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• SQLCMD Mode: give it one more chance

  - by Maria Zakourdaev

    - Click on me. Choose me. - asked one forgotten feature when some bored DBA was purposelessly wondering through the Management Studio menu at the end of her long and busy working day. - Why would I use you? I have heard of no one who does. What are you for? - perplexedly wondered aged and wise DBA. At least that DBA thought she was aged and wise though each day tried to prove to her that she wasn't. - I know you. You are quite lazy. Why would you do additional clicks to move from window to window? From Tool to tool ? This is irritating, isn't it? I can run windows system commands, sql statements and much more from the same script, from the same query window! - I have all my tools that I‘m used to, I have Management Studio, Cmd, Powershell. They can do anything for me. I don’t need additional tools. - I promise you, you will like me. – the thing continued to whine . - All right, show me. – she gave up. It’s always this way, she thought sadly, - easier to agree than to explain why you don’t want. - Enable me and then think about anything that you always couldn’t do through the management studio and had to use other tools. - Ok. Google for me the list of greatest features of SQL SERVER 2012. - Well... I’m not sure... Think about something else. - Ok, here is something easy for you. I want to check if file folder exists or if file is there. Though, I can easily do this using xp_cmdshell … - This is easy for me. – rejoiced the feature. By the way, having the items of the menu talking to you usually means you should stop working and go home. Or drink coffee. Or both. Well, aged and wise dba wasn’t thinking about the weirdness of the situation at that moment. - After enabling me, – said unfairly forgotten feature (it was thinking of itself in such manner) – after enabling me you can use all command line commands in the same management studio query window by adding two exclamation marks !! at the beginning of the script line to denote that you want to use cmd command: -Just keep in mind that when using this feature, you are actually running the commands ON YOUR computer and not on SQL server that query window is connected to. This is main difference from using xp_cmdshell which is executing commands on sql server itself. Bottomline, use UNC path instead of local path. - Look, there are much more than that. - The SQLCMD feature was getting exited.- You can get IP of your servers, create, rename and drop folders. You can see the contents of any file anywhere and even start different tools from the same query window: Not so aged and wise DBA was getting interested: - I also want to run different scripts on different servers without changing connection of the query window. - Sure, sure! Another great feature that CMDmode is providing us with and giving more power to querying. Use “:” to use additional features, like :connect that allows you to change connection: - Now imagine, you have one script where you have all your changes, like creating staging table on the DWH staging server, adding fact table to DWH itself and updating stored procedures in the server where reporting database is located. - Now, give me more challenges! - Script out a list of stored procedures into the text files. - You can do it easily by using command :out which will write the query results into the specified text file. The output can be the code of the stored procedure or any data. Actually this is the same as changing the query output into the file instead of the grid. - Now, take all of the scripts and run all of them, one by one, on the different server.  - Easily - Come on... I’m sure that you can not... -Why not? Naturally, I can do it using :r commant which is opening a script and executing it. Look, I can also use :setvar command to define an environment variable in SQLCMD mode. Just note that you have to leave the empty string between :r commands, otherwise it’s not working although I have no idea why. - Wow.- She was really impressed. - Ok, I’ll go to try all those… -Wait, wait! I know how to google the SQL SERVER features for you! This example will open chrome explorer with search results for the “SQL server 2012 top features” ( change the path to suit your PC): “Well, this can be probably useful stuff, maybe this feature is really unfairly forgotten”, thought the DBA while going through the dark empty parking lot to her lonely car. “As someone really wise once said: “It is what we think we know that keeps us from learning. Learn, unlearn and relearn”.

