These courses rarely come to Europe - so if you're interested be quick! From the blurb:- We would like to invite you to attend the upcoming SAP Customer Workshop about How Microsoft Runs SAP. The same session will be held in Munich on February 7, 2006 and in Brussels on February 9, 2006. The...

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...

It is with sadness that I have to announce that I am changing jobs and moving back into my old role as a Product Specialist, working with our Enterprise customers in a pre-sales capacity. Alas, I won’t have as much time to blog now, but I’ll do my best to share interesting SQL info as I come across it...

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...

More and more ITPros are looking for help in deciding between 64 bit and 32 bit boxes, often they are looking for evidence that 64 bit is worth the investment and worth the risk (of adopting a new platform). This link http://www.microsoft.com/sql/64bit/productinfo/winhecdemo.mspx takes you to a compelling...

Redmond mag .com have published an article 'Ten Useful Microsoft Blogs' @ http://www.redmondmag.com/columns/article.asp?EditorialsID=1044 Guess who's number 2? Also at number 10 is the UKs own Industry Insiders blog http://blogs.technet.com/industry%5Finsiders/ . So as promised all of you who submitted...

Three new SQL Server 2000 blogcasts out of Redmond: Demo 4-1 Configuring System Monitor http://www.microsoft.com/winme/0506/24231/TNT1-160_Demo_4-1.asx Demo 4-2 Monitoring SQL Server performance http://www.microsoft.com/winme/0506/24231/TNT1-160_Demo_4-2.asx Demo 4-3 Configuring alerts http://www...

Sudhi recently asked me how to call an aspx page from a report and pass a parameter held in a textbox, or other control. My solution is: Drag a textbox control on to the report and enter the value "2005/07/28/408325" (without the the quotes) in to it. If this is a new report the textbox should...

when I was over in the US recently, I attended a 'Bill Baker and team unplugged' session, (Bill is the GM for SQL Server Business Intelligence). Reporting Services Report packs came up as a topic for discussion. The team asked the audience if the Report Packs had been well recieved, to which I quickly...

After all my messing around yesterday, I've decided to create this post in pocket word. I attended a securty session yesterday and was reminded of an issue that can send DBAs scuttling from the room when they learn of it's presence, the 'trojan report'. Reporting Services (RS) reports can use Windows...

I've had a really hard time with my iPaq today. First thing this morning I couldn't get it to connect to anything. For ages I poked about - everything looked fine. Then eventually I found, in the asset viewer, that I had no IP address. I Poke about some more but to no avail, then decided to reset the...

I'm in Seattle this week at Microsoft's first TechReady conference. What's more I'm totally mobile; I didn't bring my laptop. Instead I'm relying on my iPaq with built in wireless and bluetooth.1 To help me type I'm trialing a software keyboard I downloaded from pocketgear.com. It's not bad I have to...

More and more people are asking me about SQL 2005 training courses and certification. I believe the exams will be ready in Q1 next year. In the meantme, how about access to the training courses absolutely free until 1st November @ https://www.microsoftelearning.com/sqlserver2005

Here's another blogcast in the SQL 2000 performance blogcast series out of the States - this time 'Using SQL 2000 Profiler'. This one's a bit long at 11mins 8secs. http://www.microsoft.com/winme/0506/24231/TNT1-160_Demo_3.asx

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...

If you were given an opportunity to create a “cubed” solution for 50,000 different users, would you create one cube with 50,000 roles? Would you create 50,000 cubes – one for each customer? What would you do? This is what Mosha Pasumansky and Dave Wickert from the product team suggest for SQL Server...

Are you still using @@IDENTITY? It seems many people are. If you are, are you aware that it might not always return what you expect? No? then read on. @@IDENTITY will return the last IDENTITY column value inserted across any scope in the current session. This means that if a trigger, or similar, were...

A colleague of mine in the States, Rob Caron, is very keen to learn how our customers are deploying Reporting Services; specifically with respect to IIS. When we launched Reporting Services (RS) it was all too easy to say it was a ‘free’ addition to the SQL stack, indeed it was supposed to add value...

Not many people know we have a SQL JDBC driver at all, well now we've got a beta version for SQL Server 2005. It works for a wide variety of OSs including: HP-UX, IBM AIX, Linux, Solaris, Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, or Windows XP. Apparently it goes a lot better than the old (SQL 2000) driver...

Good news for the chap I met on the 'Ask the Experts' desk at TechEd, who was contemplating jumping through all sorts of hurdles to create reports form Sharepoint data. I couldn't really get my head round the (Sharepoint) problems he foresaw, but I was able to tell him that a report pack was in the pipeline...

Another blogcast from the States covering performance tuning in SQL Server 2000, this one covers using index tuning wizard. 6 mins 47 secs http://www.microsoft.com/winme/0506/24231/TNT1-160_Demo_2.asx

If you'd like to meet with me to discuss any issues arising from my blog posts, anything SQL, or just to say hello, I will be at the Ask the Experts Info desk, here at TechEd at 11:30 - 2pm. Tuesday. And I'll also be at the Ask the Experts stand at 2-5pm Thursday. Hope to see you there. If you're...

The QFE for SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services Service Pack 2 is now available. The QFE is a generally distributed release that can be obtained from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=7FFE50D4-AFF8-4C1E-9609-6798190C2D58&displaylang=en . This software patch includes fixes for...

A frequently asked question is, 'how does one customise the colours in a chart?' Below is a link to a blog post from Brian Welcker, which is actually a post on how to overcome the encumberence of the chart legend when it takes up too much space on a chart. The example takes advantage of some code stored...

Well I didn't realise, or maybe I just plain forgot, that these reports and the necessary support infrastrucuture come with Reporting Services under the extras folder on the CD - all useful stuff for report heads. Longest Running Reports Most Executed Reports Report Exections By Hour Report Parameters...