Mat Stephen's SQL Server WebLog : Webcasts

Getting to know SQL 2005 Service Broker

Mat_Stephen — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 00:27:00 GMT

Looks likes I've got to do a presentation on Service Broker for the SQL 2005 launch - so I've been doing some home work on the subject.

The best primer I've found is http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnsql90/html/sqlsvcbroker.asp?frame=true this is refernenced in the webcast http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032263311&EventCategory=5&culture=en-us&CountryCode=US.

Once you've got your head round the basics you'll want to create your ow broker service and queues. Best I've found is "Setting Up a Service Broker Service and Queue" from SQL Server 2005 Books on line at ms-help://MS.SQLCC.v9/MS.SQLSVR.v9.en/smo9/html/f6f1c8b5-393b-48f2-a2b0-184fef683b5c.htm. Problem with this is there's a bug in the code. I can't remember the delta between what's printed and what I have working, but my suggestion is to use the code below to create the TargetStoredProcedure and then comment out the sp.Create(); line in the sample code with //.

Hope you enjoy this new technology - if I discover some new usefulties (a new word I've just invented) in this area, I'll post them in my new 'Service Broker' category

USE [AdventureWorks]
GO
/****** Object: StoredProcedure [dbo].[TargetStoredProcedure] Script Date: 09/12/2005 23:17:28 ******/
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO
create procedure dbo.TargetStoredProcedure as
DECLARE @message_body varbinary(MAX);
DECLARE @message_type_name nvarchar(128);
DECLARE @conversation_handle uniqueidentifier;
DECLARE @message_iduniqueidentifier uniqueidentifier;
DECLARE @message nvarchar(max);
DECLARE @MessageType nvarchar(max);
Declare @message_id nvarchar(max);

WHILE (1 = 1)
BEGIN
BEGIN TRY
BEGIN TRANSACTION;
WAITFOR (

RECEIVE top(1)
@message_type_name = message_type_name,
@message = message_body,
@conversation_handle = conversation_handle,
@message_id = message_id

FROM TargetQueue
), TIMEOUT 500

IF (@@ROWCOUNT = 0)
BEGIN
ROLLBACK TRANSACTION
BREAK
END;
select @message = N'<Hello>Pong</Hello>';
set @MessageType = '//microsoft.com/ssbdemo/PongMessageType';
SEND ON CONVERSATION @conversation_handle
MESSAGE TYPE @MessageType
(@message);
END CONVERSATION @conversation_handle
COMMIT TRANSACTION
END TRY
BEGIN CATCH
print @@error;
ROLLBACK
CONTINUE
END CATCH
END;
GO
SET ANSI_NULLS OFF
GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER OFF

Project REAL—Business Intelligence in Practice - great website!

Mat_Stephen — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 18:27:00 GMT

For sometime a group of Program Managers from the SQL BI team have been working with a customer, Barnes and Noble, to produce a SQL BI solution for their data warehouse and analysis needs using SQL 2005. The leasons learnt from all their work is being continually published to this website http://www.microsoft.com/sql/bi/projectreal/default.mspx in the form of webcasts and whitepapers. With so many new tools and functionality to play with in SQL 2005, I have found their work (what I've seen of it so far), to be invaluable.

SQL Server 2005 webcasts starting today and coming throughout June

Mat_Stephen — Tue, 31 May 2005 14:12:00 GMT

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-time'. This webcast discusses the challenges of making BI more real-time, and how some of these challenges can be overcome using new features in Analysis Services, and other components of Microsoft SQL Server 2005. While the barriers to completely real-time BI remain, SQL Server 2005 makes information real-time enough to support better and faster business decisions.

2 June, 17.30: Data Warehousing Enhancements in SQL Server 2005
According to industry experts, Microsoft SQL Server 2000 is one of the most installed database systems for data warehousing. Microsoft SQL Server 2005 incorporates new features to make managing and running data warehouses a little easier. From partitioning support to on-line operations, many improvements in the new release will benefit the lives of those responsible for running and maintaining data warehouses on SQL Server. This webcast walks through the new features and enhancements in SQL Server 2005 that are most relevant to data warehouse practitioners.

20 June, 16.00: SQL Server 2005 for CRM
Does your business depend on the interoperability of Microsoft SQL Server and CRM applications? Now that more CRM applications integrate with Microsoft .NET-enabled technologies, you can deliver business solutions at reduced total cost of ownership. Microsoft SQL Server 2005 offers specific benefits to CRM applications such as Siebel. This webcast explores the new capabilities of SQL Server 2005 that are of specific interest and benefit to users running their CRM applications in conjunction with SQL Server.

