ILIKESQL - Dandy Weyn's Blog

SQL Server BareMetal Workshop series - part 1: How to build an installation VHD file that includes all software needed to start with SQL Server 2012 Database and Business Intelligence

Dandy Weyn — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 07:17:54 GMT

I truly wanted to write this type of blog long time ago, but given the fact that next week I am teaching our SQL Server 2012 Workshop, for which I did the primary design and development (and thus also delivery),
I think it is very time appropriate to start with these series now.

In these series, I will start writing about how to build your own demo / test environment for SQL Server 2012 and business intelligence on a Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V based installation.

This blog is written using my own method of installation, (unattended installations), and is purely based on publicly available Microsoft evalation copies of Sharepoint 2010, Visual Studio, SQL Server 2012 RC0, SQL Server Data tools, sample databases, and anything else you need to build your own VHD file (or non-vhd install base) that has everything offline that you need to do anything you always wanted to do with SQL Server and/or business intelligence.

In this blog, I will work based on a publicly available download of Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, for which we will download the .ISO file to install the base operating system for my Virtual machine.

Bear in mind that this blog will be part of a series, in this part we only focus on getting you the right bits.

The BareMetal framework is a framework I use for the development of our hands-on-labs (www.microsoft.com/sqlserverlabs), and the outcome of these series is to have your own local copy of the Virtual machines used in the hands-on-labs on our lab portal.

Task 0: Assumptions and basic understanding

The scripting and file locations displayed below and I would suggest you follow the same folder structure,
you can however replace the drive letter X:\ wIth the driveletter where you actually extract and download your files to.

For some of the downloads you need to register with your Windows Live ID.

Some of the scripting could definetely be done in Powershell, VBscripting, WSH or any scripting language.
You'll see that I did stick to the basics - which frequently is just a simple .CMD file to perform some basic steps.

Task 1: Creating a folder that will hold all of your downloads:

Diskspace is mandatory if you want to create an install base, you will need approximately 40Gb of diskspace, since we will download files that need to be extracted.
Now what we want to accomplish with this, is to make sure that we have everything downloaded that we need, and of course we want to be able to use that in the most flexible way, by putting that into a VHD file so we can easily mount it into a VM,
or on any Windows 7 or Windows Server platform.

The folder structure will hold each of the downloads we perform in Task 2.

Now ofcourse I don't want you to manually create those, and when you extract the handy-dandy (what's in a name) BareMetalWorkshopSeries-part1.zip file, as per attachement to the root folder of the drive you want to place al of your VMs and install bases,
you are pretty much ready to go.

After extraction you are ready to go and pretty much will spend the next couple of hours downloading your all favorite software.

Task 2: Downloading everything you ever need to get started with SQL Server 2012 and Business Intelligence

(Now look at this list - you'll have fun downloading for a bit)

Windows Server 2008 R2 64bit Edition, Installation .ISO file – with SP1
Required for:	VirtualMachine based installations
Download URL:	http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/trial-software.aspx
Destination Folder	x:\BareMetal\ServerISO
Notes	ONLY GET 64 BIT VERSION IN ISO FILE FORMAT
Alternate locations	MSDN / TECHNET Subscription (MUST HAVE EXISTING ACCOUNT)
After Download	Copy file to x:\BareMetal\Installs\ServerISO\WindowsServer2008R2.ISO NOTE: you might have to rename the downloaded file

SQL Server 2008 R2 installation bits
Required for:	SQL Server 2008 R2 (nice if you want to do upgrade testing)
Download URL:	http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=186656&clcid=0x409
Destination Folder	x:\BareMetal\Installs\SQL2008R2
Notes	ONLY GET 64 BIT VERSION in .EXE
Alternate locations	MSDN / TECHNET Subscription (MUST HAVE EXISTING ACCOUNT)
After Download	Copy file to x:\BareMetal\Installs\SQL2008R2 if not downloaded to the correct destination folder.

SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1
Required for:	SQL Server 2008 R2 (scripting will show how to slipstream)
Download URL:	http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=26727
Destination Folder	x:\BareMetal\Installs\SQL2008R2SP1
Notes	Download all the files as part of the SP1 update
After Download	Copy file to x:\BareMetal\Installs\SQL2008R2SP1 if not downloaded to the correct destination folder.

SQL Server 2012 installation files
Required for:	SQL Server 2012 Database & Business Intelligence
Download URL:	http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/future-editions.aspx
Destination Folder	x:\BareMetal\Installs\SQL2012
Notes	Download the ISO file version only
Alternate locations	MSDN / TECHNET Subscription (MUST HAVE EXISTING ACCOUNT)
After Download	Copy file to x:\BareMetal\Installs\SQL2012 if not downloaded to the correct destination folder

SharePoint 2010
Required for:	SQL Server 2012 Business Intelligence
Download URL:	http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?DisplayLang=EN&id=13768
Destination Folder	x:\BareMetal\Installs\SharePoint2010
Notes	ONLY GET 64 BIT VERSION in .EXE
Alternate locations	MSDN / TECHNET Subscription (MUST HAVE EXISTING ACCOUNT)
After Download	Copy file to x:\BareMetal\Installs\SharePoint2010 if not downloaded to the right folder location.

SharePoint 2010 SP1
Required for:	SQL Server 2012 Business Intelligence
Download URL:	http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26623
Destination Folder	x:\BareMetal\Installs\SharePoint2010SP1
Alternate locations	MSDN / TECHNET Subscription (MUST HAVE EXISTING ACCOUNT)
After Download	Copy file to x:\BareMetal\Installs\SharePoint2010SP1 if not downloaded to the right folder location.

SharePoint 2010 Prerequisites
Required for:	SQL Server 2012 Business Intelligence
Download URL:	http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262485.aspx Download all the required components
Destination Folder	x:\BareMetal\Installs\SharePointPrerequisites
After Download	Copy file to x:\BareMetal\Installs\SharePoinPrerequisites if not downloaded to the right folder location.

Office 2010 Professional Plus
Required for:	SQL Server 2012 Business Intelligence
Download URL:	http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/ee390818
Destination Folder	x:\BareMetal\Office2010
Notes	ONLY GET 32 BIT VERSION
Alternate locations	MSDN / TECHNET Subscription (MUST HAVE EXISTING ACCOUNT)
After Download	Copy file to x:\BareMetal\Office2010 if not downloaded to the right folder location. NOTE: SAVE the product key displayed as part of the download

Office 2010 SP1
Required for:	SQL Server 2012 Business Intelligence
Download URL:	Download Office 2010 SP1 (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=220084)
Destination Folder	x:\BareMetal\Office2010SP1
Notes	ONLY GET 32 BIT VERSION
Alternate locations	MSDN / TECHNET Subscription (MUST HAVE EXISTING ACCOUNT)
After Download	Copy file to x:\BareMetal\Office2010SP1 If you didn’t download to the right destination folder.

Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate ISO
Required for:	SQL Server 2012 Database & Business Intelligence
Download URL:	http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=06a32b1c-80e9-41df-ba0c-79d56cb823f7
Destination Folder	X:\BareMetal\Installs\VS2010Ultimate
Notes	Download All Files (4 files)
Alternate locations	MSDN / TECHNET Subscription (MUST HAVE EXISTING ACCOUNT)
After Download	Copy file to X:\BareMetal\Installs\VisualStudio2010 if not downloaded to this folder

SharePoint 2010 SP1
Required for:	SQL Server 2012 Business Intelligence
Download URL:	http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26623
Destination Folder	x:\BareMetal\Installs\SharePoint2010SP1
Alternate locations	MSDN / TECHNET Subscription (MUST HAVE EXISTING ACCOUNT)
After Download	Copy file to x:\BareMetal\Installs\SharePoint2010SP1 if not downloaded to this folder

PowerPivot Client Software
Required for:	SQL Server 2012 Business Intelligence
Download URL:	http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=28150
Destination Folder	X:\BareMetal\Installs\PowerPivot
Notes	Download All Files
After Download	Copy file to X:\BareMetal\Installs\PowerPivot if not downloaded to this folder

SQL Server Data Tools CTP4
Required for:	SQL Server 2012 Database & Business Intelligence
Download URL:	http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/hh297027 Read the notes on how to Create an Administrative Install Point and perform those tasks after download in the folder where you downloaded the SSDT executable to.
Destination Folder	X:\BareMetal\Installs\SSDTCTP4
After Download	See steps described on the download page

Silverlight 5
Required for:	SQL Server Business Intelligence
Download URL:	http://www.silverlight.net/downloads Download Silverlight Developer Runtime (32 bit) and (64 bit)
Destination Folder	X:\BareMetal\Installs\Silverlight
After Download	Copy file to X:\BareMetal\Installs\Silverlight if not downloaded to this folder

SQL Server Sample Databases
Required for:	SQL Server 2012 Database & Business Intelligence
Download URL:	http://msftdbprodsamples.codeplex.com/
Destination Folder	X:\BareMetal\Installs\Samples\SQL2008R2 X:\Baremetal\Installs\Sampes\SQL2012
Notes	Download All Files
After Download	Copy file to X:\BareMetal\Installs\Samples\SQL2008R2 Copy file to X:\BareMetal\Installs\Samples\SQL2012

Winrar (3^rd party software – evaluation copy)
Required for:	Automated extraction during installation of several components
Download URL:	http://www.rarlab.com/download.htm
Destination Folder	X:\BareMetal\Installs\Winrar
Notes	Download All Files, extract to the x:\BareMEtal\Installs\Winrar

PowerShell Management Library for Hyper-V
Required for:	Automation of the creation of Virtual Machines
Download URL:	http://pshyperv.codeplex.com/
Destination Folder	X:\BareMetal\Installs\PSHyperV
Notes	Download All Files

BGINFO
Required for:	Automate the setting of desktop backgrounds
Download URL:	http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897557.aspx
Destination Folder	X:\BareMetal\Installs\Tools\BGINFO
Notes	Download All Files

Task 3: How to extract all these downloads with the least administrative effort?