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• Quote of the day: On being able to handle the future

  - by BuckWoody

  The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time. - Abraham Lincoln Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Open the SQL Server Error Log with PowerShell

  - by BuckWoody

  Using the Server Management Objects (SMO) library, you don’t even need to have the SQL Server 2008 PowerShell Provider to read the SQL Server Error Logs – in fact, you can use regular old everyday PowerShell. Keep in mind you will need the SMO libraries – which can be installed separately or by installing the Client Tools from the SQL Server install media. You could search for errors, store a result as a variable, or act on the returned values in some other way. Replace the Machine Name with your server and Instance Name with your instance, but leave the quotes, to make this work on your system: [reflection.assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SqlServer.Smo") $machineName = "UNIVAC" $instanceName = "Production" $sqlServer = new-object ("Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Server") "$machineName\$instanceName" $sqlServer.ReadErrorLog() Want to search for something specific, like the word “Error”? Replace the last line with this: $sqlServer.ReadErrorLog() | where {$_.Text -like "Error*"} Script Disclaimer, for people who need to be told this sort of thing: Never trust any script, including those that you find here, until you understand exactly what it does and how it will act on your systems. Always check the script on a test system or Virtual Machine, not a production system. Yes, there are always multiple ways to do things, and this script may not work in every situation, for everything. It’s just a script, people. All scripts on this site are performed by a professional stunt driver on a closed course. Your mileage may vary. Void where prohibited. Offer good for a limited time only. Keep out of reach of small children. Do not operate heavy machinery while using this script. If you experience blurry vision, indigestion or diarrhea during the operation of this script, see a physician immediately. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• PowerPivot Workshop in London #ppws

  - by AlbertoFerrari

  As you might have read in Marco’s post , the PowerPivot Workshop I and Marco Russo have prepared is now starting its European tour. We will be in London on February 7,8 2011 and then touch most of the European countries during the next few months. We have provided the workshop first in Amsterdam and it has been a huge success, it is now time to start the roadshow and meet people who want to learn PowerPivot all over Europe: I am really excited about this! You will find updated information and workshop...(read more)

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• T-SQL in Chicago – the LobsterPot teams with DataEducation

  - by Rob Farley

  In May, I’ll be in the US. I have board meetings for PASS at the SQLRally event in Dallas, and then I’m going to be spending a bit of time in Chicago. The big news is that while I’m in Chicago (May 14-16), I’m going to teach my “Advanced T-SQL Querying and Reporting: Building Effectiveness” course. This is a course that I’ve been teaching since the 2005 days, and have modified over time for 2008 and 2012. It’s very much my most popular course, and I love teaching it. Let me tell you why. For years, I wrote queries and thought I was good at it. I was a developer. I’d written a lot of C (and other, more fun languages like Prolog and Lisp) at university, and then got into the ‘real world’ and coded in VB, PL/SQL, and so on through to C#, and saw SQL (whichever database system it was) as just a way of getting the data back. I could write a query to return just about whatever data I wanted, and that was good. I was better at it than the people around me, and that helped. (It didn’t help my progression into management, then it just became a frustration, but for the most part, it was good to know that I was good at this particular thing.) But then I discovered the other side of querying – the execution plan. I started to learn about the translation from what I’d written into the plan, and this impacted my query-writing significantly. I look back at the queries I wrote before I understood this, and shudder. I wrote queries that were correct, but often a long way from effective. I’d done query tuning, but had largely done it without considering the plan, just inferring what indexes would help. This is not a performance-tuning course. It’s focused on the T-SQL that you read and write. But performance is a significant and recurring theme. Effective T-SQL has to be about performance – it’s the biggest way that a query becomes effective. There are other aspects too though – such as using constructs better. For example – I can write code that modifies data nicely, but if I haven’t learned about the MERGE statement and the way that it can impact things, I’m missing a few tricks. If you’re going to do this course, a good place to be is the situation I was in a few years before I wrote this course. You’re probably comfortable with writing T-SQL queries. You know how to make a SELECT statement do what you need it to, but feel there has to be a better way. You can write JOINs easily, and understand how to use LEFT JOIN to make sure you don’t filter out rows from the first table, but you’re coding blind. The first module I cover is on Query Execution. Take a look at the Course Outline at Data Education’s website. The first part of the first module is on the components of a SELECT statement (where I make you think harder about GROUP BY than you probably have before), but then we jump straight into Execution Plans. Some stuff on indexes is in there too, as is simplification and SARGability. Some of this is stuff that you may have heard me present on at conferences, but here you have me for three days straight. I’m sure you can imagine that we revisit these topics throughout the rest of the course as well, and you’d be right. In the second and third modules we look at a bunch of other aspects, including some of the T-SQL constructs that lots of people don’t know, and various other things that can help your T-SQL be, well, more effective. I’ve had quite a lot of people do this course and be itching to get back to work even on the first day. That’s not a comment about the jokes I tell, but because people want to look at the queries they run. LobsterPot Solutions is thrilled to be partnering with Data Education to bring this training to Chicago. Visit their website to register for the course. @rob_farley

