SQL 2008 launched a few months ago... and left Reporting Services developers in the dust.
Good things will come to those that wait.
The current target date for a control that can read the 2008 RDL schema is currently the first calendar quarter of 2009. These dates can and are subject to change.
Notes from a former certification blogger.
I really recommend that you subscribe to Born to Learn.
Ask Ken why it's called Born to Learn, while you're over there.
The first stop for MCP, certification, or exam help continues to be your regional helpdesk: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/support/worldsites.mspx, as you know. The MCP newsletter is still the best, official way to get news about the program and exams: Subscription info. And don't forget the other great bloggers in Microsoft learning--if you get stuck somewhere, check in with one of these people or teams:
- Gerry: Developer Certification
- Mike: E-Learning
- Beta exams
- The Microsoft Learning web site
- Jeff: Developer Courseware
- Juliana: Microsoft Press
- ILT – Courseware Team: Instructor-Led Training
- Bill: MCT and Trainer Readiness
While I'm at it, I thought I'd answer some of your other, recent questions, too, in a little Q&A.
Where to start when dealing with certifications
Before writing this article, I posed a question to many certified individuals. The question I asked was, “What was the hardest part of your certification journey?” You would expect to hear that the hardest part was the exam(s) themselves. However, many people responded that the most difficult challenge was that they simply did not know how or where to start. They would describe how they heard of a certification, bought a book and started studying. There was no research performed, no plan established, and no evaluation afterword to debrief and learn from the experience.
Seven Steps to Certification Success : Training and Certification : Learning : Microsoft Forums
SpaceObServer - The Complete Disk Usage Management Solution
V3.3.2
SpaceObServer is a powerful and flexible hard disk space manager for Windows. It scans local and network drives using a background service and stores their structure, sizes and properties in an SQL database. In an Explorer-like user interface the collected data can be viewed and browsed in hierarchical or tabular views, 3D bar, pie, line charts and tree maps. Using the archived data you are able to track the development of the space usage from past to present, and forecast future size usage. A flexible file search, with predefined searches for very big, old or obsolete files allows filtering and listing files directly from the database. A duplicate file search is also included.
JAM Software - SpaceObServer - The Hard Disk Space Manager with Database Storage
Can you believe there are people who would charge you for a barcode font like this?
What to do if you need to roll back \ undo your virtualized client
Use the Force - To get the server and workspace versions in sync again perform a get using the force option.
OR
If you are using Hyper-V a better solution is to put your workspace on a drive that is offline to the host OS (Windows 2008) but known to the Hyper-V machine. You have to disassociate this offline drive from the Hyper-V machine before you do the rollback and re-attach afterwards. This keeps the rollback from affecting the workspace drive, leaving your workspace files the same.
SQL-RD saves time and money by allowing you to schedule and manage MS SQL Reporting Services Reports on numerous servers from a single application. It exports your RS reports to multiple printers, FTP, Secure FTP, email, folders, FAX and SMS. Choose to output to doc, xls, rtf, wk*, dbf, htm, mhtm, pdf and more. Use standard frequencies like daily, weekly, mothly, or set up your own custom calendars and exception calendars. Dynamic schedules provide an unmatched feature for linking and automating reports, data and destinations. It integrates seamlessly with Outlook and Exchange Server. Use Event-Based schedules (triggers) to fully automate your business processes whether they are report-related or not. SQL-RD features a feature-rich intuitive user interface, Folder Housekeeping, Clustering, PDF, PGP, Excel and Zip security, and an NT (Windows) service scheduler. It is fully compatible with SSRS 2000 and SSRS 2005.
To have a more ideally sized VLF, consider creating the transaction log in 8GB chunks (8GB, then extend it to 16GB, then extend it to 24GB and so forth) so that the number (and size) of your VLFs is more reasonable (in this case 512MB).
Kimberly L. Tripp | Transaction Log VLFs - too many or too few?