Extracting of downloaded files (.ISO, .ZIP, .EXE) etc can be a tough one, depending on what your purpose of the extraction is,
Some of the downloads would automatically start the installation process, which we want to prevent of course, we rather extract and have a solid installation base that we put into a VHD file, so that it is easy
to mount in both Windows, as a Windows Server 2008 R2 based Hyper-V image.

If any graphical UI interface pops up (including a request to format your newly mapped VHD file, please ignore)

Step 1: Creating a VHD file using diskpart

Open and administrative command prompt to x:\BareMetal\Hostscripts

type the following command:

BuildInstallVHD.VHD

This script will create a VHD file in x:\BareMetal\InstallVHD using DiskPart

Step 2: Extract all of the downloaded files into the VHD file

In the same administrative command prompt type LoadInstallsVHD.CMD

This script will run for a bit and 'voila' - after that you will have a drive letter (mapped as M: drive) with all your installation bits

Step 3: Dismount the VHD if you want to attach it to a Virtual Machine

In the same administrative command prompt [x:\Baremetal\Hostscripts], type the following command

UnmountInstallVHD.CMD

Task 4: What's next?

In the next part of these series will write about the automated creation of a Virtual Machine using the Hyper-V Powershell Management Library.
in the series post after that we will then look into the installation process and correct installation steps to get you going with:

SQL Server installations on Windows Server Core
SQL Server installations and configuration of AlwaysOn
SQL Server and Sharepoint 2010 integrated (PowerPivot, Power View)

TechED North America / TechED Europe pre-conferences for Database and Business Intelligence

Dandy Weyn — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 23:38:51 GMT

As content lead on the Database and Business Intelligence Track I am happy to announce that we will have 2 pre-cons at Tech ED North America an Tech ED Europe.

That's right - based on popular demand we are hosting these pre-conferences at both Tech ED North America and TechED Europe.

And the great line up of presenters for the pre-con's are certainly no strangers to the Database and BI communities.

Microsoft SQL Server Performance Tuning and Optimization

Presented by: Denny Cherry and Thomas LaRock

In this session, learn about SQL Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2012 performance tuning and optimization. Industry Experts Thomas LaRock and Denny Cherry guide you through tools and best practices for tuning queries and improving performance within Microsoft SQL Server. This session details real-life performance problems which have been gathered and tuned using industry standard best practices and real-world skills.

More information about TechED Europe which takes place in Amsterdam from June 26 - 29 can be found on http://europe.msteched.com

More information about TechED North America which takes place in Orlando from June 11 -1 4 can be found on http://northamerica.msteched.com

Using BISM Tabular in Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services 2012

Presented by: Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 introduced new BI Services, like Power View and the BI Semantic Model (BISM) in Analysis Services, which offers two types of models, Tabular and Multidimensional. The Tabular model is required in order to publish data for Power View and it is based on concepts like tables and relationships that are familiar to anyone who has a relational database background. In this seminar, learn how to build a complete solution in Tabular, either by creating a new model from scratch or by importing an existing PowerPivot model.

After an initial introduction of the overall architecture with the Microsoft platform, including SharePoint, PowerPivot and Power View, most of the time is dedicated to the definition of a BISM Tabular model. Learn about creating one from the ground up and then defining all the metadata required in order to obtain a rich semantic model that provides better user experience for data exploration in both Excel and Power View. You also learn the basics of DAX language and how to manage role based security and partitioning in a Tabular model.

At the end of the day, you will be able to create your BISM Tabular models, fully exploiting the features available in a Corporate BI scenario. You will gain a solid background to enable you starting your next project with Tabular.

More information about TechED Europe which takes place in Amsterdam from June 26 - 29 can be found on http://europe.msteched.com

More information about TechED North America which takes place in Orlando from June 11 -1 4 can be found on http://northamerica.msteched.com

SQL Server 2012 - SPECIAL OPS TOUR - part 2

Dandy Weyn — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 20:33:58 GMT

CALLING ALL SQL SERVER PROFESSIONALS

The Special Ops Tour, brought to you by Microsoft and PASS, is deep into the
planning stages. The most highly-anticipated SQL Server tour of the year is just
a few months away. But our agents can't do this without you. The time has come
to select the 12 DBA operatives who have the skills and accomplishments to join
the team. You could be one of the 12. Simply complete and submit the form on the www.specialopstour.com website ,
including a link to a short video as instructed.

Show us how you resolved any IT problem using SQL Server 2012, RC0.
The 12 winners will be highlighted on the Special Ops Tour, profiled on the Tour website, receive full conference passes
to PASS Summit 2012, and have their travel and accommodations to the nearest Tour stop covered.

Your mission is clear - good luck!

www.specialopstour.com

the Nokia Lumia 800 Windows 7.5 "Mango" phone - a user's review

Dandy Weyn — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 20:30:48 GMT

While I was traveling in Europe, I was inspired by some announcements that were made in regards to the release of the first Nokia Windows Phones.
Inspired and encouraged as I was .. I tried to get my hands on one of them which shouldn't be that big of an issue since my parents only live about 30 minutes away from the border to the Netherlands, where the phone was released on November 17th.
So here we go - starting to drive - with a good old printed map, to find directions to one of the stores in Terneuzen, NL - my first stop was Belcompany one of the larger phone supply chains in the Netherlands.
Arrived at the store, I got dissappointed, since the first store sold out of them already.

No problem --- The PhoneHouse (one of the other phone shops in the Netherlands), had one on stock, and before I realized I spent about $675 on a brand new, Nokia Lumia 800.

First impressions:

The phone feels very solid, probably due to its metal frame, and it truly feels like it has very solid and quality manufacturing.
It also clearly has the Nokia brand on it, accompanied by the well know Windows Phone buttons allowing quick navigation through applications.

The side of the phone provides solid metal buttons for volume control, Lock / Power and of course the Windows Phone Camera button to quickly snap pictures.

Front View	Side View (volume buttons, power button, camera button)

Phone specificifications:

General	2G Networks	GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
	3G Networks	HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100
Size	Dimensions	116.5 x 61.2 x 12.1 mm, 76.1 cc
	Weight	142 g
Display	Type	AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors 480 x 800 pixels, 3.7 inches (~252 ppi pixel density) - Gorilla Glass display - Nokia ClearBlack display - Multi-touch input method - Proximity sensor for auto turn-off - Accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate - Touch-sensitive controls
Memory		512 Mb RAM, 16Gb internal storage
Data		GPRS - Class 33 EDGE - Class 33 3G - HSDPA 14.4 Mbps, HSUPA 5.76 Mbps
connectivity		Bluetooth 3.5 mm phone jack MicroUSB 2.0
Camera	Camera	8 MP, 3264x2448 pixels, Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, dual-LED flash with geo tagging
	Video	720@30fps
Features	OS	Microsoft Windows Phone 7.5 Mango
	CPU	1.4 GHz Scorpion processor, Adreno 205 GPU, Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon chipset, 3D Graphics HW Accel.
	Radio	Stereo FM radio with RDS
		- MicroSIM card support only - SNS integration - Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic - Digital compass - MP3/WAV/eAAC+/WMA player - MP4/H.264/H.263/WMV player - Document viewer/editor - Video/photo editor - Voice memo/command/dial - Predictive text input
Battery	Stand By	Up to 265 h (2G) / Up to 335 h (3G)
	TalkTime	Up to 13 h (2G) / Up to 9 h 30 min (3G)

Phone call quality

The call quality on this phone, as well on the speaker phone and over bluetooth is great, which is what I would expect from a manufacturer like Nokia.

Screen Size / Display

While the screen size is smaller than some of the other windows phones, this display and screen seems much brighter, even in outside/sunny conditions.
A smaller screensize is definetely something I welcome since the phone perfectly fits in my pocket and is well protected using the standard, in-the-box, provided sleeve that seamlessly fits around the phone.
After using the phone for about a week now there isn't a single scratch on it - which - surprising to my usage (putting it in my pocket with car keys etc) - is quite exceptional by itself.

Nokia Drive - GPS application.