20 June, 17.30: Upgrading to Microsoft SQL Server 2005
Increase the scale, performance, security, and continuous availability of your existing systems by upgrading to Microsoft SQL Server 2005. This comprehensive webcast walks you through the necessary steps for planning and upgrading to SQL Server 2005. Learn tips and techniques on how to minimize your down time during the upgrade and how to make the most of the upgrade tools.

21 June, 17.30: Scripting in Microsoft SQL Server 2005
Learn about the capabilities of the new SQL Server 2005 command-line query tool, SQLCMD that will replace the osql and isql utilities. This webcast shows how you can use the new Windows Management Instrumentation providers to configure services and network protocols and set up event notifications to keep you aware of changes to your servers.

21 June, 19.30: Get More from Your Oracle Data with SQL Server 2005
Explore Microsoft SQL Server 2005 solutions for integrating with Oracle data sources using distributed query, replication, and SQL Server 2005 Integration Services. This webcast will show you how these solutions enable you to take full advantage of the power of SQL Server 2005, including the full business intelligence suite, even when one or more of your data sources is an Oracle database.

22 June, 19.30: Troubleshooting SQL Server 2005 Integration Services
When something unexpected happens while running your extraction, transformation, and loading processes, how can you figure out what went wrong? Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Integration Services provides better support for troubleshooting than ever before. This webcast outlines the management functionality built into Integration Services to help troubleshoot operational issues.

27 June, 16.00: SQL Server 2005 for Financial Services
How does Microsoft SQL Server 2005 impact your financial service business? How can you take advantage of the robust capabilities of SQL Server 2005 to reduce total cost of ownership and create business opportunities? See Microsoft SQL Server 2005 from a financial services perspective. This 90-minute webcast is geared toward the financial services industry and highlights the specific opportunities and benefits that are of interest to those in financial services.

30 June, 17.30: The Hidden Benefits of Upgrading to SQL Server 2005
Learn about the benefits you get just by upgrading to Microsoft SQL Server 2005. Even if you don't use all the new features in SQL Server 2005, such as database mirroring and partitioning, or writing stored procedures in .NET languages, you can still reap great benefits. This webcast introduces the many new features in SQL Server 2005 that can benefit you, even without rewriting your applications or undertaking new development. You will see many examples where your performance, concurrency and availability are improved simply by upgrading.

Webcast with Proclarity

Mat_Stephen — Wed, 11 May 2005 23:45:00 GMT

If you were unable to connct to our webcast with Proclarity last month then please have another go, here is the corresponding missive from marketing:

Last month you registered to attend the TechNet Webcast ‘Analysing and Presenting SQL Server Data with Proclarity – a Technical Overview’. Unfortunately, a number of delegates experienced technical difficulties in entering the webcast.

We have now overcome these difficulties and subsequently run other webcasts without problem. Therefore, we have re-scheduled this webcast to take place on 19 May at 2pm.

You will not be registered automatically on the re-scheduled event, therefore please register online using the link below.

https://msevents-eu.microsoft.com/cui/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-GB&eventid=118759842

Thank you once again for your interest in this event, we look forward to welcoming you to what will be a highly informative and interactive presentation on the 19^th.

Webcasts - Business Intelligence using SQL Server 2005

Mat_Stephen — Tue, 03 May 2005 14:56:00 GMT

The marketing people here at Microsoft, have asked me to advertise a new series of BI webcasts using SQL Server 2005. So, to oblige, here is their spiel:

“Your business intelligence (BI) applications need to integrate seamlessly into your overall application infrastructure to deliver real competitive advantage. Are you thinking about how to leverage your existing investment in BI and without sacrificing the ability to extend and add cutting-edge functionality? Is developing BI applications and managing them across multiple data platforms and tools becoming a complex and costly venture? Microsoft SQL Server 2005 is around the corner, delivering its enterprise-class BI platform with rich and powerful integration, analysis, and reporting functionality.

Tune in to this series as we show you how to:

Take advantage of high-availability features in SQL Server 2005 BI
Increase SQL Server 2005 BI application performance using the new scalability features
Use the single management shell and new features to easily manage and deploy BI applications
Extend the functionality of SQL Server 2005 BI applications using the .NET Framework
Develop rich applications on top of SQL Server 2005 BI platform using ADOMD.net, XML and the new management object model
Add reporting functionality to any application by easily embedding Report Controls in your applications
Use the SQL Server data mining to plug in your own data mining algorithms

Through interactive presentations and end-to-end scenario demonstrations, this series provides you with the knowledge you need to develop and implement easy-to-manage, adaptive BI application architecture. The powerful SQL Server 2005 BI platform will help you keep pace with the evolving needs of your organization.

