• June T-SQL Guru - Naomi brings us "How SQL Server Determines Type of the Constant"

    Posted over 1 year ago
    by Ed Price - MSFT}

    It's time for our next June TechNet Guru winner!

     

    Multi MCC award winner, two-time TechNet Guru Gold Medal winner, and Wiki Ninja Green Belt, Naomi N, is our T-SQL TechNet Guru for June! See the TechNet Guru Contributions for June 2013.

    Naomi N's avatar

    ABOUT NAOMI: I am an IT professional with more than 15 years of experience in a variety of programming languages and technologies. I am a Microsoft Community Award Recipient and was Personality of the Year at the UniversalThread.com forum in 2008,2009,2010,2011.  

     

    Here is Naomi's winning article:

    How SQL Server Determines Type of the Constant

     

    Here are all the June T-SQL winners (two were from Naomi):

    Guru Award  Transact-SQL Technical Guru - June 2013  

    Gold Award Winner

     

    		 Naomi N How SQL Server Determines Type of the Constant Richard Mueller: "A good recommendation to explicitly CAST values, with an example of possible consequences if you don't."

    Silver Award Winner

     

    		 Naomi N SET ANSI_PADDING Setting and Its Importance Samuel Lester: "Outstanding contribution! I love the process of walking us through the debugging you performed. People who read this article gain an understanding of not only the SET ANSI_PADDING setting, but also how you arrived at discovering this as well as the technical resources available to ask in the MSDN forums. Very, very good!"
    Ed Price: "Very in depth article with great code formatting!"
    Richard Mueller: "This explains an issue I was not aware of. Well researched. Good to include a script to correct the situation."

    Bronze Award Winner

     

    		 Johnny Bell Jnr SQL Server Result Set In An HTML Email Richard Mueller: "Very instructive. I like this because similar techniques can be used for other applications."
    Samuel Lester: "Great article and very handy for sure. I'm a big fan of code generation through T-SQL as you're doing with the @HTML parameter. I use similar tricks often to generate code for other programming languages. Very good!"
    Ed Price: "The text does a great job setting up the code blocks!"

    Transact SQL was our second largest category with 9 submissions (4 from Naomi)! Naomi holds onto her title for a second month. Thanks go out to all our contributors... Kalman, Naomi, Sathyanarrayanan, and Johnny Bell! You made it tough on the judges to select from an excellent group! Please go check them all out here.

     

    Here's an excerpt from the article:

     

    Problem Definition

    There was an interesting question asked recently in Transact-SQL forum "Basic doubt in Round function". 

    The problem was stated as following:

    SELECT ROUND(744, -3)

    produced 1000 while

    SELECT ROUND(744.0, -3)

    gave an error "Arithmetic overflow error converting expression to data type numeric."

     

    ==================

     

    Read the rest here:

    How SQL Server Determines Type of the Constant

     

    Thanks to Naomi N for your great contribution to the TechNet Guru contest! You can read about all the June winners here: TechNet Guru Award Winners - June 2013

     

    Also, for the July Guru competition, see TechNet Guru Contributions for July 2013.

     

    Any questions or comments for Naomi?

     

    Are you a Wiki Ninja? http://technet.com/wiki

     

        - Ninja Ed

     

  • Friday with International Community Update – MTFC Award - How we are going to centralize information

    Posted over 1 year ago
    by Gokan Ozcifci}

    Hello Community, again me today to update you on the latest news in the most prestigious Wiki (TechNet) international community from Europe (Belgium/France). You all know the Award that we launched with other Wiki Ninjas (Bruno, Philippe and Ed). The French Award to evangelize French contributors on TechNet/MSDN. You can check the article here if you never heard about the MTFC award: http://blogs.technet.com/b/wikininjas/archive/2013/03/17/week-end-surprise-four-fantastic-presents-the-microsoft-technical-french-contributor.aspx

    The problem is that the French contributors are not familiarized with the WIKI and don’t share their knowledge here. So our intention was and is to centralize all the information on the WIKI so everybody can enjoy the French resources. You can see that a new user has been created for our award naming “TNWiki French Day GA” and last Sunday we added all the winning articles on the WIKI.

    We can also be proud about our first contributor who has changed his name on TechNet.

     

    Thanks to all the French Contributors and all made excellent work! A big hug to everyone and have a great Friday!