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• Getting Dynamic in SSIS Queries

  - by ejohnson2010

  When you start working with SQL Server and SSIS, it isn’t long before you find yourself wishing you could change bits of SQL queries dynamically. Most commonly, I see people that want to change the date portion of a query so that you can limit your query to the last 30 days, for example. This can be done using a combination of expressions and variables. I will do this in two parts, first I will build a variable that will always contain the 1 st day of the previous month and then I will dynamically...(read more)

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• My First Post @ geekswithblogs

  - by sathya

  Dear Friends, Here is my first post on geekswithblogs. I am happy that I have got a separate space here to blog. I am an MCTS certified Professional in .Net 2.0 Web applications, working as a Senior Software Engineer. Willing to share my knowledge on all topics whatever I know. I am also an active presenter / speaker in Microsoft Developer User Group HyderabadTechies. And I have presented many online sessions there. I keep myself updated on the latest technologies in Microsoft. You can see my posts here on the following subjects : C# ASP.NET SQL Server SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) I have a personal blog too where I share my knowledge. Pls take a note of it. http://cybersathya.blogspot.com You can see me here often posting the updates on technologies and the technical challenges that I faced and the solutions for the same. Stay Tuned !!! Regards Sathya Narayanan Srinivasan

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• Come Aboard. We're Expecting You...

  - by KKline

  Those of us over a certain age (read - old as dirt) can remember the theme songs to certain TV shows better than we can the National Anthem. Try these lines out and see if you don't immediately remember the tune that goes along with them: Come and knock on our door | We've been waiting for you ... Makin' your way in the world today | Takes everything you've got ... Just some good ol' boys | Never meaning no harm ... Thank you for being a friend | Travel down the road and back again ... So when I...(read more)

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• Columnstore Case Study #2: Columnstore faster than SSAS Cube at DevCon Security

