I love the data profiling task that was added to SSIS in SQL Server 2008. It allows you to get a profile of the data in a table - this includes things like what are potential candidate keys, what length are the data values in each column, what percentage of rows in a table are null in each column, what is the distribution of values in the data, etc. etc.
2010-10-06
Every so often, Microsoft sends MVPs a set of MSDN subscriptions that we can give to someone that would benefit from them. I have found it to be very interesting in past years and have to say that the most pleased I ever felt giving these away has been to students who are struggling to get into the workforce for some reason (one with a notable disability comes immediately to mind) or to developers that are just down on their luck for some reason.
2010-09-27
I’ve (fortunately) ended up with a new notebook recently and had to reinstall everything. One problem I ran into was with Master Data Services. The config program seemed happy but it shouldn’t have been. What threw me was that it seemed to have a dependency check for IIS 7, etc. while configuring MDS. That led me to think I’d already configured IIS appropriately. I hadn’t and when I tried to use the site, I got the above error. IIS needed to have the following:
2010-08-23
Another of the free eClinics that we’ve been building for Microsoft was released today. This one was put together by our Australian team with Bill Chesnut as the lead author and provides an introduction to the virtualization of SQL Server and the surrounding tooling.
Enjoy!
2010-08-12
I got the super sad news from Adam Machanic tonight that Kent Tegels had passed away. At the time I recorded my last podcast with Kent, he seemed to be getting better.
I cannot begin to express how sad I am about this tonight. The SQL and XML communities are weakened by this loss.
Farewell Kent and thanks for all the fish.
2010-08-03
Together with the folk from Microsoft DPE, my colleagues and I have helped put together a series of free training materials for SQL Server 2008 R2. The presentations from these are now available in bite-sized pieces on the Microsoft Channel 9 site.
You’ll find them here:
http://channel9.msdn.com/learn/courses/SQL2008R2TrainingKit/
Enjoy!
2010-07-20
Hi Folks,
Just wanted to focus some attention on Arnie Rowland’s project to help unemployed developers to get some software in return for helping a non-profit. Seems like a great idea Arnie!
(link no longer valid)
2010-07-15
I got the news this morning that another of the free SQL Server 2008 R2 eClinics that we’ve been building for Microsoft Learning has been published.
The eClinic for StreamInsight has been rev’d to RTM and is now available.
Enjoy!
2010-07-13
Hi Folks,
We’ve been updating the free eClinics for SQL Server 2008 R2 for the released version of the product. Three of these clinics are now published:
Master Data Services
(no longer available)
Application and Multi-server Management (Data-tier applications, SQL Server Utility)
(no longer available)
Managed Self-Service BI (PowerPivot for Excel, Reporting Services in R2, Report Builder 3.0 and PowerPivot for SharePoint)
(no longer available)
Enjoy!
2010-07-03
While building some maps today in SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services, I kept coming up with an error that said:
A generic error occurred in GDI+
I was struggling to think what I’d done wrong. After much nashing of teeth and removal of hair, I finally worked out what the error was. When I got to the “Choose Color Scheme and Visualization” page of the map wizard for building a color analytical map, I hadn’t picked the correct value for the “Field to Visualize” drop-down. I’m guessing that because it had defaulted to my GEOMETRY column, instead of the field that I actually wanted to use for analysis, it must get itself into some sort of stack overflow or nesting problem.
2010-06-11