When traveling, I truly can use a turn-by-turn GPS system, since I tend to get lost in a shopping mall.
The nice thing about the built in Nokia Drive GPS is that you basically have a global GPS system on which you can install maps from anywhere in the world (a feature that is only available on select portable GPS systems, that end up costing you more than a Nokia Lumia 800 phone).
Immediately after my trip to Europe I was able to put this GPS system to a test, since I traveled to Hollywood with my wife for Thanksgiving, and we decided not to opt for a GPS with our rental car.
It took a while to install the 1.7Gb maps (which covers and spans the entire United States), but after the installation we were ready to go - ready to test the navigation getting us from the airport, to the airport, and discover Hollywood and surrounding areas.
When connecting the phone to the car charger (microUSB available at any retailer), it perfectly fitted onto the dashboard, acquired a GPS signal within seconds, and took nothing to set our destination to start our navigation to our destination.
The maps display in either 2D or 3D which is fully selectable. Driving around in Los Angeles, going to Universal Studios, Beverly Hills.

When putting the phone into the vertical / horizontal position the map automatically turns as well, which is what you would expect.
As i traveled a lot previously and used several GPS systems (even though I have always been a big fan of TomTom), I am truly happy with the turn-by turn navigation in the Nokia Drive application (both from a sound quality perspective, as well as the time it takes for the GPS to determine its initial position (which was seconds, rather than minutes on some of the GPS systems I had in several rental cars).

This turn by turn navigation is definetely amazing - but keep in mind that, as any other portable GPS navigation system, turn by turn GPS navigation is battery intensive (you'll need a micro USB car charger - which to that advantage will also keep your phone charged :) )

Picture Quality

As I like photography, most of the time when traveling for fun I take my Nikon D5100 with additional lenses with me, so I rarely use my phone for pictures, other than occasional snapshots (that quick picture of our little guy, or a snapshot that is too funny not to miss when i don't have the camera handy). I've always been a big fan of the Carl Zeiss lenses on point and shoot cameras.
With the Nokia Lumia 800 featuring a f/2.2 aperture Carl Zeiss lens, it makes it the brightest lens on a mobile phone, resuitng in a great 8MP picture (sample below).

Random picture taken at the Hollywood Walk of fame

Nokia Application Highlights

The phone also features some Nokia Only Windows Phone applications that give you highlights of some of the new releases in the Windows Phone MarketPlace.
While I tend to use my phone primarily for email, navigation, texting and phone calls, the expected integration of Windows Phone with Facebook, Twitter, Windows Live, Xbox and LinkedIn, make this phone into a succesful business partner for me.

Micro SIM

One of the first surprises when i tried to move over my simcard (while in the store), was that the Nokia phone won't fit the standard simcard.
The PhoneHouse where I purchased it said that they can trim down the simcard to a micro-sim, however they don't have the tool/aid to actually cut it correctly and suggested me to ask BelCompany, the store that initially ran out of stock on the Lumia 800.
While I know that that kind of service probably is unlikely to happen at certain locations, the Belcompany sales representative made no issue about it, and cut down my simcard to a Micro-Sim form factor.
Amazingly that worked!

3G/4G

The phone in its current European release supports HSDPA.
High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) is an enhanced 3G communication protocol also branded 3.5G, 3G+ or turbo 3G, which allows networks to have higher data transfer speeds and capacity.
Current HSDPA deployments support down-link speeds of 1.8, 3.6, 7.2 and 14.0 Megabits.. Further speed increases are available with HSPA+ providing speeds of up to 42 Mbit/s downlink and 84 Mbit/s.

Proud Owner / Conclusion

While the Nokia Lumia 800 has not yet been introduced in the United States, I am now the proud owner of a phone that gives me all the Windows Phone 7.5 "Mango" features, and so much more with apps such as Nokia Drive, Nokia Maps, Nokia Music.
While I also have a Samsung Focus S, I consider this Nokia phone to be my primary phone because of the "cool factor", the great and solid design, and the fact that I have a turn-by-turn GPS system on the Go.This is a great phone and I can't wait to get back to the office on Monday and put it on the table during meetings (pretty sure some people will look at it wondering what phone I have --- )

With that, I can't wait to see the Nokia phones being introduced to the US market, and am truly excited with the roadmap, and technology moving forward.
While I never had a Iphone before, but owned several Windows Phones prior to Windows Phone 7, I truly believe, as a Microsoft employee, that our company is on the right roadmap with our Windows Phone platform, and this product is so user friendly, that even my wife is happy with her Windows Phone and finally gave up on a phone with integrated keyboard :).

A special thanks to The PhoneHouse in Terneuzen, NL for keeping a phone aside while I was driving up there, and thank you to Belcompany for the great assistance in trimming down my simcard.

SQL Server 2012 Release Candidate RC0

Dandy Weyn — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 21:36:40 GMT

We've had some great announcements over the past couple of days, with the announcement of the SQL Server 2012 SPECIAL OPS TOUR. #specialopstour

Now we have even more updates: SQL SERVER 2012 RC0 is available.

Since this morning SQL Server 2012 RC0 bits are available for download the Microsoft Download Center.

With RC0 we are making another huge milestone towards the release of SQL Server 2012.

The following list provides an overview of what we've added to RCO:

Get Mission Critical Confidence

Greater availability. Deliver the required 9s and data protection with AlwaysOn, delivering added functionality over CTP3 that allows customers to experience multiple, readable secondaries for distributed scale of read workloads and support for FileTable and FILESTREAM which brings first-class HA to complex data types.
Blazing-fast performance. Experience lightning fast performance gains for Business Intelligence and Data warehousing with SQL Server 2012. The new ColumnStore Index offers 10-100x star join or similar query performance improvements. Additionally, customers can more effectively govern performance in multi-tenancy environments like private cloud. Resource Governor enhancements include support for 64 resource pools, greater CPU usage control, and resource pool affinity for partitioning of physical resources and predictable resource allocation.
Security for compliance. Help enable compliance with new security features, User-Defined Server Roles, Default Schema for Windows Groups, Audit filtering and resilience, and Contained Database Authentication.

Unlock Breakthrough Insights

Rapid data exploration. Unlock rapid data exploration for deeper insights across the organization through web-based data visualization analytics with Power View and PowerPivot enhancements like support for KPIs, Rank, Perspectives, Hierarchies, and sophisticated business logic.
Managed Self-Service BI. PowerPivot enables IT to pro-actively empower end users through familiar Self-service BI capabilities in Excel, while providing IT Dashboards in SharePoint 2010 to gain insight and oversight over end users create content. In RC0 SSAS now includes PowerShell support to help streamline administration tasks. The new BI Semantic Model (BISM) continues to bridging the gap between end user created BI applications and IT managed corporate solutions by introducing the ability to import PowerPivot models into Analysis Services through the SQL Server professional tools (Management Studio and BI Development Studio) so that they can be professionally managed and transformed into massively scaling corporate grade solutions.
Credible, consistent data. Provide a consistent view across heterogeneous data sources with the BI Semantic Model (BISM) a single model for Business Intelligence applications, from reporting and analysis to dashboards and scorecards. Make data quality a part of everyday life with the Master Data Services add-in for Excel and new Data Quality Services that is integrated with 3^rd party data providers through Windows Azure Marketplace DataMarket. Additionally in RC0, customers can better support heterogeneous data within Data Warehouses through new Change Data Capture (CDC) support for Oracle.

Experience Cloud on Your Terms

Optimize productivity. Optimize IT and developer productivity across server and cloud with the new SQL Server Data Tools, a unified dev experience now with a new Server Explorer and user experience enhancements, and Management Studio for snapshot backups to the Windows Azure Platform. Additionally, the new LocalDB version of Express introduced in CTP3 now has a smaller more simplified installer adding tremendous value for ISVs.
Extend any data, anywhere. Developers love it and organizations benefit from the built-in expansive data support and storage flexibility in SQL Server. Beyond relational investments introduced in CTP3 include, FileTable unstructured file storage directly in the database and full globe spatial support which include circular arcs on the ellipsoid, an industry first for relational database systems.

SQL Server Special Ops Tour

Dandy Weyn — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 20:31:00 GMT

CALLING ALL SQL Server PROFESSIONALS:

SQL Server 2012 is the most important release ever of SQL Server with its’ mission critical, breakthrough
insight and cloud on your terms features. Do your part to bring the SQL Server
2012 roadshows to your city and get on stage with Microsoft! This March, Microsoft is teaming with PASS to bring
you the SQL Server 2012 Special Ops Tour – a cross-country roadshow that will take us to 12 cities across America. This is your tour, and we want to
highlight you –the SQL Server operative, your company, and the great work you are doing through
opportunities to be featured on our media channels, stage time at roadshow
events, and exclusive networking session.

Take our survey at www.specialopstour.com today, and help
shape our course of action. Familiarize yourself with CTP3 to prep for the
Solutions Contest and check back in December for details and how to submit!

ACTION REQUIRED:

- Visit the preview site (www.specialopstour.com) and cast your votes for your city

- Download and get to know CTP3 in preparation for upcoming solutions contest

- Check back for details on how to be featured!

Coming in December: Special Ops Contest

In the coming weeks, you'll havethe opportunity to enter a high-profile contest where we'll identify 12 SQL
Professionals with the best IT solutions on SQL Server 2012. So get ready to
share your killer SQL Server 2012 skills.

happy upgrade to a brand new Samsung Focus S - migrating your applications

Dandy Weyn — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 00:08:04 GMT

As today ATT released the new Samsung Focus S Windows Phone, a huge lineup was seen at many stores.

Unfortunately, I realised it too late to get to the closest store - so I had to drive a bit further and get my hands on a brand new phone. But hey..I have it and I am truly impressed with it.