In SQL 2008 (or using 3rd party tools) you can run this command against multiple servers to determine which SQL Agent jobs overlap. Perfect for finding contentious jobs...
use msdb
go
with cte (name, server, run_date,run_time,run_duration,enddate,startdatetime,enddatetime,retries_attempted) as (
select --j.name, h.step_id, h.step_name, h.sql_message_id, h.sql_severity, h.message, run_status,
j.name,server, run_date, run_time, run_duration, run_time + run_duration enddate,
dateadd(hh, run_time / 10000,
dateadd(mi, (run_time % 10000)/100,
dateadd(ss, run_time %100,
cast(cast(run_date as char(8)) as datetime)))) startdatetime,
dateadd(ss,run_duration,dateadd(hh, run_time / 10000,
dateadd(mi, (run_time % 10000)/100,
dateadd(ss, run_time %100,
cast(cast(run_date as char(8)) as datetime))))) enddatetime,
retries_attempted
from sysjobs j
inner join sysjobhistory h on h.job_id = j.job_id and h.step_id = 1
where run_date > convert(varchar(10),dateadd(d,-1,getdate()),112)
--and run_status <> 1
)
select cte.server, cte.name, cte.startdatetime, cte1.enddatetime, cte.run_duration, cte1.server, cte1.name, cte1.startdatetime, cte1.enddatetime, cte1.run_duration
from cte
cross join cte cte1
where (cte.name <> cte1.name)
and (cte.startdatetime between cte1.startdatetime and cte1.enddatetime
or cte.enddatetime between cte1.startdatetime and cte1.enddatetime)
and cte.run_duration > 300
Other than hiding Activity Monitor from us in SQL 2008 (it's on the toolbar now) it has some great new features that make the role of a DBA almost obsolete.
Well, not quite, but it does make things much easier.
Install SQL 2008 and you can even run things like Policy Based Management and Activity Monitor (Super 2008 Ed'n) against SQL 2005 & 2000 instances.
My favourite trick is to show query plan on an active query, show missing indexes, then implement. Instant performance improvements... and here's another way to track performance (or just snoop).
The new Activity Monitor has another trick up its sleeve: If you open it and then expand the first band of information just below the four graphs, you'll see a list of processes that you can order, sort and filter. If you right-click any process, you'll see an option to "open in Profiler". Click that, and you'll open Profiler with a default trace right on that SPID. Very useful to quickly identify the actions of a connection.
There’s nothing wrong with Excel. Actually, there’s tons of stuff wrong with Excel. Here is one example of a Spreadmart gone bad.
Excel error leaves Barclays with more Lehman assets than it bargained for
The law firm representing Barclays filed the motion (download PDF) on Friday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, seeking to exclude 179 Lehman contracts that it said were mistakenly included in the asset purchase agreement. The firm — Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP — said in the motion that one of its first-year law associates had unknowingly added the contracts when reformatting a spreadsheet in Excel.
Cut-Paste Wealth Destruction! :)
Actually, many of the problems with Excel aren’t really with the product, it’s how it’s used. “When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Ditto when the only tools you are comfortable with for dealing with numbers are Excel and Calc.exe, and it takes 2 weeks (or more) for the same report to be built using a “reporting tool” by the IT team…
Chris has some great points that I wholeheartedly agree with. In the past, I have been responsible for promoting the view of a “single source of total knowledge” or a “one view” of the organization. Excel doesn’t fit into this picture as a storage mechanism, but it can be the UI, analysis, modeling, and calculation engine that is supported by a central repository stored in the SQL Server cloud (or wherever you may decide to store your data). Not knowing the details on Project Gemini, I hope that it continues with this theme of server-based storage and client-based analysis, and doesn’t go the way of Coleco Gemini. I hope that there are options for clients who don’t adopt the latest technologies.
Spreadsheets have long been one of the most popular ways for corporate users to store and analyze data. But over the past few years, they have played an increasing role in data breaches because workers are apt to store them unsecured on laptops. In addition, hackers have actively tried to exploit vulnerabilities in Excel.
Since I’m a DBA at heart, I’m not comfortable seeing thousands of silos of varying degrees of accurate information multiplying and dividing around a company. With a DBA mindset, it is all about control, security, maintainability, and performance of your data.
