The Bit Bucket

One of the things that I have been pestering the SQL team to do is to name their updates according to what is contained in them. For example, instead of just:

sqlncli.msi 

What I’d prefer is that the file was called something like:

SQLServerNativeClient2k8SP1CU3x64.msi

So I normally rename them as soon as I receive them, to avoid confusion in future. However, today I found that doing so caused me a problem. After renaming the file, and installing it, the installation failed with the error:

2011-11-26

It’s great to see that volume 2 of MVP Deep Dives is now available and will be distributed at the PASS summit next week. I’m really sad that I won’t be at the book signing next week but I’d encourage you all to get along, order a copy and have it signed.

A huge thanks has to go to Kalen Delaney for her management of this project and a big thanks to my fellow editors Louis Davidson, Brad McGehee, Paul Nielsen, Paul Randal, and Kimberly Tripp for their efforts. A special mention for Paul Nielsen whose ideas and spirit around volume 1 that have continued into this new volume.

2011-10-06

Part of the value in the ongoing evolution of the T-SQL language is that we are moving further and further towards being declarative rather than prescriptive ie: we are able to tell SQL Server what we want, rather than how to do it. Over time, that raises more and more possibilities for the optimizer to work with us to achieve a better outcome.

For example, note the following query against the AdventureWorksDW database:

2011-09-11

With SQL Server, there often seems to be an over-emphasis on the items that provide bullet points for the marketing brochure. Yet, small but useful changes to the product can make a more profound impact on DBAs/developers than the new items that are highlighted by those bullet points.

One of the things I loved about Reporting Services in SQL Server 2008 R2 is the amount of focus they provided on ease of use. In particular, the addition of data bars, lookup functions, pagination control, rendering targets in expressions, domain scope, etc. made a huge difference to anyone that really needs to build reports.

2011-09-11

I’ve been doing some work with PowerPivot and SharePoint/Excel Services this week. I wanted the user interface to have slicers for:

• Year
• Month
• Day

But I wanted the slicer to be preselected for the current month. There is no property on the slicers to set a default value. I read a number of websites and the suggestion was to use VBA code to set the value. This works but if you want to have the VBA code run at workbook open, you have to create a macro-enabled workbook, and these are not supported by Excel Services.

2011-08-11

Ola has updated his index optimization scripts again. The update relates to logging to a table.

You’ll find the scripts here: http://ola.hallengren.com/

2011-07-19

When using the Usage Based Optimization wizard (or the Aggregation Design Wizard), on the screen that asks you to enter counts. There is a button that says “Count” but after using it, you might still be confronted by the message ““Estimated Count or Partition Count must be specified for cube objects that require counting”. It’s not overly helpful, given you have just asked it to count them itself.

If you see this, look through the list of dimensions and find any that have red squiggles under them. Then open each and find the attributes that also have squiggles and update those counts. Make sure that all squiggles disappear.

2011-07-06

I spent last week on campus in Redmond with the SQL Server Analysis Services Maestro program. It was great to have a chance to focus on SSAS for a week. As part of that, I did quite a bit of reading as I had quite a bit of travelling time. Ironically, I re-read a few books.

The first was Marco Russo, Alberto Ferrari and Chris Webb’s book Expert Cube Development with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services. I’ve often told BI classes that I’ve been teaching that this is a really good book and highly recommended. Re-reading it confirmed that. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it again.

2011-06-21

Another book that I re-read while travelling last week was Fast Track to MDX. I still think that it’s the best book that I’ve seen for introducing the core concepts of MDX. My colleague Mark Whitehorn, along with Mosha Pasumansky and Robert Zare do an amazing job of building MDX knowledge throughout the book.

I had dinner with Mark in London a few years back and I was pestering him to update this book. The biggest limitation of the book is that it was written for SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services, yet it still provides an excellent introduction to MDX. The knowledge from the three authors and Mark’s entertaining writing style make this still a “must-have” book for anyone learning MDX.

2011-06-21

Yet another book that I started re-reading last week (but haven’t finished again yet as it’s so large) is Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services Unleashed by Irina Gorbach, Alexander Berger and Edward Melomed.

This book has always left me with mixed feelings. The authors clearly offer expert level knowledge on the topics (as they were part of the development team for the product) but I struggle with the “readability” of this book. As an example, each time a concept is introduced, it is done so with accompanying XMLA code snippets, etc.I suspect that a lot of readers would be put off by the XMLA. Most people just don’t think in XMLA.

2011-06-21