  - by aspiringgeek

  Preamble This is the second in a series of posts documenting big wins encountered using columnstore indexes in SQL Server 2012 & 2014.  Many of these can be found in my big deck along with details such as internals, best practices, caveats, etc.  The purpose of sharing the case studies in this context is to provide an easy-to-consume quick-reference alternative. See also Columnstore Case Study #1: MSIT SONAR Aggregations Why Columnstore? As stated previously, If we’re looking for a subset of columns from one or a few rows, given the right indexes, SQL Server can do a superlative job of providing an answer. If we’re asking a question which by design needs to hit lots of rows—DW, reporting, aggregations, grouping, scans, etc., SQL Server has never had a good mechanism—until columnstore. Columnstore indexes were introduced in SQL Server 2012. However, they're still largely unknown. Some adoption blockers existed; yet columnstore was nonetheless a game changer for many apps.  In SQL Server 2014, potential blockers have been largely removed & they're going to profoundly change the way we interact with our data.  The purpose of this series is to share the performance benefits of columnstore & documenting columnstore is a compelling reason to upgrade to SQL Server 2014. The Customer DevCon Security provides home & business security services & has been in business for 135 years. I met DevCon personnel while speaking to the Utah County SQL User Group on 20 February 2012. (Thanks to TJ Belt (b|@tjaybelt) & Ben Miller (b|@DBADuck) for the invitation which serendipitously coincided with the height of ski season.) The App: DevCon Security Reporting: Optimized & Ad Hoc Queries DevCon users interrogate a SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services cube via SSRS. In addition, the SQL Server 2012 relational back end is the target of ad hoc queries; this DW back end is refreshed nightly during a brief maintenance window via conventional table partition switching. SSRS, SSAS, & MDX Conventional relational structures were unable to provide adequate performance for user interaction for the SSRS reports. An SSAS solution was implemented requiring personnel to ramp up technically, including learning enough MDX to satisfy requirements. Ad Hoc Queries Even though the fact table is relatively small—only 22 million rows & 33GB—the table was a typical DW table in terms of its width: 137 columns, any of which could be the target of ad hoc interrogation. As is common in DW reporting scenarios such as this, it is often nearly to optimize for such queries using conventional indexing. DevCon DBAs & developers attended PASS 2012 & were introduced to the marvels of columnstore in a session presented by Klaus Aschenbrenner (b|@Aschenbrenner) The Details Classic vs. columnstore before-&-after metrics are impressive. Scenario   Conventional Structures   Columnstore   Δ SSRS via SSAS 10 - 12 seconds 1 second >10x Ad Hoc 5-7 minutes (300 - 420 seconds) 1 - 2 seconds >100x Here are two charts characterizing this data graphically.  The first is a linear representation of Report Duration (in seconds) for Conventional Structures vs. Columnstore Indexes.  As is so often the case when we chart such significant deltas, the linear scale doesn’t expose some the dramatically improved values corresponding to the columnstore metrics.  Just to make it fair here’s the same data represented logarithmically; yet even here the values corresponding to 1 –2 seconds aren’t visible.  The Wins Performance: Even prior to columnstore implementation, at 10 - 12 seconds canned report performance against the SSAS cube was tolerable. Yet the 1 second performance afterward is clearly better. As significant as that is, imagine the user experience re: ad hoc interrogation. The difference between several minutes vs. one or two seconds is a game changer, literally changing the way users interact with their data—no mental context switching, no wondering when the results will appear, no preoccupation with the spinning mind-numbing hurry-up-&-wait indicators.  As we’ve commonly found elsewhere, columnstore indexes here provided performance improvements of one, two, or more orders of magnitude. Simplified Infrastructure: Because in this case a nonclustered columnstore index on a conventional DW table was faster than an Analysis Services cube, the entire SSAS infrastructure was rendered superfluous & was retired. PASS Rocks: Once again, the value of attending PASS is proven out. The trip to Charlotte combined with eager & enquiring minds let directly to this success story. Find out more about the next PASS Summit here, hosted this year in Seattle on November 4 - 7, 2014. DevCon BI Team Lead Nathan Allan provided this unsolicited feedback: “What we found was pretty awesome. It has been a game changer for us in terms of the flexibility we can offer people that would like to get to the data in different ways.” Summary For DW, reports, & other BI workloads, columnstore often provides significant performance enhancements relative to conventional indexing.  I have documented here, the second in a series of reports on columnstore implementations, results from DevCon Security, a live customer production app for which performance increased by factors of from 10x to 100x for all report queries, including canned queries as well as reducing time for results for ad hoc queries from 5 - 7 minutes to 1 - 2 seconds. As a result of columnstore performance, the customer retired their SSAS infrastructure. I invite you to consider leveraging columnstore in your own environment. Let me know if you have any questions.

