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• An update on using Rosetta Stone: Studio now isn't very useful and is not great value as an add-on option

  - by Greg Low

  I had a surprisingly large number of responses from my previous posting about learning Chinese. An update for those considering Rosetta Stone (www.rosettastone.com) for Chinese, Spanish or any other language that they offer:I had to renew my "Studio" subscription today and it's now a much worse deal than it was.It's now $75 for 6 months for Studio sessions. Online classes used to be 45 mins. Recently they reduced them to 20 mins. Given how often people have connection issues, etc. that 20 mins can disappear very quickly.They've also reduced the number you can attend. You used to be able to have 2 scheduled at any point in time. Now they limit you to 2 "group sessions" per month during the period. (You can pay for additional private sessions). The combination of these two changes now makes it much less useful. Two x 20 min sessions per month is an almost meaningless amount of practice. They also now automatically change you to auto-renew when you subscribe. They tell you where to remove this auto-renewal but the first 4 or 5 times that I went into that screen, no such option appeared. Later, an option did appear and I used it.Overall, things just aren't what they used to be at Rosetta Stone. It's now pretty hard to recommend the Studio option where it was a no-brainer before.FURTHER UPDATE: <sigh>Even after I renewed, I could not even connect to their "new" service. Although the system processed the renewal, it still tells me it's expired. My online chat person "Siva S" tells me that the problem is that I've purchased all 5 levels of the program. I can't wait till they explain to me how making an extra purchase from them stops me from logging on. Siva told me that they had "renewed" the program. I'd have to speak to Customer Care; they aren't available and then disconnected himself. Impressive (not).Their website is now full of issues too. It insists that my billing address is in the USA, even though it pretends to accept changes to it.Overall, it's gone from something that could be recommended (with some limitations) to now being an app to avoid. That's a pity as I liked much of it before.

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• Developing add-ins for multiple versions of Office

  - by Pranav

  Do you want to develop an add-in targeting multiple versions of Office? And you have basic questions like “Is it possible to do? ” and “How to do it?” ? Then you came to the right place. Few months back, I got a requirement to developed add-ins for Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007. The functionality for both the versions is same. A doubt stroked… when the functionality is same, why would I develop two add-ins separately? Why don’t I make a single build for both the versions of Office? Then I started searching for techniques to develop add-ins which works in both (2003 and 2007) and read many articles written by VSTO Experts in their blogs, Official VSTO Blog, MSDN, Forums and what not. Misha Says: Theoretically, you can develop an add-in for multiple versions of Microsoft Office by catering to the lowest common denominator. This means if you use an Excel 2003 add-in template in Visual Studio 2008, you would be able to develop and debug this with Excel 2007. However if you try this, you may meet these error messages: “You cannot debug or run this project, because the required version of the Microsoft Office application is not installed.”, followed by “Unable to start debugging.” You can develop Office 2003 add-in in a system where Office 2007 is installed. The following is the procedure that demonstrates how to update your Visual Studio debugging options to use Microsoft Outlook 2007 to debug an add-in targeting Microsoft Outlook 2003. On the Project menu, click on ProjectName Properties Click on the Debug tab In the Start Action pane, click the Start external program radio button Click the file browser button and navigate to %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Office\Office12 Choose Outlook.exe and click Open Press F5 to debug your add-in For more details. Go through this article in Misha Shneerson’s Blog. There are some tips and tricks to be followed and the things that one needs to take care while developing add-ins targeting multiple versions of Office in Andrew’s Blog. Have a look at this too. You might find it interesting and useful. http://blogs.msdn.com/andreww/archive/2007/06/15/can-you-build-one-add-in-for-multiple-versions-of-office.aspx Here is an MSDN article on Running Solutions in Different Versions of Microsoft Office http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb772080.aspx Hope this helps!

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• Join the Authors of SSIS Design Patterns at the PASS Summit 2012!

