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SQL Server Advent Calendar

SQL Server Advent Calendar 17 – Change Tracking

Day 17 of my virtual advent calendar, about stuff I like in SQL Server 2008.. Today’s topic is the confusingly named change tracking i.e. nothing to do with Change Data Capture (CDC) I mentioned in my last post. CDC is only in enterprise edition only Read More...

SQL Server Advent Calendar 16 – Change Data Capture

Day 16 of my virtual advent calendar, about stuff I like in SQL Server 2008.. One of the main hurdles in refreshing a data warehouse is to work out what’s changed since the last refresh.  If you’re lucky the source will have a last modified date Read More...

SQL Server Advent Calendar 15 – Integration Services Profiling

Day 15 of my virtual advent calendar, about stuff I like in SQL Server 2008.. If there were no issues with data quality in data warehouses I would have completed many of my BI projects in a third of the time. The client would always insist they had good Read More...

SQL Server Advent Calendar 14 – Integration Services Lookups

Day 14 of my virtual advent calendar, about stuff I like in SQL Server 2008.. If it aint broke don’t fix it, is probably best aimed at Integration Services in SQL Server 2008. So what was ‘fixed’?  The most important thing was the performance of Read More...

SQL Server Advent Calendar 13 – Grouping Sets

Day 13 of my virtual advent calendar, about stuff I like in SQL Server 2008.. The SQL Group by clause has been around since I can remember, but in SQL Server 2008 we know have grouping sets.  Imagine you wanted to sum sales amount from the adventure Read More...

SQL Server Advent Calendar 12 - Tablix

Day 12 of my virtual advent calendar, about stuff I like in SQL Server 2008.. One of the frustrations I used to have with Reporting Services was to decide whether to use a table or a matrix data control, and if I got too far in to a design and it turned Read More...

SQL Server Advent Calendar 11 – Report Builder v2

Day 11 of my virtual advent calendar, about stuff I like in SQL Server 2008.. …and I mentioned redesigning charts in my last post and the best answer might be to get your users to do it for themselves in Report Builder 2. Leaving you (the DBA BI expert) Read More...

SQL Server Advent Calendar 10 – Reporting Services Charts

Day 10 of my virtual advent calendar, about stuff I like in SQL Server 2008.. I have been using Reporting Services since beta 2 in SQL Server 2000, and for me the weak link was the charts which even then looked pretty basic… Many people resorted to using Read More...

SQL Server Advent Calendar 9 – Management with Powershell

Day 9 of my virtual advent calendar, about stuff I like in SQL Server 2008.. Many SQL Server databases are managed by part time or accidental DBA’s, who have a whole bunch of other duties possibly including networking, active directory, SharePoint and Read More...

SQL Server Advent Calendar 8 – Analysis Services Named Sets

Day 8 of my virtual advent calendar, about stuff I like in SQL Server 2008.. Analysis Services allows you to create a set of things you are interested in and persist this in the cube.  MDX is used to define the set e.g. CREATE SET CURRENTCUBE.[Top Read More...

SQL Server Advent Calendar 7 – Partitions & Indexed Views

Day 6 of my virtual advent calendar, about stuff I like in SQL Server 2008.. Indexed Views allow result sets to be persistent as they are materialized on physical storage which avoids performing costly joins and/or aggregations at execution time.  Read More...

SQL Server Advent Calendar 6 – Hierarchy Data Type

Day 6 of my virtual advent calendar, about stuff I like in SQL Server 2008.. Using a relational database to store structures like the hierarchy of a company or the product catalogue usually involves one of two techniques: Have a table for each level in Read More...

SQL Server Advent Calendar 5 – Analysis Services Performance

Day 5 of my virtual advent calendar, about stuff I like in SQL Server 2008.. Over 80% of the budget on improvements to Analysis Services in SQL Server 2008 went on improving performance. The answer was called block space computation and to understand Read More...

SQL Server Advent Calendar 4 – Filtered Indexes

Day 4 of my virtual advent calendar, about stuff I like in SQL Server 2008.. Filtered indexes are indexes with a where clause, allowing you to index the part of the  table you are interested in. For example if a column can have nulls in you could Read More...

SQL Server Advent Calendar 3 – Analysis Services Backup

Day 3 of my virtual advent calendar, about stuff I like in SQL Server 2008.. Backing up of analysis services in SQL Server 2005 ran out for steam for databases of about 20Gb, and so you have to follow a different route to back them up (see this technet Read More...

SQL Server Advent Calendar 2 – Time

Day 2 of my virtual advent calendar, about stuff I like in SQL Server 2008.. Following on from my previous post, in some data warehouses there is a separate dimension for time of day, so that demand through a day can be modelled. Storing time in SQL server Read More...

SQL Server Advent Calendar 1 – Dates

There is no possible connection between databases and Christmas, so I simply wanted to share 24 my favourite bits and bobs that are in SQL Server 2008…. The new date data types in SQL server crack a problem I have had since I started BI as there is (nearly) Read More...