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(link no longer valid)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
Our buddy Buck Woody made an interesting post about a common question: “How do I back up a single table in SQL Server?”
That got me thinking about what a backup of a table really is. BCP is often used to get the data but you want the schema as well.
For reasonable-sized tables, the easiest way to do this now is to create a script using SQL Server Management Studio. To do this, you:
2010-06-07
A question came up on the SQL Down Under mailing list today about how to add an included column to an index using SMO. A quick search of the documentation didn’t seem to reveal any clues but a little investigation turned up what’s needed: the IndexedColumn class has an IsIncluded property.
Index i = new Index();
IndexedColumn ic = new IndexedColumn(i, “somecolumn”);
ic.IsIncluded = true;
2010-05-28
Great to see that our friend Ola Hallengren has updated his maintenance utility scripts to deal with SQL Server 2008 R2.
These scripts are highly regarded, particularly given the price: free !
You’ll find them here:
http://ola.hallengren.com/Versions.html
Ola noted that the main change from 2008 is that backup compression is now supported in Standard Edition of SQL Server. That in itself is good news.
2010-05-17
I’d briefly played around with user-defined aggregates in StreamInsight with CTP3 but when I started working with the new Count Windows, I found I had to have one working. I learned a few things along the way that I hope will help someone.
The first thing you have to do is define a class:
public class IntegerAverage: CepAggregate<int, int>
{
public override int GenerateOutput(IEnumerable<int> eventData)
{
if (eventData.Count() == 0)
{
return 0;
}
else
{
return eventData.Sum() / eventData.Count();
}
}
}
In this case, I’ve defined an IntegerAverage class that inherits from CepAggregate. CepAggregate is then declared as a generic type taking an int input parameter and providing an int output. The GenerateOutput method is overriden and called when it’s time to process the input. In this case, I’ve just checked if there are any values, returned zero if not and returned an integer average if there are values.
2010-05-08