There's Something about SQL! : Microsoft Business Intelligence

SQL Server Reporting Services & SQL Server Analysis Services Performance Troubleshooting

beatrice — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 12:51:00 GMT

Some useful posts\white papers that you can't miss if you're looking on how to increase or troubleshoot performances of Analysis and Reporting server:

Analysis Services Processing Best Practices

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/bestpractice/ssaspbpr.mspx#Profile

The recommendations in this white paper provide best practices for processing in Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 Analysis Services. These performance optimizations are based on real-world implementations with some of our top customers and partners who use SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services Enterprise Edition.

Identifying and Resolving MDX Query Performance Bottlenecks in SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services

(New!!! 28 August 2007)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=975C5BB2-8207-4B4E-BE7C-06AC86E24C13&displaylang=en

This article provides the information about the available MDX query troubleshooting tools and demonstrates how to use the most common of these tools to identify and resolve MDX query performance bottlenecks with individual MDX queries

How to diagnose issues when running reports in the report server?

http://blogs.msdn.com/lukaszp/archive/2007/01/31/how-to-diagnose-issues-when-running-reports-in-the-report-server.aspx

Lukasz Pawlowski, Program Manager at Microsoft, discusses the process to follow when diagnosing issues when running reports in the report server

SQL 2005 Standard Reports, SQL 2005 Performance Dashboard Reports and... DMVStats

beatrice — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 06:13:00 GMT

SQL Server 2005 introduced dynamic management views (DMV) and functions (DMF), a mechanism to allow you to look at the internal workings of SQL Server using TSQL. They allow you an easy method for monitoring what SQL Server is doing and how it is performing. They replace the need to query the system tables or using other awkward methods of retrieving system information that you had to use with SQL Server 2000.

To retrieve information from DMVs and DMFs, you have plenty of choices:

T-SQL

To learn about DMVs and DMFs, you can refer to:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188754.aspx
Troubleshooting Performance Problems in SQL Server 2005

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/tsprfprb.mspx

If you're not familiar with T-SLQ or you're looking for a nice user-interface to browse the information provided by the DMVs, you have two report-based solution ready to be used:

SQL Server 2005 Standard Reports: In SQL Server 2005 there is a set of pre-made reports in Management Studio that can help database administrators gather information in many common areas. There are reports for CPU, memory, disk, sessions, queries, transactions, and more baked right into Management Studio.

If you have SQL Server 2005 CTP2, you can download and install SQL Server 2005 Performance Dashboard: a custom set of reports (custom reports are a new feature of Service Pack 2) for Management Studio.

As Standard Reports, they retrieve information mainly from DMVs and DMFs, but they allow you to navigate and drill down through the information provided, from an initial Dashboard that provides a high-level overview on how your system is performing.

To try them out, visit: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=1D3A4A0D-7E0C-4730-8204-E419218C1EFC&displaylang=en

Well, so now, what to add on top of that?

Well, what happens is that DMVs and DMFs retrieve real time information, which then is stored in memory. As long as you'll restart your SQL Server instance, you will be going to loose all the information which you have collected, therefore you're going to loose the information that you can visualise through Standard Reports and Performance Dashboard Reports.

You can still save the information you're collecting periodically into a table, and then modify the Performance Dashboard Reports through SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence Development Studio... But why to reinvent the wheel?

The Microsoft SQL Server Development Customer Advisory Team has developed a tool, DMV Stats, which collects performance oriented DMVs into a data warehouse, and provides a methodology called 'Waits' and 'Queues' to identify and track down performance issues. Drill-through analysis is provided by reporting services reports.

Well, something to try out...

For more information visit: http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlcat/archive/2007/07/13/performance-analysis-tool-dmvstats.aspx

- Beatrice Nicolini -

Webcasts on SQL Server 2005 - New Entries!

beatrice — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 14:12:00 GMT

Just a quick update on the next webcasts available for SQL Server 2005 (and Sharepoint Services v3)!