The ATT store was very supportive on moving over SimCard, providing assistance with setup of my liveID (like I needed that ...), and once i gotten home it was
just a matter of installing my favorite apps onto the new phone.

As soon as I added the liveID of the new phone, the phone showed up under my profile on www.windowsphone.com

Right after I logged in, I clicked to My Phone | Account and reviewed the purchased apps history.

A click on Reinstall | Download App to Phone Immediately got me right to installing the application directly on the phone.

What I really liked there is that I could actually review which applications I purchased, and which ones I decided to reinstall (nice cleanup ...).

I am honestly pleased by the quality of the phone, how easy it was to connect it again with my bluetooth devices.
The display is significantly larger, and phone is much lighter than the Samsung Focus that is now happy to transition with 32Gb microSD to my wife.

by popular demand - SQL BareMetal scripts

Dandy Weyn — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 15:42:00 GMT

If you ever attended any of our SQL BareMetal Hands-on-Labs or Workshop, pretty sure you were excited about some of the scripting.

On popular demand I have looked at an easy way to distribute some of that scripting, and in the future we will continue to update these scripts with the upcoming and planned SQL Server 2012 BareMetal workshop that we are running.

I released the SQLBareMetal project on Codeplex, and you should truly consider this to be my very own 'community contribibution' and project.

I gladly assist if there are any questions.

Link to the codeplex project:

http:/sqlbaremetal.codeplex.com

SQL Server 2012 BareMetal Workshop - Are you an MCT?

Dandy Weyn — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 06:56:57 GMT

Are you a Microsoft Certified Trainer that teaches SQL Server 2012?

Based on the succes of our BareMetal Hands-on-Labs and Instructor Led Labs we are building a 2 Day Workshop for Business Intelligence and Mission Critical.

Are you interested in becoming one of the referenced trainers and ready to attend the TTT in January? - Applications are accepted, seating capacity limited - send me an email at dandyw@microsoft.com for more details.

Just Announced - SQL Server 2012 - coming to you in 2012

Dandy Weyn — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 17:54:00 GMT

SQL Server 2012 is coming!

Today at SQL PASS SUMMIT 2011, our CVP Ted Kummert revealed the product name of the next version of SQL Server code name "Denali".
As it might not come to any surprise we are proud to announce SQL Server 2012, releasing in - 2012!

What I am excited about are the strong pillars on SQL Server 2012.

Mission Critical Confidence

SQL Server as the mission critical paltform, on performance and high availability at a low TCO.

The enhancements with AlwaysON, providing 2 times faster failover, and a signifcicant reduced downtime brings a unique position of high availability through Windows Server core support, Online Operations Enhancements,
with integrated configuration Wizards, Powershell Support, and the AlwaysOn Dashboard, allowing you to configure AlwaysOn through Powershell.
From the AlwaysON support we can have Active Secondaries, allowing you for Scale read only applications

Performance enhancements with columnstore provide increased performance that will increase query performance significantly.
A great demo on columstore is the session that was delivered by Eric Hanson at TechED North America which can be found here.

Full text search enhancements and higher scalability (partitioning now increased to 15000) are some of the key enhancements delivering on that Mission Critical Confidence and Scale

Security enhancements, including advanced auditing, contained databases, data tier applications and user defined server roles provide great security benefits exceeding industry standards,
and allow you to easily deploy applications.

Migration and Upgrade enhancements (think about Upgrade Advisor), is enhanced with Distributed Replay to allow application testing and database replay

Breakthrough Insights

With breakhtrough insights we provide and unlock new insights with pervasive data discovery across the organization.
We are releasing the next generation of PowerPivot, and PowerView (Crescent), bringing you a new level of browser based reporting, fully integrated within SharePoint 2010.

The rich data expereince allows you to connect to nearly any data source, including our connector to Hadoop to perform in-memory analysis in Excel 2010, with PowerPivot.
Data refresh can be set and important into Analysis Services and grab a self-serviced created PowerPivot Report, integrate it within an Analysis Services cube.

End User alerting allows you to

Data Quality Services provides enhanced data cleansing, seamlessly integrated with SQL Server Integration Services, and integration with 3rd party services to perform a better, more accurate and performant data cleansing.

Cloud on your terms

SQL Server provides Choice in data store, both for structured, unstructed and complex data.

We enhanced and embraced Hadoop through a Hadoop connector for SQL Server, as well as PDW, with a Hadoop based distribution on Windows Server and Windows Server Azure to ship in CY2012.

The Hadoop connector, is also available for SQL Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2008R2 Parallel Data Warehouse, and can be found here

Appliances

In the keynote Ted also reinstated the release of SQL Server Parallel Datawarehouse, which includes Dell as a partner and appliance provider for PDW , the Database Consolidation appliance, and cloud.

Hands-on with SQL Server 2012

Are you getting excited and hyped around the new features in SQL Server 2012.
The SQL Server Learning Center hosts hands-on-labs on all the above technologies - ready for you to go.

http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/learning-center/virtual-labs.aspx

Firewall Configurations for SQL Server

Dandy Weyn — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 16:32:00 GMT

I've been asked the question many times, and you probably have seen it before ...
The "warning" message that displays during a SQL Server installation and warns you about "Firewall" configurations.

To optimize for a minimal footprint and maximum security, configuring the right firewall settings might be a bit hard for some of us,
or even more might take some "time" to configure using Windows Advanced Firewall on Windows Server 2008 R2.

While there is quet some detailed descriptive information in the Configuring the Windows Firewall for SQL Server Access Article,
sometimes it might be as simple as "get me a script that I can modify and does it for me".

Well here it is .. create a .CMD file with good old notepad and add the following batch to it.
Note that when executing the script you need to run it under administrative privileges.

echo off
@echo This scripts sets the default firewall configurations for SQL Server components
echo.
echo Setting the core components for a database instance

echo Default Instance
netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="SQLServer" dir=in action=allow protocol=TCP localport=1433 profile=DOMAIN

echo Dedicated Admin Connection
netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="SQL DAC" dir=in action=allow protocol=TCP localport=1434 profile=DOMAIN

echo SQL Browser Service
netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="SQL Browser" dir=in action=allow protocol=UDP localport=1434 profile=DOMAIN

echo Setting the core firewall rules for database mirroring, service broker, TSQL Debugger, Analysis services, Reporting Services

echo Mirroring EndPoint - CHANGE PORT NUMBER AS NEEDED depending on which role
netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="Mirroring EndPoint" dir=in action=allow protocol=TCP localport=5022 profile=DOMAIN

echo Service Broker
netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="SQL Service Broker" dir=in action=allow protocol=TCP localport=4022 profile=DOMAIN

echo Enable TSQL Debugger (uses RPC)
netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="T-SQL Debugger" dir=in action=allow protocol=TCP localport=135 profile=DOMAIN

echo Browser service for Analysis Services
netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="SQL Browser for Analysis Services" dir=in action=allow protocol=TCP localport=2382 profile=DOMAIN

echo Analysis services Default Instance
netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="Analysis Services" dir=in action=allow protocol=TCP localport=2383 profile=DOMAIN

echo HTTP/HTTPS for reporting services
netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="HTTP Reporting Services" dir=in action=allow protocol=TCP localport=80 profile=DOMAIN
netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="HTTPS Reporting Services" dir=in action=allow protocol=TCP localport=443 profile=DOMAIN

Of course as security best practices you would only enable the ports that you really need, which could be as simple as putting a single REM statement.

Enjoy!

SQL Server Security Vulnerabilities

Dandy Weyn — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 03:02:30 GMT

SQL Server is the most secure of any of the major database platforms.

In 2010, SQL Serer recorded zero security vulnerabilities compared with 34 for Oracle and 21 for IBM.

Take that!

For more information about SQL Server 2008 R2 security and compliance:

http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/solutions-technologies/mission-critical-operations/security-and-compliance.aspx

SQL Server Code Name "Denali" CTP 3 - Product Guide

Dandy Weyn — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 19:31:47 GMT

Our team is pleased to announce the release of the SQL Server Code Name “Denali” Community Technology Preview 3 (CTP3) Product Guide v1.

It is available for download at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=225814.

The SQL Server Code Name “Denali”
CTP3 Product Guide includes useful resources and demos that will help customers
in their evaluation of CTP3.

14 Product Datasheets
8 PowerPoint Presentations
5 Technical White Papers
13 Hands-On LabPreview Documents
6 Click-Through Demonstrations
13 Self-Running Demonstrations
26 Links to On-Line References
44 Links to On-Line Videos including 26 Presentations from North America TechEd 2011

What's next...

Our team is also working on a hosted lab platform that allows you to run hosted labs, without having to configure anything yourself - more announcements on that to come later this month.
On top of that we will also release all the scripting from our BareMetal SQL Server Labs and guidance on how to build your own lab / demo environment from scratch.

Today is yet another milestone for SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse! -- Please welcome Dell PDW Appliance and Hadoop connectors

Dandy Weyn — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 20:22:00 GMT

Today we announced at TDWI another giant leap in Microsoft's datawarehousing offering.:

Today, businesses are increasingly facing a “data deluge,” as the complexity and volume of data grows steadily. Meanwhile, IT continues to grapple with how to manage, store that data, as well as unlock the valuable business insights that data holds. That’s why last November Microsoft released SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW) – a complete, high-scale data warehousing solution that enterprises can use to manage and enable self-service business intelligence across the company with SQL Server. Today, we are excited to announce that PDW is taking several significant steps forward.

