I've just completed an article which gives my definition of BI, its written for people new to this area and who are still trying to get their heads round it. BI is traditionally swamped in marketing and analyst 'blah blah', which only serves to obscure...

Cool new OVER Clause (Transact-SQL) in SQL Server 2005 to circumvent the not so efficient correlated subquery. Imagine a table: create table grades( StudentID int not null ,StudentName varchar(10) not null ,Subject varchar(10) not null ,Score int...

Follow up on Database snapshot performance question from SQL Server™ 2005 High Availability TechNet evening 21/6/05 Question; how does a snapshot database perform compared to the original database when it comes to querying – can it make use of the...

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...

Question: How many columns does SQL Server 2005 allow in a published article (SQL Server 2000 was linited to 254)? Answer: The column limit for transactional replication, I'm informed, is now in excess of 1000.

Database Mirroring: How many witness can you have in quorum? - One How many witnesses can you have on one box? - Many

Here's a Blogcast, the third in a series of three from the US, looking at Performance tuning techniques with SQL 2000 'Managing indexes' http://www.microsoft.com/winme/0506/24231/TNT1-160_Demo_1-3.asx

Here's a Blogcast, second in a series of three from the US, looking at Performance tuning techniques with SQL 2000 'Analyzing an execution plan' http://www.microsoft.com/winme/0506/24231/TNT1-160_Demo_1-2.asx

Here's a Blogcast, one of a series of three from the US, looking at Performance tuning techniques with SQL 2000 http://www.microsoft.com/winme/0506/24231/TNT1-160_Demo_1-1.asx

During my TechNet presentation on Tuesday evening (14/6/05 in Reading), I got a little side tracked and, while talking about partitioning in SQL 2005, found myself drawing my audiences’ attention to the fact that only one thread can access a database...

You can find all the code @ http://blogs.technet.com/mat_stephen/articles/406459.aspx

The Video from SAPPHIRE (Steve Ballmer on Mendocino) is now available on the website at http://www.microsoft-sap.com/alliance.aspx Mendocino is described at www.sap.com/mendocino , and www.microsoft.com/office/sap . I think mendocino is very significant...

I had a question, at the London roadshow (8th June), which I wasn’t sure if I could answer reliably, so I promised to blog the answer. The question: “Can I run selected (with mouse) tasks and transforms from inside the SQL Server Integration Services...

Reporting Services: How to stop IE striping out leading spaces in report data values: My thanks to Russell Christopher and Mike Schetterer who recently discussed the problem that IE will strip out leading spaces from data in a report. The solution...

Here is a 4min 8sec blogcast showing how to add a multicast transform to a SQL Server Integration Services package (the package created in the previous blogcast). A multicast transform can create two or more replica data flows from one original data flow...

Good news! Due to popular demand we have added Report Server to the Express edition of SQL 2005 and added Report Builder to the Workgroup edition - there are some caviats though so check the small print at the bottom of this feature guide. http://www...

Alas SQL Server 2000 SP4 has introduced a bug that prevents all one's memory being used if you are using AWE - please see the following article. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;899761 Microsoft will post a fix for this once...

Here is an 8min 13sec blogcast showing how to create a simple SQL Server Integration Services package. The package aggregates 2 million records from a raw data file and passes the resulting 64 aggregated rows into a table in tempdb.

This morning, at TechEd USA, Paul Flessner announced the release date for SQL Server 2005. This is an excerpt from his notes from TechEd: "It is official — the countdown to launch has begun! During my Tech•Ed keynote this morning, I announced...

For those of you in the area, I'll be presenting these two TechNet evenings in Reading UK - it would be good to see you there! 14 th June Session Abstract: Microsoft SQL Server 2005 is the next version of the successful SQL Server product family. This...

Well, how about this - looks good to me! Definitely one for your favourites. I'll say no more and just paste in the general announcememt for customers. SQL Server TechCenter Launches The new SQL Server TechCenter is live on TechNet – featuring...

You can register for all these webcasts from here http://www.microsoft.com/uk/technet/training/webcasts.mspx#EIA 31 May, 17.30: Real-Time BI with SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services There is an increasing demand to make business intelligence (BI) 'real...

I am very grateful to Andy Steer of Contemporary Plc for this useful tip. To keep up-to-date with knowledge base articles coming out of Microsoft, check out this web page containing RSS feeds for all Microsoft products: http://support.microsoft...

SQL Server Reporting Services: How to do an aggregate, SUM(Field), and display it as a % of the total for a Table or Matrix column To do this we have to take advantage of the fact that the SUM function, and indeed all aggregate functions, have an optional...

SQL 2005 now provides Showplan (Query plan) output in XML - why? To make it easier for a dba/developer to write TSQL, or other code, that can determine the cost of a query and thus dynamically determine if the query should be prevented from running based...