SQL Server 2005 SP2 Tools and Improvements (Level 200)

Event Overview:

In this webcast, we discuss the broad range of tools available for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 (SP2). If you are a database administrator or IT professional who is new to SQL Server 2005 or would like to see a few of the great scenarios enabled by SP2, you should attend this session. We cover several tools and features that are new or improved in SP2, including Management Studio, Best Practices Analyzer, multi-instance maintenance plans, custom reports, script generation, and the Copy Database Wizard.

Date:

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

1:00 PM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

Recommended For:

IT professionals

SQL 2005 High Availability Webcast

Event Overview:

SQL Server 2005 is engineered to reduce both planned and unplanned downtime, provide solutions for disaster recovery, and provide greater system availability to database users through High Availability technologies. Come learn more about SQL 2005 High Availability.

Date:

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

9:00 AM Central Time (US & Canada)

Recommended For:

IT Professional.

If you're interested in Sharepoint Services, don't miss the:

Web Demonstration of Windows SharePoint Services v3!!!

The demonstration will include:

- Gantt Chart task lists

- Workflow approval to manage documents

- Blog and Wiki collaboration features

- New navigation and usability features

- RSS feed generation

The demonstration will give registrants the chance to:

- View the new features of v3

- Learn how SharePoint can benefit your business

- Ask questions of our presenter and organiser online

Date(s):

Live Web Demo > Whats New in SharePoint Services V3	30/03/2007 09:30
Live Web Demo > Whats New in SharePoint Services V3	04/05/2007 09:30

Note: ISC Software Solutions Ltd is a Microsoft Gold partner with specialisations in: Information Worker Solutions, Microsoft Business Solutions, Data Management Solutions.

A New Site for Microsoft BI

beatrice — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 11:43:00 GMT

A new useful website entirely dedicated to Microsoft BI solution is online from the 20th February at http://www.microsoft.com/bi.

What you'll find:

Learning Opportunities (webcasts, virtual labs, white papers)
Upcoming Events
Demos
Useful Info to help you successfully plan, build and deploy a successful Microsoft BI solution.

How To: Install SSRS 2000 after Share Point Services

beatrice — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 21:05:00 GMT

Here are some tips you might find useful if you are trying to Install SQL Server Reporting Services 2000 after having installed Share Point Services on the same machine.

The two products have in fact some interoperability issues, which are described in the SSRS 2000 Deployment Guide (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2000/deploy/rsdepgd.mspx): but the process descibed in here is not 100% complete, and since I've found some difficulties in retrieving information on the best practices to use, I want to share them into my blog.

1. The SSRS wizard will alert you about some Virtual Directory issues: ignore this alert and proceed with the installation.

2. Al the end of the wizard, you'll receive an error message that states:

Setup could not initialize the report server. You must manually initialize the report server before using it for the first time. For more information, see the Reporting Services setup documentation.

Ignore this message as well, and close the installation wizard.

Then you have to manually:

3. Add the Reporting Services virtual directories to the Windows SharePoint Services list of exclusions

4. Modify the SharePoint Web.config file

5. Move the report server in an application pool that is separate from the SharePoint server one

6. Finally, use the rsactivate utility to activate the local instance of Reporting Services (the deployement guide states: "in Internet Explorer, navigate to http://<server>/ReportServer. This causes Reporting Services to initialize". This didn't worked for me, I had to use the rsactivate utility, even if the error message indicated an initialization problem).

Is can sound tricky, but you can find all the instructions for steps 3 to 6 at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa179370(sql.80).aspx.

Join the Microsoft BI Conference 2007!

beatrice — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 19:51:00 GMT

It's official: Microsoft will host its first Business Intelligence conference in Seattle, at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center from May 9-11, 2007, where Microsoft expects approximately 2,000 conference attendees including CEOs, CFOs, IT professionals, partners and financial analysts.

The conference will feature technical tracks and sessions, customer and partner presentations, executive keynotes, presentations by industry analysts, customer awards presentation, and an exhibit hall showcasing Microsoft partners. Attendees will learn about customer and partner BI implementations, best practices and successes.

The conference website is online at http://www.microsoftbiconference.com/, to help you to find out more about this event.

During the conference, Microsoft will be recognizing customers for their outstanding solutions built on the Microsoft Business Intelligence product family and the benefits their company has realized as a result. Nominations are due April 1, 2007. Click here for more information.