There's Something about SQL! : PFE Life

Old MPS Reports Dismissed - New Version Ready!

beatrice — Tue, 19 May 2009 10:17:00 GMT

A new version of MPS Reports has been released late April, at the following link:

Microsoft Product Support Reports

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=CEBF3C7C-7CA5-408F-88B7-F9C79B7306C0&displaylang=en

Amongst the main differences:

With the new MPS reports, there is only one download, based on your system architecture (x86 or x64).
The supported Operating Systems for the new tool are Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.
There are some prerequisites for running the new tool:

Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0
Windows Powershell 1.0
Windows Installer 3.1
Microsoft Core XML Services (MSXML) 6.0

For specific information for running the new version, you can refer to this article form the

Ask The Performance Team:

Two Minute Drill: The New MPS Reports

http://blogs.technet.com/askperf/archive/2009/05/01/two-minute-drill-the-new-mps-reports.aspx

If instead you prefer the old school way, and still like to run the old versions, refer to Tristank blog:

Old MPSReports

http://blogs.technet.com/tristank/archive/2009/05/12/old-mpsreports.aspx

- Beatrice Nicolini -

I' back to Italy... and I'm loving IT!

beatrice — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 10:53:00 GMT

Well well, long time without posting once again.

This time I have a good enough reason… which is my relocation back to… La Dolce Vita.

Yes, exactly, I am back in Italy, back to Milan, back to the place I grown up and where I have all of my family!

Working in Microsoft UK has been an amazing professional and personal experience. Great work, great people… not such a great weather :-) … but now I have a new brilliant challenge to start and I am very looking forward to it!

So you guess, I haven't left the family. I am still working in Microsoft, same role as a SQL server Premier Field Engineer. Just a bit more of sun, of good food and red wine.

Blogging is going on, hopefully with more and more posting … so stay tuned!

-Beatrice Nicolini-

W-Tech 2009 - London, 3rd February 2009!

beatrice — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:52:00 GMT

Next week I am going to present at this year's W-Tech event, which is due to be in London next week, at the Savoy Place.

I am already working an my slide deck, and the title myself and my colleagues from Microsoft have been given is pretty exciting:

Having fun and being a technical professional

"Can working as a female technical professional be challenging and fun? Come and meet some of Microsoft's female engineers and hear about how they are climbing the career ladder working in an exciting, dynamic and diverse working environment"

If you are a woman (sorry, men not allowed for once :)) and you are interested in starting\going back to a career in IT, you should not miss this event!

More info:

Abstract:

BCS and womenintechnology are bringing women, whatever stage of their career, including those looking to get their career back on track, and employers together for the premier networking event of 2009.

Meet with some of the smartest IT professionals, the biggest recruiters in IT, attend career development workshops, revamp and submit your cv, prepare yourself for that next interview or promotion.

This is a fantastic opportunity to hear from high profile women in the industry already succeeding and achieving, you could be one of them?

Agenda:

http://www.wtech-event.co.uk/eventproa.php

More Info:

http://www.wtech-event.co.uk/

Registration:

https://forms.bcs.org/w-tech/prog/index.php

- Beatrice Nicolini -

Reading User Group Meeting - 20th Nov

beatrice — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 13:30:00 GMT

For those which live or work close to Reading - there will be a UserGroup on the 20th Evening held in TVP - Microsoft Offices.

Agenda:

6pm – 6:30 Registration and networking + Tea/Coffee with biscuits.

Meet and greet.

6:30pm – 7 Round Table discussion - ALL

Take stock and get the latest news in the SQL Server field. This is also a great opportunity to ask any burning questions you have, may be a problem at work.

7pm – 7:40 SQL Server 2008 - Data & Backup Compression

Beatrice Nicolini

Premier Field Engineer | SQL Server |Microsoft U.K.

Read my Blog.: http://blogs.technet.com/beatrice

With the 2008 release, SQL Server makes a major advance in scalability for data warehousing. With data and backup compression, SQL Server 2008 reduces the size of tables and indexes by storing fixed-length data types in variable length storage format and allows saving disk media space for your SQL backups. This session will guide you through the new data and backup features of SQL 2008, and will show which options are available for different data warehousing scenarios.

7:40pm – 7:55 BREAK: Sarnies

More time to network and ask questions...

7:55pm – 8.15pm Open Nuggest Session

The Audience - anyone

Bring your 5 minute hint/tip/demo and present it. This worked well at the London User Group.

Please let me know in advance via email to http://sqlserverfaq.com/events/138/tonyrogerson@torver.net.

It's a great way of getting your name know and developing your career! There will be prizes for each person who presents.