This kind of desktop, DIY BI is in a way similar to illegal drugs: there are always some people that want it, a certain number of them are always going to do it even though they know they shouldn't, so you've got two choices - either legalise it and then hope to control it, as with Gemini, or throw all your efforts into outlawing it.
Chris Webb's BI Blog: Last thoughts on Gemini for the moment
Project Gemini – Microsoft’s Brilliant Trojan Horse
The concept of transferring some of the calculations and aggregations to the client does make sense. My laptop is more powerful than many of the 5 year old servers in use at some of the client sites I work in. It would be great to be able to quickly build models without delving into Business Intelligence Studio, SSIS, SSRS & SMS, or asking a developer. There’s not much faster than memory on a PC, so in-memory processing sounds great to me. I just hope there’s a way to push out a lockdown mechanism, for when that laptop and its information disappears from the company.
I hope they include a connector to perform calcs inside the GPU too.
I like what I see so far with some of the “value-adds” coming out of MS Downloads for Excel like the data mining tools, though in the wrong hands (or even worse, the right hands) the information could be very misleading and lead to disastrous results. From a marketing and adoption perspective, does it make sense to sell the idea of distributing mass amounts of data down to a client PC? I’m still waiting on a good forms-based interface to input data from Excel directly into a data repository. Sort of an InfoPath merged with Excel, without the need to install InfoPath, and with the “always-on” save features from One Note. Sure, web forms and web services. What about just Excel to Sql?
Without proper governance and understanding of the technology, publishing to Sharepoint can still lead us to Enterprise Spreadmart solutions and IT maintenance nightmares.
In my opinion, rather than sheets of 20 million rows of raw data crunched and stored in a spreadsheet on a laptop, file share, or document store, there should be sheets (or something else?) of results available with the data being stored, crunched, and transformed in a central, secure, redundant place (“THE CLOUD?”). I hope that this is the approach Project Gemini will provide. Magic?
One truth, shared by many, common to one.
Some people seem to think that Microsoft Business Intelligence is Sharepoint. Sharepoint is one piece to the puzzle, and it can scale, but there are some inherent limits that need to be avoided. Eli has a few.
The 2,000 rule: because stored procedure calls to SQL Server slow down as you reach 2,000 items, have less than that in a view on a List. Less than 200 ideally to have optimum performance.
Speaking of scalability & Microsoft applications… Windows 3.1 is dead. Long live Windows 3.11.
news.bbc.co.uk — "An application has expectedly quit. Windows 3.x has come to the closing moments of its long life. On 1 November Microsoft stopped issuing licences for the software that made its debut in May 1990 in the US. The various versions of Windows 3.x (including 3.11) released in the early 1990s, were the first of Microsoft's graphical user interfaces .."
http://digg.com/microsoft/Microsoft_has_officially_retired_Windows_3_1
SQL Server Support in a Hardware Virtualization Environment
There is no doubt that virtualization is a hot and popular topic (the number of questions over email I get daily are a testament to that). Therefore, I think it is important for our customers to understand the support policies from Microsoft regarding SQL Server running in a hardware virtualization environment.
We have just published the following KB article that outlines this policy:
PSS SQL Server Engineers : SQL Server Support in a Hardware Virtualization Environment
Day after day we are working with Cube Browser but when the project or cube designer has closed we lost our query, sometime it takes a long time to reorder again all our dimensions.
This add-in is giving us the ability to save personal views and run it as a new request.
I develop it for SSAS 2005 & 2008 (SSAS 2008 Pre CTP6 with VS 2008).
Reporting Services Querying with WQL
Hi Everyone,
From time to time we need to "ask" our Operation system questions such as:
1. How are you today?
2. How was your night?
3. Do you need anything?
4. Did somebody do something to you? Who?
Well, the best way to do it is querying the system with WMI queries by WQL language.
Few days ago my customer needed to decide what the best way is.
So, how we can do it? , the following solutions are some examples of ways to do it
