate Source control is a plugin you use in the SSMS tool. It will connect your databases to the source control systems like Git, TFS etc; Install the Redagte SQL source control tool from here.

We created a Project in the DevOps and select the version control as Git. We then initialize the main branch using the visual studio and clone the branch using the visual studio to local folder. We then connect the SQL database to the source control by connecting to the local folder. This will link the database to the source control. The initial commit will help us push the objects into the source control.

We can also use the Azure DevOps to create CI/CD pipelines to push the changes to each environment before committing the code into production. To find out what the CI/CD pipeline is, please read this Microsoft article.

I have described it very briefly here in this blog post about the database code solution we used but this is a wide topic to learn.

To learn about Azure DevOps implementing continuous integration using DevOps, check the Microsoft learn series here.

I am looking forward to reading the experiences of other SQL Community members regarding their journey with database source control.

Thank you for reading!

May 2024 Power BI Report Server update – Fix “We couldn’t connect to the Analysis Services Server”

July 31, 2024September 16, 2024 by Deepthi Goguri, posted in Solutions

Deepthi Goguri

Deepthi is the Founder of dbanuggets and a SQL Database Administrator. As a Microsoft MVP, she helps SQL communities by sharing her expertise in resolving SQL Server problems globally.

We recently updated our Power BI Report Server with a May 2024 update. Found that we were unable to open any reports using direct query. Paginated reports were all working fine. This also doesn’t apply to any reports using the import mode. We were not having this issue when using the Power BI desktop but only on the web page.

Below is the error message shown when opening the reports using direct query.

I had to check with my Community friends first as I was searching online if any others had the same issue. James Reeves, one of my community friends pointed me to resolution steps by sharing this medium article. Thank you to my friend.

As per my company standard procedures to contact Microsoft support for any issues, I have open a ticket with them to get action steps for resolution. They helped me resolve the issue. I promised them that I will be writing a blog post about how we resolved this issue so anyone having the same issue will have an idea of the resolution steps to this error.

When you check the Change log for Power BI Report Server, Version: 1.20.8910.25479 (build 15.0.1115.165), Released: May 28, 2024 release notes mentioned about the security change made during this update to add the environment variable and system variable on the Power BI Report Server machine.

Steps

Connect to your Power BI Report Server. In the search bar at the bottom > search settings > system > about > Advance system settings > Environmental variables

Repeat the same by creating the same variable with value in the System Variables too. Click OK.

Restart the Power BI Report Server and now try to connect to the report and you should be able to open it.

Also, do not forget to read the limitations to Connect to SQL Server database from Power Query Online here.

Thank you for reading!

T-SQL Tuesday #174: My Favorite Job Interview Question

May 14, 2024September 16, 2024 by Deepthi Goguri, posted in T-SQL Tuesday

Deepthi Goguri

Deepthi is the Founder of dbanuggets and a SQL Database Administrator. As a Microsoft MVP, she helps SQL communities by sharing her expertise in resolving SQL Server problems globally.

Loved this question asked by Kevin Feasel for this month of T-SQL Tuesday, so here I am to write this post before this day ends. Please find the invitation here.

First, I would like to talk about my entire amazing interview process as a whole. It was multiple layers of interviews – Starting with my HR, my manager, and IT Director, interviews with all the DBA team members in sets of two per interview, and Cultural ad interviews with multiple teams focusing on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

By looking at the list, are you already stressed? I felt the same when I was sent an email from HR with this list of interviews scheduled but I can say this is one of the best interview processes I have seen in my entire career. I had a chance to talk to each of the members I potentially work with if I were the chosen one for the position. My team members all the way to my Director. I have never seen any interview with a Director for a database administration position. This has to do completely with the Culture of the company and a clear example of how each of the potential employees are valuable to them.

I really appreciate all the companies who take real care in interviewing the best candidates for the position.

Coming to the best interview question from the same company – An interview with DBA’s. They asked me how I could manage my work and community work at the same time and how I find time to do all the community work apart from my work. They asked me if I rest and take time for myself. To be very sincere, I became emotional when they asked me this question. They asked me about my emotional well-being. I was all prepared technically and was ready to answer technical questions and hearing this come from them (Who are Experts in the Database Administration field) melted my heart. I was not expecting this at all. We also had technical discussions and it was a great interview with each of the DBA team members.

At the end of this interview (which was the final interview round), I made sure I let the interviewers know how wonderful the interview process was and I appreciated them for giving me the best time ever. I also let them know that this interview process was the best in my entire career. To be very sincere, I was not making up the words to impress the interviewers. I had enough experience to find another job if I was not selected for the role but I sincerely wanted to appreciate the entire team and the company for giving me the best experience ever.

Best of the Best, I am currently working here ❤

Thanks to Kevin for asking us to write on this topic. Really appreciate it.

Looking forward to reading the posts from other SQL Family members.

Thanks for reading!