  - by andyleonard

  My fellow authors and I will be presenting a day-long pre-conference session titled SSIS Design Patterns at the PASS Summit 2012 in Seattle Monday 5 Nov 2012! Register to learn patterns for: Package execution Package logging Loading flat file sources Loading XML sources Loading the cloud Dynamic package generation SSIS Frameworks Data warehouse ETL Data flow performance   Presenting this session: Matt Masson Tim Mitchell Jessica Moss Michelle Ufford Andy Leonard I hope to see you in Seattle!...(read more)

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• Speaking - Automate Your ETL Infrastructure with SSIS and PowerShell

  - by AllenMWhite

  Today at 4:45PM EDT I'm presenting a new session using PowerShell to auto-generate SSIS packages via the BIML language. The really cool thing is that this session will be live broadcast on PASS TV! You can view the session by clicking on this link . If you have questions for me during the session, you can send them to me via Twitter using this hashtag: #posh2biml Brian Davis, my good friend from the Ohio North SQL Server Users Group, will be monitoring that hashtag and feeding me the questions that...(read more)

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• SQL Rally Pre-Con: Data Warehouse Modeling – Making the Right Choices

  - by Davide Mauri

  As you may have already learned from my old post or Adam’s or Kalen’s posts, there will be two SQL Rally in North Europe. In the Stockholm SQL Rally, with my friend Thomas Kejser, I’ll be delivering a pre-con on Data Warehouse Modeling: Data warehouses play a central role in any BI solution. It's the back end upon which everything in years to come will be created. For this reason, it must be rock solid and yet flexible at the same time. To develop such a data warehouse, you must have a clear idea of its architecture, a thorough understanding of the concepts of Measures and Dimensions, and a proven engineered way to build it so that quality and stability can go hand-in-hand with cost reduction and scalability. In this workshop, Thomas Kejser and Davide Mauri will share all the information they learned since they started working with data warehouses, giving you the guidance and tips you need to start your BI project in the best way possible?avoiding errors, making implementation effective and efficient, paving the way for a winning Agile approach, and helping you define how your team should work so that your BI solution will stand the test of time. You'll learn: Data warehouse architecture and justification Agile methodology Dimensional modeling, including Kimball vs. Inmon, SCD1/SCD2/SCD3, Junk and Degenerate Dimensions, and Huge Dimensions Best practices, naming conventions, and lessons learned Loading the data warehouse, including loading Dimensions, loading Facts (Full Load, Incremental Load, Partitioned Load) Data warehouses and Big Data (Hadoop) Unit testing Tracking historical changes and managing large sizes With all the Self-Service BI hype, Data Warehouse is become more and more central every day, since if everyone will be able to analyze data using self-service tools, it’s better for him/her to rely on correct, uniform and coherent data. Already 50 people registered from the workshop and seats are limited so don’t miss this unique opportunity to attend to this workshop that is really a unique combination of years and years of experience! http://www.sqlpass.org/sqlrally/2013/nordic/Agenda/PreconferenceSeminars.aspx See you there!

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• .Net Rocks TV - Architecting Windows Phone Applications

  - by psheriff

  I recently completed a .NET Rocks TV show with Carl Franklin. In this episode I discuss some design decisions that will help you create architecturally sound Windows Phone applications. Of course, many of the techniques will also apply to Silverlight and WPF application development as well. Check out the episode at http://www.dnrtv.com/default.aspx?showNum=184   Good Luck with your Coding,Paul Sheriff   ** SPECIAL OFFER FOR MY BLOG READERS **Visit http://www.pdsa.com/Event/Blog for a free video on Silverlight entitled Silverlight XAML for the Complete Novice - Part 1.