The first step forward is the release of our second Appliance Update (AU2) to PDW that delivers richer programmability, plus four new connectors for heterogeneous BI & ETL (Extract, Load and Transform) environments. Unlike Service Packs, an Appliance Update refreshes the full appliance seamlessly with both hardware and software updates. Released just four months after Appliance Update 1, Microsoft is rapidly responding to customer needs on the most demanding Data Warehouses, delivering features most requested by customers such as multi-statement batches, T-SQL variables, temporary tables, conditional logic and control flow statements. Thanks to deep integration with the Microsoft Business Intelligence stack, Parallel Data Warehouse already offers the most complete data warehouse solution. Appliance Update 2 extends this by introducing new connectors for SAP Business Objects and Informatica, enabling customers to use Parallel Data Warehouse seamlessly in heterogeneous BI and ETL environments. In addition, MicroStrategy also has certified high speed connectors for PDW. Customers can now leverage existing investments while scaling their data warehouses at unbeatable price-performance with PDW.

Microsoft is also proud to announce the release of the Dell Parallel Data Warehouse appliance, offering customers more hardware choice thanks to a strategic alliance between Microsoft and Dell. With the new Dell appliance scaling beyond 600 TB with an affordable starting price under $12K per TB, customers can now enjoy massive scalability and performance at low cost on a platform they know and trust, while also receiving white glove service through Microsoft’s Critical Advantage Program (MCAP), an enhanced support service for appliances. In addition, Microsoft Enterprise Services and Dell Services will provide consulting for architectural design and implementation of the PDW solution to meet customer-specific requirements. For more information on Dell’s PDW appliance, visit www.microsoft.com/pdw.

In the data deluge faced by businesses, there is also an increasing need to store and analyze vast amounts of unstructured data including data from sensors, devices, bots and crawlers. By many accounts, almost 80% of what businesses store is unstructured data – and this volume is predicted to grow exponentially over the next decade. We have entered the age of Big Data. Our customers have been asking us to help store, manage, and analyze both structured and unstructured data – in particular, data stored in Hadoop environments. As a first step, we will soon release a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of two new Hadoop connectors – one for SQL Server and one for PDW. The connectors provide interoperability between SQL Server/PDW and Hadoop environments, enabling customers to transfer data between Hadoop and SQL Server/PDW. With these connectors, customers can more easily integrate Hadoop with their Microsoft Enterprise Data Warehouses and Business Intelligence solutions to gain deeper business insights from both structured and unstructured data.

With a scalable set of Data Warehousing offerings including SQL Server 2008 R2, Reference Architectures and Data Warehouse appliances, Microsoft enables customers to gain business insights from increasingly large and diverse data sets. The world of data is evolving and Microsoft is committed to helping our customers navigate those changes successfully. We look forward to your feedback on these updates and connectors!

Available now - SQL Server codename "Denali" CTP

Dandy Weyn — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 16:10:00 GMT

Introducing SQL Server Code-Named "Denali" - Today we released our latest CTP release of SQL Server Code-Named "Denali"

Download here

A key component of the cloud-ready information platform, SQL Server Code Name “Denali” will help organizations unlock breakthrough insights across the organization as well quickly build solutions and extend data across on-premises and public cloud backed by mission critical confidence.

Mission Critical Confidence – Enable mission critical performance and availability at low TCO.
Breakthrough Insight – Unlock new insights with rapid data exploration and visualization across the organization.
Cloud on Your Terms – Create and scale business solutions fast, on your terms from server to private or public cloud.

Mission Critical Confidence

The next wave of SQL Server investments further help protect an organization’s infrastructure – getting you the nines and performance you need at the right price, especially for mission critical workloads. When you make a bet on Microsoft, you get more than a trusted platform; you get a trusted business partner and trusted ecosystem of experienced vendors.

SQL Server AlwaysOn

The new integrated high availability and disaster recovery solution provides redundancy within a datacenter and across datacenters to help enable fast application failover during planned and unplanned downtime. AlwaysOn delivers a suite of new capabilities

AlwaysOn Availability Groups is a new feature that greatly enhances the capabilities of Database Mirroring and helps ensure availability of application databases. Availability Groups provides an integrated set of options including automatic and manual failover of a group of databases, support for up to four secondaries, fast application failover and automatic page repair.
AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instances enhance SQL Server Failover Clustering and support multi-site clustering across subnet which helps enable cross-datacenter failover of SQL Server instances. Fast and predictable instance failover is another key benefit which helps ensure fast application recovery.
AlwaysOn Active Secondries enable secondary instances to be utilized for running report queries and backup operations which helps eliminate idle hardware and improve resource utilization.
SQL Server AlwaysOn Connection Director Capabilities:
- Multi-subnet failover: This improvement enables faster client connection failover for AlwaysOn in multi-subnet scenarios. Now client applications can failover across multiple subnets (up to 64) almost as fast as they can failover within a single subnet.
- Read-Only Intent: This improvement is a big step in our connectivity story for Readable secondaries, which is accepted really well by our customers, both at PASS as well as earlier SDRs. This improvement gives the customers a way to control the type of workloads that run on their HA servers and efficiently manage their resources.
- SQL Server AlwaysOn AutoStat auto-creates and updates temporary statistics needed for queries running on the readable secondary. These temporary statistics area stored in TempDB therefore no physical changes are required in the user database. This allows the optimizer to generate optimal query plans on secondary replica as it would do on the primary replica and it does not require any user intervention.

Windows Server Core Support

SQL Server is supported on Windows Server Core. By running SQL Server on Windows Server Core the OS patching can be reduced significantly which greatly reduces planned downtime. †The percentage reduction in patching and OS reboots can be as much as 50-60% in certain environments depending on the server roles that are enabled and the type of patches that are applied.

Database Recovery Advisor:

This feature has introduced significant user experience enhancements to the ways DBAs can now restore databases using SQL Server Management Studio. Capabilities include a visual timeline that presents the backup history of the database and the available points in time to which the user can restore the database, algorithms to streamline identifying the right sets of backup media to get the database back to a specific point in time, and page restore dialog in SSMS to do page-level restores of the database.

High Availability for StreamInsight:
The new StreamInsight capabilities address key customer needs for high availability management. The next on-premise release provides customers with:

Resilient against planned and unplanned downtime with new checkpointing capabilities
Facilitates predictive modeling and patter matching with user-defined stream concept
Improved monitoring and administration with performance counters
Easier development with support for nested event type structures and new LINQ statements.

In addition, developing StreamInsight applications now becomes easier with new developer features. In particular, scenarios with statistical and predictive models over event data are significantly easier to realize. Existing installations will benefit from an upgrade to the newest release through the enhanced monitoring and manageability functionality such as performance counters.

Blazing fast performance and optimizations

In-Memory Column Store (“Apollo”)

“Apollo” introduces column store technology to the database engine, making SQL Server the first of the major general-purpose database systems to have a true column store. Apollo brings together the VertiPaq technology that was developed in Analysis Services (and is the crucial foundation for PowerPivot) and a new query execution paradigm called batch processing to provide truly astonishing speed up for common data warehouse queries. In test scenarios customers have experienced approximately 100x improvements in star join and similar queries.

Full-Text Search Performance Overhaul

FTS in Denali brings magnitudes of performance and scale advances with significantly improved query execution and concurrent index update mechanisms. Full-text search now includes properties scoped searches without requiring developers to maintain file properties (such as Author Name, Title, etc…) separately in the database. Developers can now also benefit with improved NEAR operator that allows them to specify distance in-between as well as the order of words. In addition to these exciting changes, Full-text Search has revamped all language word-breakers to latest Microsoft editions and includes support for two more languages in Czech and Greek.

Table Partitioning up to 15,000

Support growing data warehousing with table partitioning that now scales to 15,000 partitions. This new expanded support helps enable large sliding-window scenarios which will streamline maintenance of large sets within filegroups that need data switched in and out per the needs of the data warehouse.

Extended Events enhancements

Enhancements to Extended Events dramatically streamline functional and performance troubleshooting with new profiling information and a new user interface. Enhancements include flexible event selection, logging, and filtering with Extended Events.

Distributed Replay

Simplify application testing and minimize errors with application changes, configuration changes, and upgrades using new Distributed Replay. This multi-threaded replay utility provides the ability to simulate production workload scenarios testing after upgrade or configuration changes ultimately leading to protected performance during changes.

Security enhancements

Audit Enhancements

Enhancements to SQL Server auditing capabilities bring added flexibility and usability for auditing across the SQL Server environment, help making it even easier for organizations to meet compliance policies.

SQL Audit for all editions allows organizations to expand the benefits of SQL Server Audit from Enterprise edition to all editions for more thorough auditing practices across SQL Server databases enabling audit standardization, better performance and richer features.
User-Defined Audit allows the application to write custom events into the audit log to allow more flexibility to store audit information.
Audit Filtering provides greater flexibility to filter unwanted events into an audit log.
Audit Resilience delivers the ability to recover auditing data from temporary file and network issues.