Bonus: Attend any live webcast in this series to qualify to win a Portable Media Center (official rules) pre-loaded with our best webcasts.”

Register for the SQL Server 2005 BI Webcast Series

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Educational Webcast Series on TechNet

Mat_Stephen — Fri, 15 Apr 2005 10:47:00 GMT

Sorry I'm a little late in alerting you to this SQL Server 2005 Educational Webcast Series on TechNet, which runs from March 21-May 18. This 10 part series will provide IT Professionals with a broad overview of the benefits of SQL Server 2005 to whet their appetite for the upcoming public beta release, TechEd and a more detailed technical webcast series to follow TechEd in June. To learn more see http://www.microsoft.com/seminar/events/series/technetsqlserver2005.mspx

Also Don't forget these webcasts I'll be hosting out of the UK - they'll be mostly demo based!

19 April, 2pm: TechNet Webcast: Extending the Microsoft BI Platform: Panorama Software

This session will show you how you can integrate Panorama technology seamlessly with SQL Analysis Service and SQL Reporting Services to address the challenges you may face in a Microsoft BI environment. These include scalability, integrating with Microsoft Excel, exception reporting, business level performance management and alerting. The session will provide a technical overview of Panorama’s software, it will be fully interactive with plenty of time for questions.

26 April- Analysing and Presenting SQL Server data with ProClarity - a Technical Overview

This webcast is intended to explain how the combination of an analytics application like ProClarity and Analysis Services and Reporting Services in SQL Server, can help organisations analyse large volumes of data quickly and then share the results. An on-line demonstration of ProClarity will show how SQL Server data can be graphically analysed, and the results then shared via Reporting Services.

Questions arising from TechNet Webcast: Business Intelligence on the Microsoft Platform 23rd March.

Mat_Stephen — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 04:21:00 GMT

Thanks to all of you who tuned in to this webcast last week. Sorry this post is a little late, no sooner had I finished the webcast than the sore throat I had turned into a full blown cold and layed me out for the next couple of days.

The archive for the webcasst can be found here: http://www.placeware.com/cc/emea/view?id=118756214&pw=K2GX9N

Here are some of the questions and answers arising that may be of wider interest:

What is the URL for the Analysis Services Excel download?

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=DAE82128-9F21-475D-88A4-4B6E6C069FF0&displaylang=en

What are the new SQL Server 2005 DM algorithms?

Time Series, Sequence Clustering, Association, Naive Bayes and Neural Net.

Where can I get the SQL Server BI Accelerator from?

The BI Accelerator can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/sql/ssabi/ As Mat says there are 2 models available in the download but others are available. Manufacturing and Financial templates can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/sql/ssabi/techinfo/datamodels.asp

Asked: will writeback in SQL 2005 be better that current? And if so, how much better and where can I find out more?

I believe it will perform better. To find out more detail have a look at the sql 2005 webcasts at www.microsoft.com/sql

Is there an additional add-in to view olap cubes via Excel97?

There are 3rd party tools but nothing available for 97 directly from MSFT

I hope you can join us for the next two BI webcasts mentioned in my last post

Forthcoming UK Microsoft SQL Server Business Intelligence Webcasts.

Mat_Stephen — Tue, 22 Mar 2005 17:54:00 GMT

I shall be presenting this first webcast myself and hosting the other two – hope you can join in.

23 March, 10am: TechNet Webcast: Business Intelligence on the Microsoft Platform

This webcast is will provide IT Professionals with a complete technical introduction to Business Intelligence on the Microsoft Platform. We will cover the key concepts and discuss the challenges customers face when building BI Solutions. We will demonstrate Microsoft's Business Intelligence (BI) Platform and look at the components it provides throughout the lifecycle of a Business Intelligence project.

19 April, 2pm: TechNet Webcast: Extending the Microsoft BI Platform: Panorama Software

26 April- Analysing and Presenting SQL Server data with ProClarity - a Technical Overview

SQL Server SP4 Beta is still Open

Mat_Stephen — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 19:13:00 GMT

SQL Server SP4 Beta is still Open.

Customers can sign up here for the SP4 Beta Program http://www.microsoft.com/sql/evaluation/betanominations.asp.

Upcoming Wechat on SQL Server SP4 on February 15, 2:00 – 3:00pm PST. Sign up here:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/chats/default.mspx and scroll down to SQL Server SP4 chat, sponsored by SSWUG.ORG.

The first 75 customers who complete a new SP4 Survey will receive a free gift.

Q&A for the SP4 Beta

What is in SP4?

SP4 includes all of the latest security fixes and quick fix updates for SQL Server 2000 to make your SQL Server 2000 system as secure and functional as possible.