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• Columnstore Case Study #1: MSIT SONAR Aggregations

  - by aspiringgeek

  Preamble This is the first in a series of posts documenting big wins encountered using columnstore indexes in SQL Server 2012 & 2014.  Many of these can be found in this 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. Why Columnstore? 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. App: MSIT SONAR Aggregations At MSIT, performance & configuration data is captured by SCOM. We archive much of the data in a partitioned data warehouse table in SQL Server 2012 for reporting via an application called SONAR.  By definition, this is a primary use case for columnstore—report queries requiring aggregation over large numbers of rows.  New data is refreshed each night by an automated table partitioning mechanism—a best practices scenario for columnstore. The Win Compared to performance using classic indexing which resulted in the expected query plan selection including partition elimination vs. SQL Server 2012 nonclustered columnstore, query performance increased significantly.  Logical reads were reduced by over a factor of 50; both CPU & duration improved by factors of 20 or more.  Other than creating the columnstore index, no special modifications or tweaks to the app or databases schema were necessary to achieve the performance improvements.  Existing nonclustered indexes were rendered superfluous & were deleted, thus mitigating maintenance challenges such as defragging as well as conserving disk capacity. Details The table provides the raw data & summarizes the performance deltas. Logical Reads (8K pages) CPU (ms) Durn (ms) Columnstore 160,323 20,360 9,786 Conventional Table & Indexes 9,053,423 549,608 193,903 ? x56 x27 x20 The charts provide additional perspective of this data.  "Conventional vs. Columnstore Metrics" document the raw data.  Note on this linear display the magnitude of the conventional index performance vs. columnstore.  The “Metrics (?)” chart expresses these values as a ratio. Summary For DW, reports, & other BI workloads, columnstore often provides significant performance enhancements relative to conventional indexing.  I have documented here, the first in a series of reports on columnstore implementations, results from an initial implementation at MSIT in which logical reads were reduced by over a factor of 50; both CPU & duration improved by factors of 20 or more.  Subsequent features in this series document performance enhancements that are even more significant. 

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• Adding a Network Loopback Adapter to Windows 8

  - by Greg Low

  I have to say that I continue to be frustrated with finding out how to do things in Windows 8. Here's another one and it's recorded so it might help someone else. I've also documented what I tried so that if anyone from the product group ever reads this, they'll understand how I searched for it and might try to make it easier.I wanted to add a network loopback adapter, to have a fixed IP address to work with when using an "internal" network with Hyper-V. (The fact that I even need to do this is also painful. I don't know why Hyper-V can't make it easy to work with host system folders, etc. as easily as I can with VirtualPC, VirtualBox, etc. but that's a topic for another day).In the end, what I needed was a known IP address on the same network that my guest OS was using, via the internal network (which allows connectivity from the host OS to/from guest OS's).I started by looking in the network adapters areas but there is no "add" functionality there. Realising that this was likely to be another unexpected challenge, I resorted to searching for info on doing this. I found KB article 2777200 entitled "Installing the Microsoft Loopback Adapter in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012". Aha, I thought that's what I'd need. It describes the symptom as "You are trying to install the Microsoft Loopback Adapter, but are unable to find it." and that certainly sounded like me. There's a certain irony in documenting that something's hard to find instead of making it easier to find. Anyway, you'd hope that in that article, they'd then provide a step by step example of how to do it, but what they supply is this: The Microsoft Loopback Adapter was renamed in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. The new name is "Microsoft KM-TEST Loopback Adapter". When using the Add Hardware Wizard to manually add a network adapter, choose Manufacturer "Microsoft" and choose network adapter "Microsoft KM-TEST Loopback Adapter".The trick with this of course is finding the "Add Hardware Wizard". In Control Panel -> Hardware and Sound, there are options to "Add a device" and for "Device Manager". I tried the "Add a device" wizard (seemed logical to me) but after that wizard tries it's best, it just tells you that there isn't any hardware that it thinks it needs to install. It offers a link for when you can't find what you're looking for, but that leads to a generic help page that tells you how to do things like turning on your printer.In Device Manager, I checked the options in the program menus, and nothing useful was present. I even tried right-clicking "Network adapters", hoping that would lead to an option to add one, also to no avail.So back to the search engine I went, to try to find out where the "Add Hardware Wizard" is. Turns out I was in the right place in Device Manager, but I needed to right-click the computer's name, and choose "Add Legacy Hardware". No doubt that hasn't changed location lately but it's a while since I needed to add one so I'd forgotten. Regardless, I'm left wondering why it couldn't be in the menu as well.Anyway, for a step by step list, you need to do the following:1. From Control Panel, select "Device Manager" under the "Devices and Printers" section of the "Hardware and Sound" tab.2. Right-click the name of the computer at the top of the tree, and choose "Add Legacy Hardware".3. In the "Welcome to the Add Hardware Wizard" window, click Next.4. In the "The wizard can help you install other hardware" window, choose "Install the hardware that I manually select from a list" option and click Next.5. In the "The wizard did not find any new hardware on your computer" window, click Next.6. In the "From the list below, select the type of hardware you are installing" window, select "Network Adapters" from the list, and click Next.7. In the "Select Network Adapter" window, from the Manufacturer list, choose Microsoft, then in the Network Adapter window, choose "Microsoft KM-TEST Loopback Adapter", then click Next.8. In the "The wizard is ready to install your hardware" window, click Next.9. In the "Completing the Add Hardware Wizard" window, click Finish.Then you need to continue to set the IP address, etc.10. Back in Control Panel, select the "Network and Internet" tab, click "View Network Status and Tasks".11. In the "View your basic network information and set up connections" window, click "Change adapter settings".12. Right-click the new adapter that has been added (find it in the list by checking the device name of "Microsoft KM-TEST Loopback Adapter"), and click Properties.   