Default Schema for Windows Groups:

Database schema can now be tied to Windows Group rather than individual users to increase database compliance. It eases administration of database schema, decreases the complexity of database schema management through individual Windows users, prevent errors of assigning schema to the wrong users when users changes groups, avoids unnecessary implicit schema creation, and greatly reduces the chance of query errors when wrong schema being used.

User-Defined Server Roles:

User-Defined Server Roles increase flexibility, manageability, and facilitate compliance towards better separation of duties. It allows creation of new server roles to suit different organizations that separate multiple administrators according to roles. Roles can also be nested to allow more flexibility in mapping to hierarchical structures in organizations. It also helps prevent organizations to use sysadmin for database administration.

Contained Database Authentication:

Contained Database Authentication increases compliance by allowing users to be authenticated directly into user databases without logins. User information for login (username and password) is not stored inside master database but user databases directly. It is very secure because users can only perform DML operations inside the user databases and not database instance level operations. It also reduces the need to login to the database instance and avoid orphaned or unused logins in the database instance. This feature is used in AlwaysOn to facilitate better portability of user databases among servers in the case of server failover without the need to configure logins for all database servers in the cluster.

SharePoint Active Directory:

Help secure end user data analytics with built-in IT controls, including new SharePoint and ActiveDirectory security models for end user reports published and shared in SharePoint. Enhanced security models provide control at row and column levels.

Breakthrough Insight
SQL Server will help customers unlock exciting new insights with self-service pervasive data discovery across structured, unstructured and cloud data sources backed by IT management and insight, credible consistent data and large-scale data warehousing and analytics solutions.

Rapid Data Exploration

Reporting Services Project “Crescent”

Microsoft makes self-service reporting a reality by providing a highly interactive, web-based data exploration, visualization, and presentation experience to users of all levels—from business executives to information workers. Now anyone can create a report in just seconds, transform the “shape” of data with a single click, add powerful timed animation sequences to quickly identify trends or anomalies, and make a more convincing case through rich presentation of discovered insights.

Project “Crescent” is an interactive data exploration and visual presentation experience targeted at Information Workers who need access to their business data but don’t have the technical knowledge to write their own queries or specialized knowledge around reporting. Built on top of the BI Semantic Model, which provides a user friendly view of the data, “Crescent” gives the user a powerful yet simple to use experience for telling stories with their data.

PowerPivot Enhancements
Microsoft delivers breakthrough insights to organizations by empowering users, of all levels, to access and integrate data from virtually any source, create compelling reports and analytical applications, and easily collaborate and share insights using familiar tools in Microsoft® Excel® and Microsoft SharePoint®. IT organizations can manage these solutions with complete oversight, driving operational efficiencies and increasing adoption and use of business intelligence throughout the company.

Microsoft brings even more functionality to the award winning capabilities of PowerPivot. Customers plow through mounds of data in a familiar way at lightning-fast speeds in Excel and also leverage the new advanced analytic capabilities such as the ability to create KPIs, Rank, Perspectives, Hierarchies and sophisticated business logic. The new version of PowerPivot also extends the powerful functionalities of DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) giving end users the power of building sophisticated analytical solutions with the familiarity of Excel like functions.

Full-Text Statistical Semantic Search

Enable T-SQL developers to bring deep insight to the organization within non-structured data files stored in the SQL Server database by uncovering previously undiscovered relationships across stored files. FTS Semantic Search extracts statistically relevant ‘key phrases’ and based on these phrases ‘similarity across documents’ as structured data made available through new TSQL rowset functions. Together with FileTable, Semantic Search makes non-structured documents first class citizens of a relational database allowing developers to manipulate them together with structured data in any set operations.

Scalable & Managed Self-Service BI

BI Semantic Model

SQL Server code-named “Denali” Analysis Services introduces the BI Semantic Model, a single model for users with multiple ways of building business intelligence (BI) solutions. This means:

Continued support for the powerful online analytical-processing (OLAP) technologies that make SQL Server Analysis Services indispensible to BI specialists.
Tools for IT professionals and developers who are familiar with dealing with data in rows and columns.
Support for a spectrum of BI solutions that span personal, team, and corporate contexts

With the BI Sematic Model organizations can scale from small personal BI solutions to the largest organizational BI needs. BI Semantic Model is one model for all end user experiences – reporting, analytics, scorecards, dashboards, and custom applications and offers developers flexibility of modeling experiences, richness to build sophisticated business logics and scalability for your most demanding enterprise needs.

Rendering to Microsoft Office Word & Excel Open XML formats
In SQL Server “Denali”, Reporting Services reports can now be exported in the new Microsoft Office document formats first introduced in Office 2007 for Word and Excel. Reports can be delivered interactively – by users selecting the format of their choice, sent directly to users via subscriptions, as well as delivered programmatically. The new rendering capabilities also take advantage of the new document formats such as increased column and row limits within Excel and generally smaller file sizes.

Reporting Services End User Alerting:

End User Alerting increases information worker productivity by providing reliable data alerts. The Alert checks for data changes in the background and sends an Alert Message. The Alert is triggered based on a data condition set by the IW. IWs tailor these data conditions to their own needs, thus increasing responsiveness to data changes that matter to them. For Denali, End User Alerting provides a new tool to increase IW productivity when working with Reporting Services reports published to SharePoint.

Reporting Services SharePoint Integration Enhancements:

These capabilities provide an improved SharePoint integration platform for SQL Server Denali Reporting Services and the self-service BI features like Crescent and End User Alerting. Additionally, it helps reduce the TCO for SharePoint administrators by consolidating Reporting Services administration, configuration, and management capabilities into SharePoint 2010 Central Administration Portal and PowerShell scripting. IT can now enable reporting capabilities to all Information Workers in the organization by using a single switch and manage it like any other SharePoint feature.

Credible data - Quality and Consistency

Data Quality Services

A completely new service to SQL Service, Data Quality Services (DQS) helps round out end to end data management for organizations. DQS provides knowledge-driven tools customers can use allow data stewards to create and maintain a Data Quality Knowledge Base which helps improve data quality and ease data management. Specifically, customers can gain confidence in data quality by using organizational knowledge to profile, cleanse, and match data. Data Quality Services can be run as a standalone tool or integrated with Integration Services (SSIS). For SQL Server code-named “Denali”, customers will be able to access the Windows Azure Marketplace DataMarket as a source of 3rd party data to help validate and cleanse data in a data quality project.

Master Data Services Enhancements

Master Data Services (MDS) continues to make it easier to manage master data structures (object mapping, reference data, and dimensions and hierarchies) used in data integration operations. With new Entity Based Staging you can now load all members and attribute values for an entity at one time. Additionally the Explorer and Integration Management functional areas of the Master Data Manager Web application have been updated with a new Silverlight® look and feel. You can now add and delete members more quickly, as well as move members in a hierarchy more easily. Additionally, the new MDS Add-in for Excel democratizes data management so data management applications can be built directly in Excel by information workers. You can use this add-in to load a filtered set of data from your MDS database, work with the data in Excel, and then publish the changes back to the MDS database. If you are an administrator, you can also use the add-in to create new entities and attributes.

SQL Server Integration Services Enhancements

SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) helps lower the barriers to getting started with data integration by allowing organizations of all sizes to operationalize their commitment to information with capabilities that increase efficiency and improve productivity related to information management efforts.

New features include usability enhancements, deployment and administration enhancements, new reports for troubleshooting package operations, comparing and merging packages, and easier access to samples and tutorials. Integration Services has a new DQS Cleansing transform that integrates with the Data Quality Services Data Quality Knowledge Base.

Cloud on Your Terms

The next wave of SQL Server investments will offer organizations the agility to quickly create and scale solutions that solve challenges and fuel new business opportunity from server to private or public cloud linked together with common tools for optimized productivity and cutting-edge developer technologies—build once, deploy and manage wherever.

Optimized productivity

SQL Server Developer Tools Code Named “Juneau”

Juneau unifies the development experience for database development with a single powerful environment for database development across Database, BI and web and supports SQL Server and SQL Azure. Streamline application development with a single environment for developing DB, BI, and web solutions across on-premise and cloud environments.

New Visual Studio based IDE comes standalone or integrated (source control, unit testing, etc…), is released with Denali, on the web, and with Visual Studio vNext and is designed for both database and BI developers
Improved experience for database developers includes declarative, model-based development, integrated tools with modern language services, ability to work connected and offline with local testing, and offers SQL Server edition-aware targeting (SQL Server, SQL Azure…).
Improved experience for SSIS developers for data flow design, undo/redo, and human readable packages.

Data-tier Application Component (DAC) Framework

Introduced in SQL Server 2008 R2, Data-tier Application (DAC) support across SQL Server and Visual Studio helps IT and developers to more easily define and contain the schemas and objects required to support an application, then deploy, import, and export DACs more easily across on-premises and public cloud.