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• Latest SolidQ Journal Plus Giveaways

  - by Andrew Kelly

    You can find the latest edition of the SolidQ Journal here that is always good reading but if you register over the next 3 weeks you may be eligible for a prize including:  One $500 Amazon gift card and 5 $150 gift cards; books from Itzik Ben-Gan, Greg Low, and Erik Veerman/Jay Hackney/Dejan Sarka; and chats with MarkTab and Kevin Boles.   The deadline for the giveaway is January 7th and you can register for it HERE .  So be a good little boy or girl and maybe Santa will bring...(read more)

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• Better documentation for tasks waiting on resources

  - by SQLOS Team

  The sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks DMV contains a wealth of useful information about tasks waiting on a resource, but until now detailed information about the resource being consumed - sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks.resource_description - hasn't been documented, apart from a rather self-evident "Description of the resource that is being consumed."   Thanks to a recent Connect suggestion this column will get more information added. Here is a summary of the possible values that can appear in this column - Note this information is current for SQL Server 2008 R2 and Denali:   Thread-pool resource owner:•       threadpool id=scheduler<hex-address> Parallel query resource owner:•       exchangeEvent id={Port|Pipe}<hex-address> WaitType=<exchange-wait-type> nodeId=<exchange-node-id> Exchange-wait-type can be one of the following.•       e_waitNone•       e_waitPipeNewRow•       e_waitPipeGetRow•       e_waitSynchronizeConsumerOpen•       e_waitPortOpen•       e_waitPortClose•       e_waitRange Lock resource owner:<type-specific-description> id=lock<lock-hex-address> mode=<mode> associatedObjectId=<associated-obj-id>               <type-specific-description> can be:• For DATABASE: databaselock subresource=<databaselock-subresource> dbid=<db-id>• For FILE: filelock fileid=<file-id> subresource=<filelock-subresource> dbid=<db-id>• For OBJECT: objectlock lockPartition=<lock-partition-id> objid=<obj-id> subresource=<objectlock-subresource> dbid=<db-id>• For PAGE: pagelock fileid=<file-id> pageid=<page-id> dbid=<db-id> subresource=<pagelock-subresource>• For Key: keylock  hobtid=<hobt-id> dbid=<db-id>• For EXTENT: extentlock fileid=<file-id> pageid=<page-id> dbid=<db-id>• For RID: ridlock fileid=<file-id> pageid=<page-id> dbid=<db-id>• For APPLICATION: applicationlock hash=<hash> databasePrincipalId=<role-id> dbid=<db-id>• For METADATA: metadatalock subresource=<metadata-subresource> classid=<metadatalock-description> dbid=<db-id>• For HOBT: hobtlock hobtid=<hobt-id> subresource=<hobt-subresource> dbid=<db-id>• For ALLOCATION_UNIT: allocunitlock hobtid=<hobt-id> subresource=<alloc-unit-subresource> dbid=<db-id> <mode> can be:• Sch-S• Sch-M• S• U• X• IS• IU• IX• SIU• SIX• UIX• BU• RangeS-S• RangeS-U• RangeI-N• RangeI-S• RangeI-U• RangeI-X• RangeX-S• RangeX-U• RangeX-X External resource owner:•       External ExternalResource=<wait-type> Generic resource owner:•       TransactionMutex TransactionInfo Workspace=<workspace-id>•       Mutex•       CLRTaskJoin•       CLRMonitorEvent•       CLRRWLockEvent•       resourceWait Latch resource owner:•       <db-id>:<file-id>:<page-in-file>•       <GUID>•       <latch-class> (<latch-address>)   Further Information Slava Oks's weblog: sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks.Informit.com: Identifying Blocking Using sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks - Ken Henderson   - Guy

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• SQLRally and SQLRally - Session material

  - by Hugo Kornelis

  I had a great week last week. First at SQLRally Nordic , in Stockholm, where I presented a session on how improvements to the OVER clause can help you simplify queries in SQL Server 2012 enormously. And then I continued straight on into SQLRally Amsterdam , where I delivered a session on the performance implications of using user-defined functions in T-SQL. I understand that both events will make my slides and demo code downloadable from their website, but this may take a while. So those who do not...(read more)