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• How many SQL Server DBAs does an organization need?

  - by RickHeiges

  "How many SQL Server DBAs do we need?" - This is a question that often comes up in conversations with customers. Essentially, customers want to know if they have enough DBAs or too many. This is not a trivial question. If you do some research online via your favorite search engine, you will most likely come across numbers such as 40-65 DBs per DBA (for SQL Server). I remember finding another number relating to storage space instead of the number of DBs; the range was 3-5TB per DBA. I have had custoemrs...(read more)

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• T-SQL Tuesday - IO capacity planning

  - by Michael Zilberstein

  This post is my contribution to Adam Machanic's T-SQL Tuesday #004 , hosted this time by Mike Walsh . Being applicative DBA, I usually don't take part in discussions which storage to buy or how to configure it. My interaction with IO is usually via PerfMon. When somebody calls me asking why everything is suddenly so slow on database server, "disk queue length" or "average seconds per transfer" counters provide an overwhelming answer in 60-70% of such cases. Sometimes it can be...(read more)

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• How *not* to handle a compensation step on failure in an SSIS package

  - by James Luetkehoelter

  Just stumbed across this where I'm working. Someone created a global error handler for a package that included this SQL step: DELETE FROM Table WHERE DateDiff(MI, ExportedDate, GetDate()) < 5 So if the package runs for longer than 5 minutes and fails, nothing gets cleaned up. Please people, don't do this... Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!...(read more)

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• Building the Internet of Things – with Microsoft StreamInsight and the Microsoft .Net Micro Framework

  - by Roman Schindlauer

  Fresh from the press – The March 2012 issue of MSDN Magazine features an article about the Internet of Things. It discusses in depth how you can use StreamInsight to process all the data that is continuously produced in typical Internet of Things scenarios. It also gives you an end-to-end perspective on developing Internet of Things solutions in the .NET world, ranging from the .NET Micro Framework application running on the device, the communication between the devices and the server-side all the way to powerful cross-device streaming analytics implemented in StreamInsight LINQ. You can find an online version of the article here. Happy reading! Regards, The StreamInsight Team

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• The Team Behind SQL Saturday 60 In Cleveland

  - by AllenMWhite

  Last July I asked the assembled group at the Ohio North SQL Server Users Group meeting if they'd be interested in putting on a SQL Saturday. Enthusiastically, they said yes! A great group of people came together and met, first monthly, then every other week, and finally every week, taking time from their families to do the things necessary to put together a SQL Saturday event here in Cleveland. Their work has been amazing and any of you attending our event will see what a great job they've all done....(read more)

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• I think I’ve finally made it in life. I have a Bobblehead.