8:15pm – 8.45pm Table Expressions and the Optimiser and some SQL 2008 optimisations for Optional Parameters

Tony Rogerson, SQL Server MVP

http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/tonyrogerson

We will look at the theory behind Table Expressions (Derived Tables, Views, Table Valued Functions and Common Table BLOCKED EXPRESSION, we will delve into some traps and suprise you at what the optimiser is doing under the covers. To finish off we will look at some SQL Server 2000 introduced optimiser improvements that certainly if you are using dynamic SQL because of optional parameters will mean you can move away from dynamic SQL back to simple straighforward SQL.

To register:

http://sqlserverfaq.com/events/138/UK-SQL-Server-User-Group-Evening-Meeting-Agenda-TBC.aspx

- Beatrice Nicolini -

Missing SQL OLE DB Providers?

beatrice — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:10:00 GMT

Just came across an issue on installing Litespeed from Quest http://www.quest.com/litespeed-for-sql-server/ on a Windows 2003 64 Bit environment . Litespeed in fact requires Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server, and after some troubleshooting we've figured out that we've had the registry corrupted and by re-registering our sqloledb.dll everything worked out fine.

Faruk Celik (http://blogs.msdn.com/farukcelik), a Microsoft Support Engineer from lovely and sunny Instanbul :-), has been very helpful here, and talking once again about blogs not to miss, I highly recommend you a couple of posts that he wrote to troubleshoot OLE DB Providers issues though UDL:

Basics first : "UDL Test"

https://blogs.msdn.com/farukcelik/archive/2007/12/31/basics-first-udl-test.aspx

“UDL Test” on a 64 bit machine

http://blogs.msdn.com/farukcelik/archive/2007/12/31/udl-test-on-a-64-bit-machine.aspx

Therefore: if you have a 64 bit environment and you cannot see the provider you're looking for when performing your basic test with UDL BUT your 32 provider test on your 64 machine works out fine, it might be that you have to re-register your 64bit sqloledb.dll via:

regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\Ole DB\sqloledb.dll"

- Beatrice Nicolini -

UK SQL UG April Events – London and Edinburgh

beatrice — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 19:21:00 GMT

A new series of events is coming soon in London and Edinburgh, from the UK SQL Server User Group.

Amongst the speakers there will be my friend and ex-colleague Christian Bolton (http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/christian/), which will present on the evening of the 17th Apr in London - so make sure not to miss this date!

More information about the events:

7th April :: London :: 2.30 - 5.30
Rob Farley
For more info and to reserve your place: http://sqlserverfaq.com?eid=113

2:30pm - 3:00pm Round Table Discussion
3:00pm - 4.00pm Understanding the OVER clause in SQL 2005
4:30pm - 5.:30pm SQL Server 2008 Resource Governor - no its not the new recruitment agent

17th April :: London :: 6 - 9
Christian Bolton
Eric Alsop
For more info and to reserve your place: http://sqlserverfaq.com?eid=110

6pm - 6.30pm Round Table Discussion
6.30pm – 7.30pm Will you still want me, when I''m 64? - Christian Bolton (COEO)
An in-depth look at the move toward 64-bit computing with SQL Server covering where and why it will help, what the caveats are and the most up to date best practices gathered from global SQL Server deployments.
7.50pm - 9.00pm The cursors of SQLStein - Eric Alsop (IM Group)
Nothing divides the SQL community like a cursor, so why are they still around? In this session we are going to look at how to use cursors and when they are most applicable.

23rd April :: Edinburgh :: 6.30 - 9
Alistair Board
Satya Shyam K Jayanty

For more info and to reserve your place: http://sqlserverfaq.com?eid=111

Alistair Board The 6 W''s of SQLDiag
SaSatya Shyam K Jayanty SQL Server 2008 - Declarative Management Framework concepts & database problem solutions with policy management

- Beatrice Nicolini -

Coming Soon: SQL Server SoundBytes!

beatrice — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 20:24:00 GMT

The U.K. SQL Server PFE team is preparing, starting from September 2007, a series of SQL Server SoundBytes aimed to deliver proactive content to our Premier customer via Livemeeting.

Premier SoundByte sessions will be ideal for customers who need proactive information, for whom it may not be convenient to leave the office to come to a workshop.

Agenda is as follows:

Date	Title
3rd September 2007	SQL Server 2005 Database Clustering
17th September 2007	SQL Server 2005 Database Mirroring: Let the witness take the stand.
1st October 2007	SQL Server 2005 Configuration Best Practices
15th October 2007	Partitioned Tables and Indexes in SQL Server 2005
29th October 2007	SQL Server 2005 Memory Architecture
12th November 2007	SQL Server on SAN environment
26th November 2007	SQL Server 2005: Corruption Detection and Recovery
10th December 2007	SQL Server 2008

Please contact your TAM if you are interested in attending a SoundByte and they will nominate you to attend.

This is a UK delivery so the this is limited to UK Customer attendance.

If a customer has a global contract with local representation in the UK then the local TAM could book them onto the session.