     

     

     

     

        - Turkish Ninja Gokan

     

     

     

  • Council Spotlight - The TechNet Wiki Advisory Board

    Posted over 1 year ago
    by Ed Price - MSFT}

    Thanks to Monica Rush, for helping get this back up. It's officially launched, but it's a story that's still being told...

     

    The TechNet Wiki Advisory Board is a group of MVPs from the community who are interested in driving adoption of the TechNet Wiki.

    Charter

    Our charter focuses on building support and participation for the TechNet Wiki by sustaining great community and great content:

    1. Evangelize: Build participation and mindshare for the TechNet Wiki.
    2. Moderate: Shepherd content (focusing on your MVP-awarded technology) through active review, moderation, and contribution.
    3. Advise: Advise Microsoft technical writers, new Microsoft contributors, and community members on best practices, tips, and guidelines.
    4. Review: Review content from Microsoft technical writers, new Microsoft contributors, and key contributors.

     

    Members

    Newly affirmed members for 2013:

     

    What's Next?

    1. Grow the team: Although we have a solid team of MVPs, we have room to grow, adding more to the teams so that they can collaborate together and focus on specific types of content. For example, we have 200+ MVPs in SQL Server, so we can some people focus on BI content, others on Azure Data Platform, Database Engine, etc.
    2. Communication tools: We want to grow the communication tools in order to make it very easy for the team to collaborate.
    3. Build the communication rhythm: Finally, we'll want to build a rhythm (that currently doesn't exist) so that there's a culture of communication across the Advisory Board team and to the various Microsoft FTE (like Technical Writers who need their insights).

     

    You can read more about it here:

    TechNet Wiki Advisory Board

     

     

    Any questions?

    Know any MVPs we can recruit? =^)

     

    Wiki While You Work!!!

       - Ninja Ed

  • Wiki Ninja Belts Update - 13 New Ninjas!! ... Naomi, Hezequias, I.Biswajith, Caio, Richard, Roger, Aris, Joe, José, Tim, Danny, Thiago, & Leandro

    Posted over 1 year ago
    by Ed Price - MSFT}

    Thanks to everyone for making this happen! We have 13 new ninjas since our last update! The team is going through the interviews (almost done), and then will go through the Top Contributors blog posts. Meanwhile, the rewards are already starting for the White Belts and Yellow Belts! Rewards for Orange Belts will come later, once the list is caught up on listing all the ninja belt holders. To see more info about each belt holder and the links for their White and Yellow rewards, see Wiki Ninja Belt Status: Who Has What Belt Ranking .

     

    NOTE: This is a work in progress.

     

    New Ninjas! These are the new Wiki Ninja belt holders in this update:

     

    NOVICE WIKI NINJAS

    White Belt

    For the requirements, see the Wiki Ninja Belt Rankings, White Belt section.

    The Ninjas:

    Yellow Belt

    For the requirements, see the Wiki Ninja Belt Rankings, Yellow Belt section.

    The Ninjas:

    Orange Belt

    For the requirements, see the Wiki Ninja Belt Rankings, Orange Belt section.

    The Ninjas:

    INTERMEDIATE WIKI NINJAS

    Green Belt

    For the requirements, see the Wiki Ninja Belt Rankings, Green Belt section.

    The Ninjas:

    Blue Belt

    For the requirements, see the Wiki Ninja Belt Rankings, Blue Belt section.

    The Ninjas:

    • Luigi Bruno
      • Requirements:
        • Wrote 140+ Articles
        • Has 1,515+ Edits
        • Top Contributor blog posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

    Purple Belt

    For the requirements, see the Wiki Ninja Belt Rankings, Purple Belt section.

    The Ninjas:

    • Yagmoth555 
      • Requirements:
        • Wrote 56+ Articles
        • Has 1,031+ Edits
        • Has 326+ Wiki Comments
        • Top Contributor blog posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 | A 
    • Fernando Lugão Veltem 
      • Requirements:
        • Wrote 473+ Articles
        • Has 7,085 Edits
        • Has 4,389+ Wiki Comments
        • Top Contributor blog posts: 1. 2, 3, 4, 5 | A 

    Brown Belt

    For the requirements, see the Wiki Ninja Belt Rankings, Brown Belt section.

    The Ninjas:

    • Ed Price
      • Requirements:
        • Wrote 733+ Articles
        • Has 20,290+ Edits
        • Has 7,028+ Wiki Comments
        • Top Contributor blog posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 | A, B
          •   

     

    Reply to this blog post if you want us to calculate your ninja rank next! Anybody who replies will become the new priority!