  - by BuckWoody

  I have no idea why the Marketing group at Microsoft made me into a Bobblehead. Other than this is awesome! I think I’ll call him “Lil Buck”.     Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Adding a comma to a resource name in Microsoft Project

  - by John Paul Cook

  Microsoft Project does not allow a comma to be added to a resource name. In healthcare, the norm is to refer to people using the pattern of Name, Title which in my case is John Cook, RN. Not all commas are equal. By substituting a different comma for the one Project doesn’t like, it’s possible to add a comma to a resource name. Figure 1. Error message after trying to add a comma to a resource name in Microsoft Project 2013. The error message refers to “the list separator character” that is commonly...(read more)

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• Error occurred in deployment step 'Activate Features': The field with Id {GUID} defined in feature {GUID} was found in the current site collection or in a subsite.

  - by Jayant Sharma

  Hi all, In SharePoint 2010, This is rare error, I got when I deploy and activate Feature using VS2010. Deployment works file  but in activation process it get stuct and throws error. Error occurred in deployment step 'Activate Features': The field with Id {GUID} defined in feature {GUID} was found in the current site collection or in a subsite. When I googled I found very good solution  from Sandeep Snahta Blog. http://snahta.blogspot.hk/2011/10/error-in-activate-features-from-visual.html As suggested in this blog, there is two option to overcome this error; Close VS2010 and restart again. Or Kill VSSHost4 Process either through Task Manager or Via Power Shell Command    stop-process -processname vssphost4 -force   Jayant Sharma

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• Pre-Conference Sessions at the PASS Summit

  - by andyleonard

  Introduction I have some thoughts on the selection of pre-conference and post-conference session presenters at the PASS Summit. PASS pre-conference and post-conference sessions are $395. Trainers and speakers in the various SQL Server fields (relational engine, business intelligence, etc.) are selected to deliver these day-long seminars before and (now) after each PASS Summit. I have attended a few and the quality and amount of the training easily justifies the $395 price tag. Full Disclosure I've...(read more)

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• Cardinality Estimation Bug with Lookups in SQL Server 2008 onward