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• Windows Azure Emulators On Your Desktop

  - by BuckWoody

  Many people feel they have to set up a full Azure subscription online to try out and develop on Windows Azure. But you don’t have to do that right away. In fact, you can download the Windows Azure Compute Emulator – a “cloud development environment” – right on your desktop. No, it’s not for production use, and no, you won’t have other people using your system as a cloud provider, and yes, there are some differences with Production Windows Azure, but you’ll be able code, run, test, diagnose, watch, change and configure code without having any connection to the Internet at all. The best thing about this approach is that when you are ready to deploy the code you’ve been testing, a few clicks deploys it to your subscription when you make one.   So what deep-magic does it take to run such a thing right on your laptop or even a Virtual PC? Well, it’s actually not all that difficult. You simply download and install the Windows Azure SDK (you can even get a free version of Visual Studio for it to run on – you’re welcome) from here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsazure/cc974146.aspx   This SDK will also install the Windows Azure Compute Emulator and the Windows Azure Storage Emulator – and then you’re all set. Right-click the icon for Visual Studio and select “Run as Administrator”:    Now open a new “Cloud” type of project:   Add your Web and Worker Roles that you want to code:   And when you’re done with your design, press F5 to start the desktop version of Azure:   Want to learn more about what’s happening underneath? Right-click the tray icon with the Azure logo, and select the two emulators to see what they are doing:          In the configuration files, you’ll see a “Use Development Storage” setting. You can call the BLOB, Table or Queue storage and it will all run on your desktop. When you’re ready to deploy everything to Windows Azure, you simply change the configuration settings and add the storage keys and so on that you need.   Want to learn more about all this?   Overview of the Windows Azure Compute Emulator: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg432968.aspx Overview of the Windows Azure Storage Emulator: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg432983.aspx January 2011 Training Kit: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=413E88F8-5966-4A83-B309-53B7B77EDF78&displaylang=en      

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• Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools - January 2011 Update

  - by Nikita Polyakov

  Long time no talk? So to make up for it, here is something very new – update to WP7 Dev Tools! The Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools January 2011 Update provides bits that you would install on TOP of the current WP7 Dev tools on your machine. If you are just installing the tools for the first time, this update replaces previously released October patch. In fact, it is no longer available as this January 2011 update replaces the patch entirely. What is in this update? TextBox support for Copy&Paste Updated Emulator Image that contains Copy&Paste for your testing There have been performance tweaks for the OS Minor Bugs and Fixes How does it Work? The Copy&Paste extends a existing TextBox control to have this new functionality, There is no current API access to the Clipboard or support for other controls that are not based on TextBox. If I have/Do I need to: A current application in the marketplace/No action is required Have an application that contains a TextBox in a Pivot or Panorama control surface/Text your application in provided emulator Recommendation is to move TextBox controls from directly top of controls that listen to Gesture movement to their own pop-off screens or entire pages as this might interfear with select behavior for Copy&Paste Have controls that do no inherit from TextBox/Such controls will not get new Copy&Paste behavior Note: The update materials, FAQ and Q&A do not answer WHEN the update for the OS will be sent to the phones.  Also to note - this update does NOT update your developer phone to enable Copy&Paste or any other features. Windows Phone 7 Training Kit February Update Windows Phone Training Kit has also been updated – you can grab a fresh copy here.   Where to I find more good information, documentation and training? This very awesome blog post from the Windows Phone Developer Blog - Windows Phone 7 Documentation Landscape. Official Blog Post on the Update is here. Happy coding! -Nikita   PS: I am well aware that it is Feb 4th and not January :) If you were disappointed at CES that Microsoft said nothing at all about future of WP7, don’t forget that MWC 2011 is Feb 14th – I am going to be listening for Windows Phone announcements then, as that is where the announcements were made about Windows Phone 7.