     

    Any other questions? Leave a comment!

     

    The team is still adding Wiki Ninjas to this list (finishing the Interviewed ninjas, and starting the Top Contributor winners). Some rewards will be given during the process, but most rewards will be after all the Ninjas are added in.

    Wiki away!

       - Ninja Ed

     

  • June Reporting Services Guru - Tim Pacl brings us "Using Custom Code in SSRS Reports for Advanced String Operations"

    Posted over 1 year ago
    by Ed Price - MSFT}

    It's time for our next June TechNet Guru winner!

     

    MCC award winner Tim Pacl is our SSRS TechNet Guru for June! See the TechNet Guru Contributions for June 2013.

    Tim Pacl's avatar

    About Tim: Retired from the U. S. Navy Submarine Force. Working in computer industry since 1998. 4 years of that at Razorfish as Senior Developer and the remaining years at Dell, Inc. TFS administration, builds, ALM, web front end development, ASP.Net, Winforms, SQL Reporting. (Amongst others)

     

    Here is Tim's winning article:

    Using Custom Code in SSRS Reports for Advanced String Operations

     

    Here are all the June SSRS winners (all were from Tim):

     

    Guru Award SQL Server Reporting Services Technical Guru - June 2013  

    Gold Award Winner

     

    		 Tim Pacl Sorting Elements of a Concatenated String Peter Laker: "An excellent article with some useful tips"
    Ed Price: "This is a great article! You have a lot of code samples and a clear overview."

    Silver Award Winner

     

    		 Tim Pacl Adding Links in SSRS Reports Peter Laker: "Images really help to explain the procedure"
    Ed Price: "The images help make the steps very clear!"

    Bronze Award Winner

     

    		 Tim Pacl Concatenating Data Column Values Into a Single String Peter Laker: "Useful tip, common problem"
    Ed Price: "Good formatting on the code in this article."

    And thank you to Tim for 6 great articles about Reporting Services! Find all 6 here.

     

    Here's an excerpt from the article:

     

    Overview
    SQL Services Reporting Services is a very powerful tool and with each new release, it grows in functionality. However many users find that the expression builder functions do not quite do what they need. Fortunately, Microsoft has provided a powerful means of extending the capabilities of a report, virtually without limit, by using the custom code capability. While custom code can access custom assemblies, the string manipulation functionality discussed here uses only the core .Net assemblies which are available by default on the Reporting server and so requires no explicitly referenced assemblies.

    String Manipulation Using Custom Code
    The SQL Server Reporting Services, Power View MSDN forum contains numerous questions asking how to extend the string manipulation capabilities of Reporting Services. In some cases, the solution can only be achieved through custom code. We will explore three different string manipulation scenarios requiring custom code in SSRS reports:

    • Concatenating Data Column Values Into a Single String
    • Counting Occurrences in a Concatenated String
    • Sorting Elements of a Concatenated String

    Concatenating Data Column Values Into a Single String
    Occassionally a report author may have a need to display detail records in a grouped table in a single cell rather than separate rows.

    Scenario
    My dataset returns multiple rows of data for a given grouping with only one field (we will call it Grade) varying across those rows. I want my report to display a single line for a group with all of the values of Grade for that group displayed as a concatenated string in a single cell of each group row.

    Solution
    Add the below function to the custom code module of the report:

    Private     Num AsString=""
    Private tempstr AsString=    ""

    Function     AggregateString(Group asString, Val asString) as String
      If Group = Num Then     
       tempstr     = tempstr +", "+     Val
          Else
        Num     =     Group
        tempstr     =     Val
          EndIf
          Return     tempStr
    EndFunction

    With this custom VB.Net function, you can create a delimited string that concatenates all of the specified detail records of a group using the RunningValue function.

    =IIf(IsNothing(Fields!Grade.Value),"",RunningValue(Code.AggregateString(Fields!GroupUniqueID.Value,CStr(Fields!Grade.Value)),Max,"GroupScope"))

     

    =========================== 

     

    Read the rest here:

    Using Custom Code in SSRS Reports for Advanced String Operations

     

    Thanks to Tim Pacl for your great contribution to the TechNet Guru contest! You can read about all the June winners here: TechNet Guru Award Winners - June 2013

     

    Also, for the July Guru competition, see TechNet Guru Contributions for July 2013.

     

     

    Are you a Wiki Ninja? http://technet.com/wiki

     

        - Ninja Ed