  - by Paul White

  Cost-based optimization stands or falls on the quality of cardinality estimates (expected row counts).  If the optimizer has incorrect information to start with, it is quite unlikely to produce good quality execution plans except by chance.  There are many ways we can provide good starting information to the optimizer, and even more ways for cardinality estimation to go wrong.  Good database people know this, and work hard to write optimizer-friendly queries with a schema and metadata (e.g. statistics) that reduce the chances of poor cardinality estimation producing a sub-optimal plan.  Today, I am going to look at a case where poor cardinality estimation is Microsoft’s fault, and not yours. SQL Server 2005 SELECT th.ProductID, th.TransactionID, th.TransactionDate FROM Production.TransactionHistory AS th WHERE th.ProductID = 1 AND th.TransactionDate BETWEEN '20030901' AND '20031231'; The query plan on SQL Server 2005 is as follows (if you are using a more recent version of AdventureWorks, you will need to change the year on the date range from 2003 to 2007): There is an Index Seek on ProductID = 1, followed by a Key Lookup to find the Transaction Date for each row, and finally a Filter to restrict the results to only those rows where Transaction Date falls in the range specified.  The cardinality estimate of 45 rows at the Index Seek is exactly correct.  The table is not very large, there are up-to-date statistics associated with the index, so this is as expected. The estimate for the Key Lookup is also exactly right.  Each lookup into the Clustered Index to find the Transaction Date is guaranteed to return exactly one row.  The plan shows that the Key Lookup is expected to be executed 45 times.  The estimate for the Inner Join output is also correct – 45 rows from the seek joining to one row each time, gives 45 rows as output. The Filter estimate is also very good: the optimizer estimates 16.9951 rows will match the specified range of transaction dates.  Eleven rows are produced by this query, but that small difference is quite normal and certainly nothing to worry about here.  All good so far. SQL Server 2008 onward The same query executed against an identical copy of AdventureWorks on SQL Server 2008 produces a different execution plan: The optimizer has pushed the Filter conditions seen in the 2005 plan down to the Key Lookup.  This is a good optimization – it makes sense to filter rows out as early as possible.  Unfortunately, it has made a bit of a mess of the cardinality estimates. The post-Filter estimate of 16.9951 rows seen in the 2005 plan has moved with the predicate on Transaction Date.  Instead of estimating one row, the plan now suggests that 16.9951 rows will be produced by each clustered index lookup – clearly not right!  This misinformation also confuses SQL Sentry Plan Explorer: Plan Explorer shows 765 rows expected from the Key Lookup (it multiplies a rounded estimate of 17 rows by 45 expected executions to give 765 rows total). Workarounds One workaround is to provide a covering non-clustered index (avoiding the lookup avoids the problem of course): CREATE INDEX nc1 ON Production.TransactionHistory (ProductID) INCLUDE (TransactionDate); With the Transaction Date filter applied as a residual predicate in the same operator as the seek, the estimate is again as expected: We could also force the use of the ultimate covering index (the clustered one): SELECT th.ProductID, th.TransactionID, th.TransactionDate FROM Production.TransactionHistory AS th WITH (INDEX(1)) WHERE th.ProductID = 1 AND th.TransactionDate BETWEEN '20030901' AND '20031231'; Summary Providing a covering non-clustered index for all possible queries is not always practical, and scanning the clustered index will rarely be optimal.  Nevertheless, these are the best workarounds we have today. In the meantime, watch out for poor cardinality estimates when a predicate is applied as part of a lookup. The worst thing is that the estimate after the lookup join in the 2008+ plans is wrong.  It’s not hopelessly wrong in this particular case (45 versus 16.9951 is not the end of the world) but it easily can be much worse, and there’s not much you can do about it.  Any decisions made by the optimizer after such a lookup could be based on very wrong information – which can only be bad news. If you think this situation should be improved, please vote for this Connect item. © 2012 Paul White – All Rights Reserved twitter: @SQL_Kiwi email: [email protected]

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• How to handle possible duplicate content across multiple sites?

  - by ElHaix

  Let's say I have two sites that cover the same vertical/topic. one in the USA and one in Canada. Both sites have local-related content, which is obviously unique by location. However they will share common news or blog pages. How do I avoid getting hit with duplicate content on both sites for those news/blog pages? If the content is exactly the same, I'm guessing I would have to pick which site's content I want to noindex,nofollow, is that correct, and if so, is that all I have to add on the URL links to those pages, and the pages' meta tags?

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• Recovery from URL structure change?

  - by Dejan Pelzel

  in July this year, we have changed the URL structure of the website from: Post: domain.com/blog/post/986/dance/heart-beats-dance-video-by-chinatsu/ Category: domain.com/blog/index/cosplay/ to Post: domain.com/dance/heart-beats-dance-video-by-chinatsu-986/ Category: domain.com/cosplay/ Everything was (supposedly) properly redirected with 301 redirects and it first seemed that the traffic returned after a couple of days, but it has now been close to 2 months and things keep going worse although Google is slowly indexing the changes. What is worrying me even more is that the Pages crawled per day from Webmaster Tools started drastically dropping a few days ago and has just reached a new low in months (from over 2000 to 700). Should I be worried or will things sort out eventually?

