Mat Stephen's SQL Server WebLog : SQL Server 2000

Free SAP Customer Workshops "How Microsoft Runs SAP" Munich on February 7, 2006 and in Brussels on February 9, 2006.

Mat_Stephen — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 18:37:00 GMT

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 heart of Microsoft's worldwide operations runs on SAP. Please choose the most convenient location for you and join us for the day to hear from our SAP Services team experts about how they run and manage a global deployment of SAP across 89 countries and for 60,000 employees. This real world, non-marketing workshop is designed to give you insight into Microsoft's experiences choosing, implementing, rolling out, and maintaining our global SAP system. Both the technical aspects and the business/functional aspects of the implementation will be addressed.

For a preview of Microsoft's deployment of SAP, please read the case study at:
http://www.microsoft-sap.com/casestudies/Microsoft_Case_Study.doc

Enterprise customers considering SAP will want to send their business and IT decision-makers. SAP customers and partners implementing R/3 will benefit from Microsoft's technical, business and project management key learnings. The content of this seminar-style workshop will cater to both business and technical participants. In past workshops, customers have also found this to be a good opportunity to exchange experiences with other workshop participants.

   • Keynote: SAP, The Software That Drives Microsoft
   • Best Practices: Change Control & Leveraging Technology
   • Technical Architecture
   • SAP BW and Reporting Strategy
   • SAP .NET Extensions and Mendocino

February 7, 2006:

Kempinski Hotel Airport München
Terminalstrasse Mitte 20
85356 München

Tel. +49 89 97 82 36 40
Fax. +49 89 97 82 36 13

February 9, 2006:

Sheraton Brussels Hotel & Towers
Manhattan Center
3 Place Rogier
1210 Brussels, Belgium

Phone (32) (2) 2243111
Fax (32) (2) 2243456

Registration is limited to 150 people on a first-come first-serve basis, so please register early!

To register visit:

https://www.wellsregister.com/sap/customer/cityselect.asp

Phone: +1 206-706-3225
E-mail: SAP@WellsRegister.com

Business casual.

This is a free all-day workshop. Registration and cancellation are mandatory.

We look forward to seeing you in Munich or Brussels !

Feature Pack for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 - November 2005

Mat_Stephen — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 20:47:00 GMT

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 compatibility components for SQL Server 2005

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=d09c1d60-a13c-4479-9b91-9e8b9d835cdc&displaylang=en

Changing Job

Mat_Stephen — Thu, 06 Oct 2005 16:52:00 GMT

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.

OLAP, Darwin and Evolution

Mat_Stephen — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 02:59:00 GMT

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 couldn't say anymore at the time for fear of jeopardising the conclusions' debut in Nature (If Nature isn't first to publish, it's not in Nature). I claimed this research would demonstrate OLAP, as a technology, can be used as a useful tool in fields well beyond those fenced in by the concept of Business Intelligence. Well this research has indeed made it to the hallowed pages of this erudite organ; if you are prepared to pay the fee, you can find it here 'What Henslow taught Darwin' @ http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v436/n7051/index.html#Feature.

The article doesn't single out SQL Server per se, but I can assure you, as someone who is in touch with one of the authors, Analysis Services OLAP engine made a significant contribution to the research mentioned. Hopefully follow up material from the authors will document how OLAP was used. Apparently there's so much interest in this story there's even talk of a film!

Let me give you an abstract to show how SQL Server Analysis Services OLAP has contributed to mankind's understanding of its own history and the study of biology therein.

Darwin was a student (1829-31) of Professor John S. Henslow of Cambridge. Henslow is well known for arranging Charles Darwin's berth on the good ship HMS Beagle, the ship that took Darwin to the Galapagos islands. The Galapagos islands are where Darwin discovered 'Darwin's Finches', birds that had 'evolved', by appearance and behaviour, to such an extent that Darwin had to question whether they were different varieties of the same species, or different species altogether. In pursuit of the answer to this question, Darwin formed his seminal concepts that became the backbone to On the Origin of Species.

