Reposted 10/1/06 to include in 'free tools' category I'm constantly asked "what's Microsoft doing about metadata and do we have a solution." In the old days (SQl 2000 and 7), Microsoft provided Meta Data Services, a platform designed to help tools and applications manage metadata and information...

Overview The Feature Pack is a collection of standalone install packages that provide additional value for SQL Server 2005. It includes: Latest versions of redistributable components for SQL Server 2005 Latest versions of add-on providers for SQL Server 2005 Latest versions of backward...

Here's a little self publicity for gig I'll be doing in December: To register please go to https://msevents-eu.microsoft.com/cui/EventDetail.aspx?culture=en-GB&eventid=118761637 05 December 2005 18:30 - 05 December 2005 21:00 (GMT) GMT, London Welcome Time: 18:00 Language: English Microsoft...

After my recent SQL 2k5 BI session, here at TVP Reading, I had an enquiry asking for more info regarding the SAP provider I showed in the list of providers available to SQL Server Integration Services . The best public information I can find is @ http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms216599 . The...

Edited 21st Sept 05 to include picture of herbarium sheet. In my article 'Business Intelligence (BI): The way it is without the blah blah' , I mention that I was aware of some exiting research using the SQL Server OLAP engine, the results of which where hopefully about to hit Nature magazine. I...

For sometime a group of Program Managers from the SQL BI team have been working with a customer, Barnes and Noble, to produce a SQL BI solution for their data warehouse and analysis needs using SQL 2005. The leasons learnt from all their work is being continually published to this website http://www...

I'm grateful to T.K. Anand for this useful code snippet which is useful if you're writing a web services client that consumes OLAP data. The following Adomd.net code can be used for saving and loading cellsets… Save: XmlReader xmlReader = command.ExecuteXmlReader(); string xml = xmlReader.ReadOuterXml...

Following Deepak's question, asked in his comment on my previous UDM post , I quizzed our internal Yukon alias and received the following useful info regarding using SQL against a UDM; thanks to Akshai Mirchandani. AS2005 supports a limited set of SQL features – I can’t say for sure what the level...

There are very many, and from my own professional perspective, too many (I’ve got to try and learn all this stuff) new features in SQL 2005. Some of them can be described as ‘catch up’ features and some of them might be described as ‘tick in the box’ features. There is one that is wholly revolutionary...