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• SSIS Dashboard v0.4

  - by Davide Mauri

  Following the post on SSISDB script on Gist, I’ve been working on a HTML5 SSIS Dashboard, in order to have a nice looking, user friendly and, most of all, useful, SSIS Dashboard. Since this is a “spare-time” project, I’ve decided to develop it using Python since it’s THE data language (R aside), it’s a beautiful & powerful, well established and well documented and with a rich ecosystem around. Plus it has full support in Visual Studio, through the amazing Python Tools For Visual Studio plugin, I decided also to use Flask, a very good micro-framework to create websites, and use the SB Admin 2.0 Bootstrap admin template, since I’m all but a Web Designer. The result is here: https://github.com/yorek/ssis-dashboard and I can say I’m pretty satisfied with the work done so far (I’ve worked on it for probably less than 24 hours). Though there’s some features I’d like to add in t future (historical execution time, some charts, connection with AzureML to do prediction on expected execution times) it’s already usable. Of course I’ve tested it only on my development machine, so check twice before putting it in production but, give the fact that, virtually, there is not installation needed (you only need to install Python), and that all queries are based on standard SSISDB objects, I expect no big problems. If you want to test, contribute and/or give feedback please fell free to do it…I would really love to see this little project become a community project! Enjoy!

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• Windows Azure Virtual Machines - Make Sure You Follow the Documentation

  - by BuckWoody

  To create a Windows Azure Infrastructure-as-a-Service Virtual Machine you have several options. You can simply select an image from a “Gallery” which includes Windows or Linux operating systems, or even a Windows Server with pre-installed software like SQL Server. One of the advantages to Windows Azure Virtual Machines is that it is stored in a standard Hyper-V format – with the base hard-disk as a VHD. That means you can move a Virtual Machine from on-premises to Windows Azure, and then move it back again. You can even use a simple series of PowerShell scripts to do the move, or automate it with other methods. And this then leads to another very interesting option for deploying systems: you can create a server VHD, configure it with the software you want, and then run the “SYSPREP” process on it. SYSPREP is a Windows utility that essentially strips the identity from a system, and when you re-start that system it asks a few details on what you want to call it and so on. By doing this, you can essentially create your own gallery of systems, either for testing, development servers, demo systems and more. You can learn more about how to do that here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/gg465407.aspx   But there is a small issue you can run into that I wanted to make you aware of. Whenever you deploy a system to Windows Azure Virtual Machines, you must meet certain password complexity requirements. However, when you build the machine locally and SYSPREP it, you might not choose a strong password for the account you use to Remote Desktop to the machine. In that case, you might not be able to reach the system after you deploy it. Once again, the key here is reading through the instructions before you start. Check out the link I showed above, and this link: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc264456.aspx to make sure you understand what you want to deploy.  

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• Is the SAN dying???

  - by RickHeiges

  Is the SAN dying? The reason that I ask this question is that MSFT has unleashed technologies this year that point in that direction Always ON Availability Groups shuns shared storage Windows 2012 has Storage Replication Technology that does not require a SAN Windows 2012 has Hyper-V Replica Technology that does not require a SAN PDW v2 continues to reinforce the approach to avoid shared storage I'm not saying that SAN technology does not have its place or does not have benefits inherent to the beast....(read more)

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• Let&rsquo;s try this again&hellip;

  - by svanvliet

  So it’s been a really long time since I consistently blogged on my previous ASP.NET blog (and, let’s be honest, it wasn’t that consistent to begin with!)  With the mainstream use of microblogging sites like Facebook and Twitter, I’ve been able to post more frequent updates (http://www.facebook.com/scott.vanvliet & http://twitter.com/scottvanvliet) but haven’t really authored any good content lately. Well, I decided it’s time for me to try again! I’ve relocated my blog from the ASP.NET weblogs site to my new home here at http://geekswithblogs.net (thanks @jjulian and @jalexander!)  I hope to be posting musings on here about Silverlight, motion graphics, digital media, digital supply chain, and even personal/fun stuff. Stay tuned!