Additional supported objects Permissions, Role Memberships, Synonym, CLR System types: Hierarchy ID, Geometry, and Geography, Spatial Index, and Statistics

Data-tier Application Component (DAC) Parity with SQL Azure
SQL Server Code Name “Denali” and SQL Azure will offer ‘anywhere support’ for moving a DAC database between SQL Server databases across server, private cloud or SQL Azure. This enables customers to build once and deploy and manage anywhere which leads to unprecedented flexibility across IT and dev. Import and export services in the DAC framework enable archiving and migration scenarios between on-premise and cloud database servers. The new export service in the DAC framework will extract database schema as well as data and serialize it into a new logical and open archive format – a .bacpac file. Users will then be able to import the .bacpac archive into another database server.

PowerShell 2.0 Support

This improvement expands on the PowerShell support delivered in SQL Server 2008 by leveraging Windows PowerShell 2.0 allowing DBAs to take advantage of the latest PowerShell features and offers the flexibility to use SQLPS.exe for all SQL and related automation scenarios.

Extend any data, anywhere

Beyond Relational Enhancements

FileTable

FileTable builds on FILESTREAM to bring Win32 namespace support and application compatibility to the file data stored in SQL Server. Countless applications maintain their data in two worlds – documents, media files and other unstructured data in file servers and related Structured Metadata in relational systems. FileTable helps the barrier to entry for customers who have files on servers which currently run Win32 applications while removing the issues caused by maintaining two disparate systems and keeping them in sync.

Full Globe Spatial Support

SQL Server Spatial enhancements include circular arcs on the ellipsoid (industry firsts for relational database systems), support for full globe spatial objects, functional parity of geography and geometry data types, and spatial indexes performance.

Greater interoperability

SQL Server Code Name “Denali” helps customers extend heterogeneous environments by connecting to SQL Server and SQL Azure applications with support for additional industry standard APIs across varied platforms.

Microsoft Driver for PHP for SQL Server is designed to enable reliable, scalable integration with SQL Server for PHP applications deployed on the Windows platform.
Connectivity for Java provides secure and highly available connectivity from java applications to SQL Server for enterprise customers.
Microsoft JDBC Driver for SQL Server provides connectivity for Tier 1 enterprises and mission critical Java applications to SQL Server.

SQL Server Express Local Database Runtime (LocalDB):

In Denali, SQL Server Express will feature a new version, SQL Server Express Local Database Runtime (LocalDB). LocalDB is a new lightweight version of Express that has all its programmability features, yet runs in user mode and has a fast, zero-configuration installation and short list of pre-requisites.

For more information:

http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/: SQL Server Web site

http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/product-info/future-editions.aspx: SQL Server Code Name “Denali”

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/: SQL Server TechCenter

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/: SQL Server DevCenter

Released - SQL Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1

Dandy Weyn — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 15:50:44 GMT

Today we released SQL Server 2008 R2 -SP1

The following features are new in Service Pack 1 (SP1).

Dynamic Management Views for increased supportability. sys.dm_query_stats DMV is extended with additional columns to improve supportabilities over troubleshooting long-running queries. New DMVs and XEvents on select performance counters are introduced to monitor OS configurations and resource conditions related to the SQL Server instance.

ForceSeek for improved querying performance. Syntax for FORCESEEK index hint has been modified to take optional parameters allowing it to control the access method on the index even further. Using old style syntax for FORCESEEK remains unmodified and works as before. In addition to that, a new query hint, FORCESCAN has been added. It complements the FORCESEEK hint allowing specifying ‘scan’ as the access method to the index. No changes to applications are necessary if you do not plan to use this new functionality.
Data-tier Application Component Framework (DAC Fx) for improved database upgrades. The new Data-tier Application (DAC) Framework v1.1 and DAC upgrade wizard enable the new in-place upgrade service for database schema management. The new in-place upgrade service will upgrade the schema for an existing database in SQL Azure and the versions of SQL Server supported by DAC. A DAC is an entity that contains all of the database objects and instance objects used by an application. A DAC provides a single unit for authoring, deploying, and managing the data-tier objects. For more information, see Designing and Implementing Data-tier Applications.
Disk space control in PowerPivot for SharePoint. This update introduces two new configuration settings that let you determine how long cached data stays in the system. In the new Disk Cache section on the PowerPivot configuration page, you can specify how long an inactive database remains in memory before it is unloaded. You can also limit how long a cached file is kept on disk before it is deleted.
Support for 512e Drives. SQL Server now correctly detects and supports hard drives with the new 512e format. These drives report 512 byte logical sector sizes, but they are formatted internally using 4KB sectors. When SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 is installed on Windows Server 2008 R2 or higher, we will correctly detect these drives and adjust automatically.
Fixed various issues. This update fixes many SQL Server 2008 R2 issues that are listed in this master KB article. It also includes some additional fixes that improve the product quality

More details: -

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26727

SQL Server Code name "Denali" features

Dandy Weyn — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 18:47:00 GMT

While everyone is anxiously waiting for the next CTP release of SQL Server Code Name "Denali", - SIGN UP HERE TO BE NOTIFIED a couple of insights on Denali Features have recently been posted
on CHANNEL9 by my fellow Technical Product Manager Darmadi Komo.

These sessions are short (up to 10 minute shots) of recordings with the Program Managers for specific features.

Check them out here - CHANNEL9

BareMetal Hands-on-Labs and workshop - current and futures

Dandy Weyn — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 18:54:20 GMT

Anyone who attended TechED, SQL PASS Summit, any internal Microsoft events or the MVP Summit on SQL must have heard about BareMetal hands-on-labs.
Based on the interest, feedback and request to add the script files and manuals I am attaching the current DRAFT version of the Mission Critical Manual to this post.

Now be aware that this manual and scripts are only provided as guidance.

So what do you need to know about BareMetal, and where are we going with this in terms of a future roadmap.

BareMetal Hands-on-Labs and instructor led labs have consistently been amongst the highest scoring hands-on-labs, and instructor led labs, at our major customer facing and internal conferences such as TechReady.

Based on that success, we extended the material with in-depth guidance and best practices from the SQLCAT: Technical Reference Guide and other useful tips and tricks available, all of that coming in BareMetal V3

Throughout 2 days of hands-on-experience, you will learn what it takes to build out a SQL Server 2008 R2 based Mission Critical Platform in which you will install and configure your own environment from scratch.

The content takes a deep dive into:

- Creating Hyper-V Images and .VHD files from scratch using scripting (PowerShell)

- Configuring the Active Directory Domain and member servers through scripting and sysprepped installations

- Setting up a Windows Server 2008 R2 Clustered Environment

- Installing SQL Server 2008 R2 in a clustered environment

- Configuring and Monitoring Database Mirroring

- Configuring and Monitoring Peer to Peer Replication

On top of that, the current version that I am working on V3, will include BareMetal Business Intelligence, plus a great overview to the next release of SQL Server Codename Denali (CTP) as well as a full blow codeplex project.
Even more, you wouldn't have to download a huge amount of VMs, the majority will be scripted or is available for public download. All of that coming in BareMetal V3, which will release together with the next CTP of Denali.

Does your organization have Oracle, Sybase, MySQL or Access? Migrations done right!

Dandy Weyn — Tue, 31 May 2011 18:49:55 GMT

Do you know that Microsoft offers a free tool to automate database migration? In this demo-heavy session,we examine how SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) migrates other databases to SQL Server.
Discover how the tool perform assessment to analyze complexity of the database to help you plan for migration. Explore how the tool map data types to the equivalent SQL Server’s and convert different SQL dialects inside function,procedure,triggers,and cursors to T-SQL. Learn how the tool emulates other database features not natively supported in SQL Server.
Get a peek of what's being planned for SSMA in 2011.

At TechED North America Welly Lee delivered a great session on SSMA and Migrations.

Review the session and slidedeck here: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2011/DBI307

Microsoft Data Warehousing Offerings

Dandy Weyn — Tue, 31 May 2011 16:59:00 GMT

Microsoft Data Warehousing Offerings

Summary

When implementing a database solution, a “one shoe fits all” approach assumes that all database workloads are largely similar. Microsoft recognizes the different, sometimes conflicting, needs of targeted database workloads such as Online Transactional Processing (OLTP), Data Warehousing, and Business Intelligence.

Microsoft Data Warehousing offers a dedicated, optimized data warehousing implementation through a variety of offerings in Reference Architectures using SMP Architecture, and appliance based solutions scaling from entry-level data warehousing through Business Data Warehouse appliance to Massive Parallel Processing (MPP) offering maximal scale out solutions with SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse.

Fast Track Data Warehouse Reference Architectures offer the customer a variety of choice in hardware implementations, optimized for data warehousing workload, providing scale, hardware optimization and flexibility.

Business Data Warehouse Appliance offers a balanced architecture, providing entry-level data warehousing with the shortest time to solution, in a single appliance based on the Fast Track Data Warehouse Reference architecture optimization and guidance.

SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse provides the customer with a maximum scale, high performance massive parallel processing solution using an appliance that scales to multiple data and storage racks, in which each of the nodes that participate in the MPP architecture provide CPU capacity, storage and query optimization.
The Enterprise Data Warehouse appliance offers the highest data throughput, satisfying data warehousing needs from 10’s to 100’s of terabytes.

Which solution fits best?

When determining the correct solution for the customer, time to solution, query complexity, storage capacity, and concurrency are the key factors determining the right solution. MPP architecture offers a faster data load process over SMP architecture during high concurrent querying of existing data.