In the shadow of the afore mentioned article, we must now understand that it was Henslow who had first recognised variation in species, and that it was this recognition and the desire to seek its verification that put Darwin on the Beagle. Furthermore, it was the fidelity of Darwin to fulfil this ambition, with its incumbent rigours in procedure, that ultimately lead him to break free of the creationist shackles that had hindered his mentor, and from which, sadly, his mentor would never be freed.

The research in this article covers 10,172 plants collected by Henslow. By creating an OLAP cube to analyse the sheets of paper holding these plant samples, the researchers show that Henslow organised his documentation by none other than the variation he observed to be within the limits of species variation. Nobody is known to have attempted this before. It is of the stuff that makes a good film that we can now visit his herbarium at Cambridge and see, with newly enlightened eyes, how the plants within it have been carefully arranged to illuminate this most potent observation; a place where, hitherto, this brilliant enlightenment has been so shrouded in the dark silence of ignorance.

Below, courtesy of the authors, is an image of one of Henslow's herbarium sheets: Phleum arenarium. Eight numbered individuals are arranged in order of increasing height. Plants 1-5 were collected 3rd June 1829 at Mildenhall, Suffolk by J.S. Henslow. Plants 6-8 were collected in June 1822 at Liverpool by W. Wilson.

64 Bit performance v 32 bit performance - some compelling evidence

Mat_Stephen — Thu, 25 Aug 2005 15:23:00 GMT

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 demo, delivered at the Microsoft WinHEC 2005 conference, which compares (graphically) the performance of SQL Server 2005 running on the 32-bit version of Windows Server 2003 compared with SQL Server 2005 running on Windows Server 2003, x64 Edition.

Enjoy

Fame at last: Ten Useful Microsoft Blogs

Mat_Stephen — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 17:47:00 GMT

Redmondmag.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 articles are already gaining recognition. Alas only two articles have come form the database community. So come on, I know plenty of you who read this blog have interesting and valuable stories to tell - just send me your biography and a page or two of interesting material and I'll get it posted on the site. It should be a career enhancing experience, whilst adding to the richness of the SQL Server community.

Blogcasts: SQL Server 2000 - Configuring System Monitor & Monitoring SQL Server performance & Configuring alerts

Mat_Stephen — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 16:20:00 GMT

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.microsoft.com/winme/0506/24231/TNT1-160_Demo_4-3.asx

Reporting Services: Calling an aspx page from a report and passing a parameter

Mat_Stephen — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 13:24:00 GMT

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 be called textbox1 - visible in the properties dialogbox (usually bottom right) .

Right click on your textbox (even the cells in tables and matrixes contain textboxes) and choose Properties -> Advanced button -> Navigation Tab - 'Jump to URL:' textbox and press the 'fx' button on the right hand side. This takes you into the Expression Editor, here you enter the following in the 'Expression:' textbox on the right hand side.

="http://blogs.technet.com/mat_stephen/archive/" & reportitems!textbox1.value & ".aspx"

'Ok' all the dialogs back to your report - run the report and click on the textbox - heypresto!

SQL Server Reporting Services Report Packs - looking for suggestions

Mat_Stephen — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 13:49:00 GMT

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 responded 'yes', judging by the feedback I've had from my blog. So then we were asked to submit ideas for new Report Packs. If you have any suggestions for Report Packs you would like to see, submit them to me (via a comment would be good) and I will ensure they end up in front of the right person.

Letter from America 3 - Mischievous reports and feeding the 5000

Mat_Stephen — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 05:08:00 GMT

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 security to access it's source database, that's to say it can use the securty credentials of the report user. This is what you'd expect we'd recommend since we so often bang on about the advantages of this securty model..

The trojan report is written by a ner do well, who includes some dodgy code in a report query, maybe via a stored procedure. The dodgy code might be malevolant or just pure naughty, but it won’t work using the insufficient security credentials of the report writer. However, the code will work when run by a CXO, or anyone with the necessary credentials, someone who runs the report to merely return a bunch of sales data. The good news, if you are a DBA with blood rapidly draining from your head, is there is a new EnableIntegratedSecurity system property that was introduced in SP1 and documented clearly in the readme for sp2. With this property you can disable any trojan report.