This is the first service pack to service our 64bit release of SQL Server and customers who are on 64bit hardware or considering 64bit investments should take advantage of SP4.

When is SP4 scheduled for release?

SP4 is scheduled to be released in the 1HCY05, but the exact date will be dependent upon getting sufficient customer feedback.

Why should I test SP4?

Testing SP4 gets you ahead of the curve for adopting a new service pack and helps you to get your systems as up-to-date as possible. If you participate in the SP4 beta program,, you will be able to interact with the SQL Development team and make sure your issues are reviewed and addressed before the public release of the product.

TechNet Webcast: Troubleshooting Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (Level 200) Friday, February 04, 2005 - 9:30 AM - 11:00 AM Pacific Time

Mat_Stephen — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 22:50:00 GMT

Friday, February 04, 2005 - 9:30 AM - 11:00 AM Pacific Time

Bryan Von Axelson, TechNet Presenter, Microsoft Corporation

In this session we show how to review SQL Server logs, SQL Server events in Event Viewer, and create a Database Maintenance plan that backs up and optimizes your SQL Server databases. We will also discuss how to use SQL Server troubleshooting tools such as SQLDiag.exe, the Database Consistency Checker, and use troubleshooting stored procedures. Finally we will create and then troubleshoot a block in SQL Server using troubleshooting tools and the SQL Server Profiler.

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032267957&Culture=en-US

MSDN Webcast: Identifying Application Performance Problems with SQL Server and Shadowfax (Level 400)

Mat_Stephen — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 21:22:00 GMT

Thursday, January 13, 2005 - 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM Pacific Time

Chuck Delouis, Enterprise Architect, VERITAS

Over the last three years, Microsoft and VERITAS have collected and analyzed the most frequent performance related problems with Microsoft SQL Server from hundreds of customers. This webcast session will articulate these performance problems, describe their impact, and demonstrate how they can be solved. During this webcast we will use The Reference Implementation of Shadowfax as a case study.

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032266557&Culture=en-US

MSDN Webcast: New Features in Reporting Services Service Pack 2 (Level 400)

Mat_Stephen — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 21:21:00 GMT

Monday, January 10, 2005 - 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM Pacific Time

Geoff Snowman, MSDN DEVELOPER COMM CHAMPION, Microsoft Corp.

Service Pack 2 for Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services contains two improved features: client-side printing and Microsoft SharePoint integration, in addition to the usual rollup of any outstanding hot fixes. In this webcast, we'll investigate these two features, demonstrating both the print dialog box and the new Report Viewer and Report Explorer Web parts.

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032266509&Culture=en-US

MSDN Webcast: Application Performance Tuning Using SQL Server Profiler 2005 (Level 200)

Mat_Stephen — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 21:19:00 GMT

Friday, January 07, 2005 - 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM Pacific Time

Geoff Snowman, MSDN DEVELOPER COMM CHAMPION, Microsoft Corp.

If your system has a performance problem, how do you know whether the problem lies in the application or the database? You need a tool that will let you view interactions between the application and the database, and that's where Microsoft SQL Server Profiler comes in. In this webcast, we'll take a look at SQL Server Profiler and teach you how to analyze those tricky performance problems that lie somewhere between the application and the database.

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032266507&Culture=en-US

TechNet Webcast: Migrating Oracle and UNIX Systems to SQL and Windows - Level: 200

Mat_Stephen — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 21:18:00 GMT

Thursday, January 20, 2005 - 11:30 - 1:00 PM Pacific Time

Peter Larsen, Software Development Engineer, Microsoft Corporation

Does your organization have plans for a process-driven migration of an Oracle database on UNIX to Microsoft SQL Server on Windows? In this session, we will outline different migration strategies, highlight key technical considerations and demonstrate what is involved in performing the migration. The discussion will cover both application and database migration issues including a number of Web application server scenarios.

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=39963

TechNet Webcast: A Technical Overview of SQL 2005 High Availability Features (Part 2 of 2) - Level: 200

Mat_Stephen — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 21:15:00 GMT

Friday, January 14, 2005 - 9:30 - 10:30 AM Pacific Time

Matthew Hester, TechNet Presenter, Microsoft Corporation

There are a number of barriers to availability, and only some of these are addressable by DBMS technology. This session looks at some of the features of SQL Server 2005, the next release of the SQL Server product that can help address some of these barriers. This second part of the series addresses two specific areas: user or application error, and data access concurrency limitations. User or application error and concurrency limitations can cause problems for availability. Join this webcast to learn about the SQL Server 2005 features that can help minimize this type of situation.

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032266465&Culture=en-US