Lower entry data warehouses are a perfect candidate for the BDW appliance, based on the Fast Track Reference Architecture.

Database workloads

Separate database workloads are defined by the core functionality of applications, query patterns, and CPU and hardware utilizations.
These workloads can generally be divided into 3 separate, distinct and different workloads.

Transactional Processing

Transactional processing simplifies and accelerates data capture for accurate business decisions.
A transactional processing workload is defined by the volume of incoming transactions, the high-availability and data recovery needs associated with it, and concurrency depending on the amount of users simultaneously loading data.

Business Insights

Business insights are based on analysis of data that leads to optimized business processes and improved business performance. A business Insights solution is defined by data visualization through Business Intelligence tools. Microsoft is market leader in integrated business intelligence solutions, that are implemented through products as Sharepoint 2010, PerformancePoint Services, Office 2010, Power Pivot and SQL Server Analysis Services and SQL Server Reporting Services.

Data Warehousing

Data Warehousing enables a common data model to provide a single version of the truth, with data stored in an Enterprise Data Warehouse that offers choice, flexibility and storage capacity and query performance based upon the customer’s workload, defined by the complexity in query processing, concurrency and the data load process.

The Microsoft Data Warehouse offering provides a solid offering with different levels and stages of implementation providing the customer with specific optimizations defined by dedicated hardware and storage solutions as well as an optimized time to solution through reduced complexity.

The Data Warehousing offering is fitted towards the customer’s need with capability of growth (scale-up) and mass expansion (scale-out)

Within the Microsoft Data Warehousing offering, we offer different levels and stages of implementation, offering the customer choice, flexibility, and a solution that is fitted towards the customer’s need with capability of growth (scale-up) and mass expansion (scale-out).

Microsoft Data Warehousing Offerings

Microsoft Data Warehousing consists of box, reference architectures, and appliances dedicated to a specific workload, implementing SMP or MPP architecture.

SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition

SQL Server Enterprise Edition offers a solid data warehousing solution, based on an out of box solution, allowing the customer the most flexible choice in hardware, storage or implementation. The drawback of a boxed product solution is defined by the manual installation and fine tuning towards a specific customer workload, resulting a longer time to solution based on the complexity of the implementation.

http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver

SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse – Reference Architecture

The Fast Track Data Warehouse Reference Architecture defines guidance and best practices on implementation, aligned with a balanced hardware architecture optimized with several hardware vendors and commodity hardware. Reference Architectures offer the best price performance for data warehousing that are ideal for data marts or small to mid-sized data warehousing.
The Reference Architecture based solutions offer variety in optimized hardware and choice of vendor, with scale up capabilities ranging in the 5 – 80 terabytes range.

http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/solutions-technologies/data-warehousing/fast-track.aspx

SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse – Enterprise Data Warehouse Appliance

The PDW (Parallel Data Warehouse) appliance offers high-end massive parallel processing at the highest performance and scale, in a fully integrated hardware and software solution with built-in high availability. SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse offers unique ultra-shared nothing architecture in which tables can be organized in a distributed and replicated table model, offering maximal query throughput, and high-intense load processes without interfering with a high level of concurrent query and CPU workloads. The Architecture consists of a Control Rack that takes control over client connectivity, appliance management and load processes, with individual query and data retrieval sent to a data rack that consists of each of the individual compute and storage nodes that make up the Massive Parallel Processing architecture. This high-end enterprise data warehousing solution offers maximum scale and expansion allowing additions of data racks to maximize scale out, functioning as a hub in distributed data warehouse architecture (hub/spoke).

http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/solutions-technologies/data-warehousing/pdw.aspx

Resources:

Teched North America – All UP Data Warehouse – From SMP to Parallel Data Warehouse

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2011/DBI332

DevDays 2011 Netherlands – Deep Dive into Microsoft Data Warehouse

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/DevDays/DevDays-2011-Netherlands/Devdays094

Channel 9 videos posted

Dandy Weyn — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 20:15:02 GMT

Our team hast posted a couple of new videos on SQL Server through Channel 9, available for web based viewing, or download to your favorite playbac device

Upgrade Your Database
Data Programmability Tools
SQL Server appliance
Parallel Data Warehouse
SQL Server virtualization
SQL Server security
SQL Server AlwaysOn
SQL Server backup compression
SQL Server Integration Services
SQL Server Non-Relational
SQL Server CLR
SQL Server Data Compression
SQL Server Manageability

Setting up Alwayson Availability Groups in SQL Server codename "Denali"

Dandy Weyn — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 17:41:30 GMT

SQL Server AlwaysOn is the new comprehensive high availability and disaster recovery solution in SQL Server Code-Named "Denali".
Using AlwaysOn, you can increase application availability and get a better return on your hardware investments through a simplified high availability (HA) deployment and management experience.

In the following video, my colleague Gopal Ashok introduces on how to set up Availability Groups in SQL Server Code-Named "Denali"

Database Availability

AlwaysOn Availability Group provides high availability and disaster recover for application databases.
Learn more...

Instance Availability

AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instance enhances the existing failover clustering instance and now provides high availability and disaster recovery for SQL Server Instances.
Learn more...

More information:

AlwaysOn Team Blog

SQL Server AlwaysOn Team Blog

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ms-PjlX7S04

One of Lynn Langit's books on daily sale through OReilly -Ebook Deal of the day

Dandy Weyn — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 17:06:12 GMT

Get Lynn Langit's BI BI book 50% off TODAY ONLY - Best of 2010 #Ebook Deal of the Day on the Top 25 w/Code DDM25 http://oreil.ly/top25-ebooks

Microsoft Press Top 25 of 2010 - Ebook Deal of the Day

oreil.ly

When you buy ebooks thru oreilly.com you get lifetime access to the book, and whenever possible we provide it to you in five, DRM-free file formats PDF, .epub, Kindle-compatible .mobi, Android .apk, and DAISY ebook that you can use on the devices...

it's like having a 4x4, but the manufacturer and sales person does not allow you to take it offroad...

Dandy Weyn — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 23:34:24 GMT

I just got off the phone with my ISP - QWEST, since that is about the only ISP we can get in the building I live.
Fortunately I also have a Clear internet connection that I use when I travel, giving me a better deal than the internet connections we get charged for at hotel locations.

The problem I experienced today was in regards to VPN connectivity - using the PPTP protocol, which failed to connect on the Zyxell PK5000Z I got from Quest,
but worked clearly on my 'other' internet connection.

So after figuring out every single VPN setting and using the online chat option with Qwest ---- the result is --- Your modem doesn't support PPTP.

OK, no problem right, let's get it replaced and get a new model.
Qwest offered me an "OLD" model instead, requesting me to send back the one I currently have, and purchased through them.

So from my side, the ideal opportunity to purchase something that actually works, but when I request a refund on the existing modem, they simply can't do that.

Isn't that kinda like ..you buy a brand new Jeep, take it offroad and it just won't go offroad, while the dealership is not allowing you to get a refund on it, but offers you the old model for the same price?

Final outcome --- I am shopping for a new router/DSL modem, or I can decide to keep the current Zyxell PK5000Z, configure it to bridge with another wireless router that I have.

Ah ---internet connectivity --- don't we love it.

SQL PASS - Hands-on-Labs goodness ...

Dandy Weyn — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 23:52:58 GMT

To follow up on a general request by the attendees at SQLPASS, I promised to post a link to our existing SQL Server 2008 R2 and SQL Azure Hands-on-Labs.

Some of these labs are hosted as part of the Technet Virtual Labs or MSDN Virtual labs, which makes it very easy for you to experience SQL Server, without actually having
to install anything on your desktop.

We also released 2 training kits,that besides hands-on-labs also provide you with whitepapers, recorded videos and an installation guide, all in an easy to install training kit.

SQL Server 2008 R2 Training Kit

SQL Server 2008 R2 offers an impressive array of capabilities for developers that build upon key innovations introduced in SQL Server 2008.
The SQL Server 2008 R2 Update for Developers Training Kit is ideal for developers who want to understand how to take advantage of the key improvements introduced in SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2 in their applications, as well as for developers who are new to SQL Server.
The training kit is brought to you by Microsoft Developer and Platform Evangelism.

Windows Azure Platform Training Kit

The Windows Azure Platform Training Kit includes a comprehensive set of technical content including hands-on labs, presentations,
and demos that are designed to help you learn how to use the Windows Azure platform including: Windows Azure, SQL Azure and the Windows Azure AppFabric.

Technet and MSDN -Virtual Labs - HOSTED ONLINE

This series of hands-on-labs are hosted online, so you don't need to build out your own Hyper-V environment.

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

TechNet Virtual Lab: Analyzing and Reporting with the Excel 2010 Client

TechNet Virtual Lab: Developing and Consuming Shared Components in SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services

TechNet Virtual Lab: Exploring PowerPivot for SharePoint

TechNet Virtual Lab: Visualizing Data with Maps in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services

TechNet Virtual Lab: Working with ATOM Data Feeds in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services

TechNet Virtual Lab: Power Pivot

TechNet Virtual Lab: Reporting Services: Sparklines, Databars, and Indicators

DATABASE MANAGEMENT / HIGH AVAILABILITY

TechNet Virtual Lab: Upgrading to SQL Server 2008 R2 from SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005