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• SQLPASS BoD Polls Close this Friday

  - by RickHeiges

  Research, Contemplate, Vote. In case you didn't hear, there is a campaign going on that impacts the PASS Organization and the SQL Community. If you were a PASS member before June 1, 2012, you should have received a ballot link via email. Polls close at 3pm PT on Friday, Oct 12, 2012. I am fortunate to know all 5 candidates for this year's election and count them among my friends. The problem that I have is that I only have 3 votes to cast. At this point, I have decided on 2 of my 3 votes. Since I...(read more)

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• Security Updates Available for SQL Server 2008, 2008 R2, 2012, 2014

  - by AaronBertrand

  If you are running 2008 SP3, 2008 R2 SP2, 2012 SP1 (SP2 is not affected, RTM is no longer supported), or 2014, you'll want to check out Security Bulletin MS14-044 for details on a denial of service / privilege escalation issue that has been patched: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/security/MS14-044 For SQL Server 2012 and SQL Server 2014, I've blogged about recent builds and recommendations here: http://blogs.sqlsentry.com/team-posts/latest-builds-sql-server-2012/ http://blogs.sqlsentry.com/team-posts/latest-builds-sql-server-2014...(read more)

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• How Parallelism Works in SQL Server

  - by Paul White

  You might have noticed that January was a quiet blogging month for me.  Part of the reason was that I was working on a series of articles for Simple Talk, examining how parallel query execution really works.  The first part is published today at: http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/learn-sql-server/understanding-and-using-parallelism-in-sql-server/ . This introductory piece is not quite as deeply technical as my SQLblog posts tend to be, but I hope there be enough interesting material to make...(read more)

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• Did You Know: So Many User Groups, So Little Time

  - by Kalen Delaney

  In May and June of this year, I'll be four user groups presentations plus a SQL Saturday. You can check my schedule for links to the relevant sites, and a description of my topics, as soon as they are available. This post is mainly just a heads-up, so you can make your plans. http://schedule.KalenDelaney.com May 12: The inaugural meeting of the Sacramento SQL Server User Group (evening) May 13: Central California .Net Users Group (evening) June 8: Colorado PASS (evening) June 12: SQL Saturday #43,...(read more)

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• Microsoft BI Conference 2010 Recap & books promo

  - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

  Last week I’ve been at Microsoft BI Conference and I presented an interactive session about PowerPivot DAX Patterns. Unfortunately only the breakout session were recorded and available on TechEd Online . The room was full and there were probably many other people in an overflow room.  I would like to thanks all the attendees of my session and you can write me (marco dot russo [at] sqlbi dot com) if you have other questions and/or feedback about the session. The interest about PowerPivot (especially...(read more)

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• Tips for adapting Date table to Power View forecasting #powerview #powerbi

  - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

  During the keynote of the PASS Business Analytics Conference, Amir Netz presented the new forecasting capabilities in Power View for Office 365. I immediately tried the new feature (which was immediately available, a welcome surprise in a Microsoft announcement for a new release) and I had several issues trying to use existing data models. The forecasting has a few requirements that are not compatible with the “best practices” commonly used for a calendar table until this announcement. For example, if you have a Year-Month-Day hierarchy and you want to display a line chart aggregating data at the month level, you use a column containing month and year as a string (e.g. May 2014) sorted by a numeric column (such as 201405). Such a column cannot be used in the x-axis of a line chart for forecasting, because you need a date or numeric column. There are also other requirements and I wrote the article Prepare Data for Power View Forecasting in Power BI on SQLBI, describing how to create columns that can be used with the new forecasting capabilities in Power View for Office 365.