I'm always amazed when I come to events like Techready or TechEd, events that require feeding 5000+ attendees at meal times. These big feeding sessions are positively biblical in proportion. It takes a small army of people to: efficiently herd delegates passed the numerous long tables laden with food, to set the tables, to ferry the food in and out and to finally clear it all up. The whole thing is a logistical marvel.

When I learned that Jesus fed 5000 people, equiped with only a few loaves of bread and a bag of fish, I was taught that this was an extraordinary achievement. Well, as the son of God I think this was probably a bit of a no brainer - turning a small quantity of food into a vast feast. However, looking back on it now, what is truly amazing is how he managed to distribute all the food with only twelve deciples at his disposal.

My battery is running low so I better get on and submit this now, before I have another disaster like yesterday.

Letter from America 2

Mat_Stephen — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 04:06:00 GMT

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 machine; well that did the trick

Then I set about creating a blog post, again from my iPaq, while sitting inside a session room here at the conference. After what must have been a total of around two hours of tapping time, on and off, at the little on-screen keyboard, I decided to post my blog. I turned the wireles back on and pushed post - nothing appeared to happen. After what I now think was probably a simple case of impatience, I started tapping around to see if I could somehow coax the thing to work and, to keep this story short, I managed to loose all my work!

So now I have resorted to a terminal to publish this post. I'm really annoyed as I had carefully typed some usefull stuff and now I'm in something of a hurry I don't have the time to retrieve all the contents from my own memory; I have to get into town to join my team for an evening meal. However I do have time to leave you with the one, bizzare and most notable event, that's occured since my last post.

The last session I attended yesterday was on SQL Server Integration Services. For some reason I decided to sit on the front row, something I never normally do and something I don't intend ever doing again. The speaker was the lead developer for Integration Services, Ashivini ?????, I can't remember his second name right now. After about 10 minutes into his presentation he looked across at me and then just stopped speaking. Feeling jet lagged and conference fatigued, a sense of strange unease came over me. I hadn't been following his words closely over the last couple of minutes and so now I tried to rewind his words in an attempt to find a clue to the pause and his examining stare. Then he suddenly said something along the lines of, "Are you John Mac Enroe... well you look just like him, I really thought you were John Mac Enroe." Naturally the audience erupted into raptuous laughter.

Letter from America 1

Mat_Stephen — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 00:58:00 GMT

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 say, it enables typing with thumbs instead of using the pen. I think I will now go over to using the transcriber. It is all a bit slow I have to say.. Heard Bill this morning. During his presentation he introduced office 12, which was awesome. Office is getting a major overhaul, not least in the area of BI. I haven't learned much about SQL as yet, but I'm sure there's lots to come. One thing I do want to mention is a follow up to a previous post mentioning SQL2005 migration. Tony Rogerson, of the UK SQL group, has informed that a livemeeting recording of a recent presentation Euan Garden, from the product team, did on the subject of migration at a recent user group, is now available at www.sqlserverfaq.com Well this missive has taken ages to type; my learning from this experience is that, for me at least, the fastest way to input into this device is the keyboard and pen, which is almost acceptable. Heaven only knows what it will look like when its entered.

Get Ready for SQL Server 2005 with Free Microsoft E-Learning Courses.

Mat_Stephen — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 17:15:00 GMT

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

Blogcast: Using SQL 2000 Profiler

Mat_Stephen — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 16:15:00 GMT

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

Serialising an ADOMD.net CellSet object

Mat_Stephen — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 16:38:00 GMT

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();
            StreamWriter streamWriter = File.CreateText("CellSet.xml");
            streamWriter.WriteLine(xml);
            streamWriter.Close();

Load:
XmlTextReader xmlTextReader = new XmlTextReader("CellSet.xml");
CellSet cellSet = CellSet.LoadXml(xmlTextReader);