Friday, August 26, 2011

SQLBI - Marco Russo : DateTool dimension: an alternative Time Intelligence implementation

 

If the number of blog comments signifies how important a subject is, this blog post takes the cake.

The built-in time intelligence features (YTD, Y/Y, etc) of Analysis Services don’t work very well.

Enter DateTool dimension: an alternative Time Intelligence implementation

SQLBI - Marco Russo : DateTool dimension: an alternative Time Intelligence implementation

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Monday, August 22, 2011

Reporting Services SharePoint Integration in SQL Server Denali - Prologika (Teo Lachev's Weblog) - Prologika Forums

 

In SQL Server Denali, Reporting Services leverages the SharePoint service application infrastructure and it doesn't require installing a Reporting Services server. Not only this simplifies setup but improves performance because there is no round-tripping between SharePoint and report server anymore. Configuring Reporting Services for SharePoint integration mode is a simple process that requires the following steps:

Reporting Services SharePoint Integration in SQL Server Denali - Prologika (Teo Lachev's Weblog) - Prologika Forums

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Monday, August 15, 2011

Analysis Services Best Practise Analyser

I think it’s Best Practice but whatever, looks interesting…

Analysis Services Best Practise Analyser (SqlAsBpa for short) is a tool which checks your live Microsoft Sql Server Analysis Services 2005 against some important best practises, and reports items which violate these best practises.

Analysis Services Best Practise Analyser

Friday, August 12, 2011

Microsoft SQL Server Community Samples: Analysis Services

Resmon exposes the Analysis Services 2008 DMVs as a cube, which could help expose performance problems and find resolution.

With Analysis Services 2008 and later, data from dynamic management views can be retrieved with SQL query syntax as described here. Therefore, it is possible to build an Analysis Services cube which uses Analysis Services DMV SQL queries as the data source.
The ResMon cube rolls up information about Analysis Services such as memory usage by object, perfmon counters, aggregation hits/misses, and current session stats.

Microsoft SQL Server Community Samples: Analysis Services

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Tuesday, August 02, 2011

RogerNoble.com

RogerNoble.com: "I needed to un-pivot the values for each month in order to be able to map it to the actual days in the month so I can have a count measure. In addition I also needed to duplicate each row twice as each also represented an ‘In’ and an ‘Out’ transaction. At first glance it would seem that the simple solution calls for some sort of cursor, but having recently seen Jeff Moden’s talk on Numbers Tables at the SQL PASS Summit 2010 I decided instead to solve it using a numbers table but also apply the same logic to the date dimension table that was already in the warehouse. (Jeff has written a great post here: http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/T-SQL/62867/ which pretty much covers what he talked about)"

Interesting approach to using CROSS APPLY and a numbers table to distribute and pivot budget data.

Windows: How To Compact A Dynamic VHD

Windows: How To Compact A Dynamic VHD: "This becomes a problem if you make use of multiple VHDs because you are essentially wasting space on files that no longer exist. The solution is to Compact the VHD using Diskpart a tool provided with Windows.."

I have a Hyper-V Windows 2008/Sharepoint 2010 VHD which I am dual-booting from Windows 7. Works great once the memory is beefed up to 8gb. However, during execution the VHD mysteriously expands to 132GB. After shutting down it comes back to a more reasonable(?) 55GB.

Might not be applicable in this scenario, but for those who want to shrink a VHD file without the Hyper-V manager, see above.

Monday, August 01, 2011

Recovery Made Simple: Oracle Flashback Query | Oracle FAQ

Windows has had a recycle bin since Version 3.1, perhaps even earlier.  Even DOS had an undelete command.  How come SQL requires you to restore from backup, assuming a backup even exists?

The Oracle feature, Flashback, just sold me on using Oracle for a solution requiring high availability and uptime, provided the budget is there...  Not sure what a red query has anything to do with it though.

Sometimes it is a rouge query, sometimes a simple data clean up effort by the users, whatever may the cause be, inadvertent data-loss is a very common phenomenon. Backup and recovery capabilities are provided by the database management systems which ensure the safety and protection of valuable enterprise data in case of data loss however, not all data-loss situations call for a complete and tedious recovery exercise from the backup. Oracle introduced flashback features in Oracle 9i and 10g to address simple data recovery needs.

Recovery Made Simple: Oracle Flashback Query | Oracle FAQ

Drawing a logo or diagram using SQL spatial data | Purple Frog Systems

Spatial data in SQL 2008 R2 allows you to create freeform diagrams in your Reporting Services Reports.  Some interesting possibilities here with data-driven diagrams.  For instance, what stores on a mall map generate the most traffic?  What part of an automobile has the most frequent damage replacements?  What part of the body is most affected by a lab test? 

The ability to flag these shapes with red/yellow/green traffic lighting makes it a cool proposition for some deep visual reporting.

My session is about using SSRS, SQL spatial data and DMVs to visualise SSAS OLAP cube structures and generate real-time automated cube documentation (blog post here if you want to know more…).

This shows an unusual use for spatial data, drawing diagrams instead of the usual demonstrations which are pretty much always displaying sales by region on a map etc. Whilst writing my demos, it got me thinking – why not use spatial data to draw even more complex pictures, diagrams or logos…

Drawing a logo or diagram using SQL spatial data | Purple Frog Systems