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• Determining distribution of NULL values

  - by AaronBertrand

  Today on the twitter hash tag #sqlhelp, @leenux_tux asked: How can I figure out the percentage of fields that don't have data ? After further clarification, it turns out he is after what proportion of columns are NULL. Some folks suggested using a data profiling task in SSIS . There may be some validity to that, but I'm still a fan of sticking to T-SQL when I can, so here is how I would approach it: Create a #temp table or @table variable to store the results. Create a cursor that loops through all...(read more)

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• Implement Budget Allocation in DAX for Power Pivot and Tabular #powerpivot #tabular #ssas #dax

  - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

  Comparing sales and budget, or costs and budget, is a very common operation. However, it is often the case that you have different granularities for different tables containing budget and the data to compare with. There are two ways to do that: you can limit the comparison to the granularity that is common to the two tables, or you can allocate the budget where it’s not defined. For example, if you have a budget defined by quarter and category, you might want to allocate it by month and product. In this way, you will do the comparison as you had a more granular definition of the budget, without actually having to do the manual job of allocating data (usually in an Excel worksheet!). If you want to do budget allocation in DAX, you can use the Budget Patterns we published on DAX Patterns. If you come from and MDX/OLAP background, at first you might find it hard to solve the problem of not having attribute hierarchies that helps you in propagating the budget values to lower hierarchical levels. However, I think that once you get used to DAX, you will find the behavior very predictable and easy to “debug” also for more complex allocation formula. You just have to be careful in writing the DAX formula, but probably the pattern we wrote should help you designing the right data model, without creating physical relationships to the budget table! This pattern is also based on the Handling Different Granularities scenario I discussed a couple of weeks ago.

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• Links to C++ documentation

  - by Daniel Moth

  After a recent talk I gave on C++ AMP, one attendee was complaining that they were not familiar with lambdas and another found templates hard to parse. In case you are in the same boat, I thought I'd gather some essential reading material for you (also gives me one link to use in the future for referring people to ;-) Lambdas are available (in some shape or form) in all modern languages, so do yourself a favor and learn about them: Lambda Expressions in C++ (and also syntax and examples) Watch Herb Sutter's full length session on lambdas at PDC 2010 Templates, have been around in modern languages for even longer than lambdas (e.g. Generics in .NET), so again go dive in: Templates topic with full table of contents linking to subtopics In fact, why don't you refresh your knowledge and read the entire msdn C++ Language Reference – that's what I am doing! If you are looking to keep up to date with what is happening in the C++ world, stay tuned on the Visual C++ team (aka WinC++ team) blog and ask questions in the C++ forums. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• SQL Server v.Next ("Denali") : How a columnstore index is not like a normal index

  - by AaronBertrand

  At the end of my Denali presentation at SQL Saturday #65 in Vancouver, a member of the audience asked, "What makes a columnstore index different from a regular nonclustered index?" At the end of a busy day, I was at a loss for an answer, and I'll explain why. First, I'll briefly explain the basic, core, high-level functionality of a columnstore index (you can read a lot more details in this white paper ). Basically, instead of storing index data together on a page, it divvies up the data from each...(read more)

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• Why I don't use SSIS checkpoint files

  - by jamiet

  In a recent discussion in regard to general ETL best practises the subject of checkpoint files as a means for package restartability came up and I stated that I was dead against using them. For anyone that may care, here is why: Configuring them is distinctly unintuitive (that's a matter of opinion but if you follow the link I'll wager that you will agree) they don't make any allowance for loop iterations they cannot store variables of type Object they are limited in ability. There are many scenarios where you may want to execute certain containers regardless of whether the package is started from a checkpoint file but the current usage model does not allow for this. they are ignored by eventhandlers, which wouldn't be so bad if there were a way to toggle this behaviour in certain scenarios they dont work properly I'll expand on the last bullet point. I have encountered situations where the behaviour for tasks executing concurrently is unpredictable. That is, sometimes the completion of a task that executes concurrently with a failed/failing task will make it into the checkpoint file and sometimes it won't. This is near-impossible to reproduce but it does happen as my good friend John Welch will hopefully concur (if he is reading). Is anyone out there making successful use of checkpoint files within SSIS? I would be interested in knowing about that if so. @Jamiet

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