For many years now, I have been an advocate of “skill-based” or “performance-based” certifications which involve actually performing the tasks of the job in order to prove you are qualified. A simple concept. Now Microsoft have joined the bandwagon, which is great… Read more
Since I started talking about licensing again in my previous blog, I thought I’d follow that up with some scenarios from the Microsoft web site. Of course, Microsoft supports multiple releases of SQL Server so the story may be different depending on the release you are under. Read more
When I teach a SQL Server Reporting Services class, the question always comes up about licensing and scaling out your implementation in the production environment. The answer is, as always, “it depends”. I am not a big fan of studying licensing agreements, mainly because they are usually arbitrary, mostly contrary to the technical implementation and they also change like the wind. But people come to class expecting to save money with SSRS compared to Crystal Reports, so here goes… Read more
In a recent training session one of my students let me know about a cool web site hosted by Microsoft for developers – www.msdev.com . This is a collective web site for all Virtual labs and Web Seminars making it easy to get the latest info on Microsoft technology including SQL Server. Read more
In a previous blog entry I talked about the Sliding Window partitioning scenario. I even tried to involve Gwyneth Paltrow in a SQL Server Blog which is no mean feat. (When you teach classes over the internet you have to think of original ways of gaining students' attention). Read more
One of the great new features of SQL Server 2008 is data compression which actually reduces storage and speeds up access due to less IO – a surprising combination. Normally compression strategies mean poor performance trade-offs, but not here. SSMS 2008 also has a useful wizard to help us decide on the level of compression we can choose. Read more
This week the Wimbledon Tennis Championships are on again in London and I remember being inspired to write a blog entry on Spatial data types during that great Mens final last year. Is this possible? A segue from Wimbledon to SQL Server? It got me thinking about some of my blog entries on Sports and SQL Server. Let's take a look at a few...
The Boston Marathon now supports text alerts through SQL Server...
Boston Marathon - Text Alerts from Heartbreak Hill! Read more
Data Partitioning is a very useful feature in SQL Server 2005 and beyond. I have discussed this database feature in previous blog entries but it is also available in SQL Server Analysis Services which has its own features. For instance, you can mix and match storage options by partition. Very useful…
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I have worked with SQL Server for many years now, back to Sybase SQL Server days and there has always been confusion over Logins and Users. Even though they typically use the same name they are separate objects. Newcomers to SQL Server always seem to confuse the two. Let's take a look....
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One of the great new features of SSMS 2008 is the new debug facility. Query Analyzer had a stored procedure debug facility in SQL Server 2000 but it was not transferred when SQL Server 2005 combined Enterprise Manager and Query Analyzer. This was one feature that slipped through the cracks and went missing. We had to switch to Visual Studio and debug our stored procedures there. But Microsoft has rectified this missing feature with SSMS 2008 so we don’t have to switch to Visual Studio in order to debug our Transact-SQL code. Read more
If you are still working on SQL Server 2000 (as many of our customers are), here's another reason to upgrade to a newer version. One area that has improved vastly is file-level security. SQL Server 2005 introduced inheritance of permissions. Let’s take a look.
In SQL Server 2000, if all you wanted to do was to give Execute permissions to a set of stored procedures in a database to a particular user or role, you had to grant that permission to each and every stored procedure individually. This was a pain.
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When we encountered excessive blocking issues with reports, one tempting solution was to use the WITH NOLOCK table hint to get the report running smoothly and avoid blocking behavior completely. However, since SQL Server 2005 there is a better solution using Snapshot technology. As always, there is good news and bad news. Which do you want first?
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In these tough economic times almost all organizations are cutting back on expenses. Often the first line-item to go by the wayside is training. When you work for an IT training company you feel this first hand. However, much of the cost of employee training involves travel expenses like flights, hotels, meals etc. For this reason, we’re seeing many of our customers switch to the virtual classroom. Same training, same instructors, no travel, less cost, more green.
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SQL Server Profiler has always been a great tool for tracing activity “under the hood” on a SQL Server and assessing its performance. One feature that helps us quickly set up a trace on our current connection is new in SSMS 2008, namely “Trace Query in SQL Server Profiler”. Let’s take a look.
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Previously, I blogged about Server time dimensions. This is where a time dimension table is generated automatically on the Analysis Server instead of having to be created manually in the Data Warehouse. Well, what if you want the automatic generation but you still want the table to be part of the Data Warehouse? Enter SQL Server 2008…
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When designing a Data Warehouse we usually create a dedicated Time dimension table so that our Business Analysts can analyze the data by Year by Quarter by Month or whatever time period they require. It is our responsibility to create and populate that dimension table in the Data Warehouse. However, Analysis Services can build a time dimension table for you, called a Server time dimension. Let’s take a look.
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One new feature in SQL Server Management Studio 2008 is the ability to restrict changes that would force a table to be re-created. This is a safety valve which can be turned off, if you choose. Let’s take a look…
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I saw a great movie recently called “The Great Buck Howard” starring John Malkovich. He is portraying the Amazing Kreskin of the 70’s and always starts his “mentalism” show with “I love this town!”.
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