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• Declarative Architectures in Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

  - by BuckWoody

  I deal with computing architectures by first laying out requirements, and then laying in any constraints for it's success. Only then do I bring in computing elements to apply to the system. As an example, a requirement might be "world-side availability" and a constraint might be "with less than 80ms response time and full HA" or something similar. Then I can choose from the best fit of technologies which range from full-up on-premises computing to IaaS, PaaS or SaaS. I also deal in abstraction layers - on-premises systems are fully under your control, in IaaS the hardware is abstracted (but not the OS, scale, runtimes and so on), in PaaS the hardware and the OS is abstracted and you focus on code and data only, and in SaaS everything is abstracted - you merely purchase the function you want (like an e-mail server or some such) and simply use it. When you think about solutions this way, the architecture moves to the primary factor in your decision. It's problem-first architecting, and then laying in whatever technology or vendor best fixes the problem. To that end, most architects design a solution using a graphical tool (I use Visio) and then creating documents that  let the rest of the team (and business) know what is required. It's the template, or recipe, for the solution. This is extremely easy to do for SaaS - you merely point out what the needs are, research the vendor and present the findings (and bill) to the business. IT might not even be involved there. In PaaS it's not much more complicated - you use the same Application Lifecycle Management and design tools you always have for code, such as Visual Studio or some other process and toolset, and you can "stamp out" the application in multiple locations, update it and so on. IaaS is another story. Here you have multiple machines, operating systems, patches, virus scanning, run-times, scale-patterns and tools and much more that you have to deal with, since essentially it's just an in-house system being hosted by someone else. You can certainly automate builds of servers - we do this as technical professionals every day. From Windows to Linux, it's simple enough to create a "build script" that makes a system just like the one we made yesterday. What is more problematic is being able to tie those systems together in a coherent way (as a solution) and then stamp that out repeatedly, especially when you might want to deploy that solution on-premises, or in one cloud vendor or another. Lately I've been working with a company called RightScale that does exactly this. I'll point you to their site for more info, but the general idea is that you document out your intent for a set of servers, and it will deploy them to on-premises clouds, Windows Azure, and other cloud providers all from the same script. In other words, it doesn't contain the images or anything like that - it contains the scripts to build them on-premises or on a cloud vendor like Microsoft. Using a tool like this, you combine the steps of designing a system (all the way down to passwords and accounts if you wish) and then the document drives the distribution and implementation of that intent. As time goes on and more and more companies implement solutions on various providers (perhaps for HA and DR) then this becomes a compelling investigation. The RightScale information is here, if you want to investigate it further. Yes, there are other methods I've found, but most are tied to a single kind of cloud, and I'm not into vendor lock-in. Poppa Bear Level - Hands-on EvaluateRightScale at no cost.  Just bring your Windows Azurecredentials and follow the these tutorials: Sign Up for Windows Azure Add     Windows Azure to a RightScale Account Windows Azure Virtual Machines     3-tier Deployment Momma Bear Level - Just the Right level... ;0)  WindowsAzure Evaluation Guide - if you are new toWindows Azure Virtual Machines and new to RightScale, we recommend that youread the entire evaluation guide to gain a more complete understanding of theWindows Azure + RightScale solution.    WindowsAzure Support Page @ support.rightscale.com - FAQ's, tutorials,etc. for  Windows Azure Virtual Machines (Work in Progress) Baby Bear Level - Marketing WindowsAzure Page @ www.rightscale.com - find overview informationincluding solution briefs and presentation & demonstration videos   Scale     and Automate Applications on Windows Azure  Solution Brief     - how RightScale makes Windows Azure Virtual Machine even better SQL     Server on Windows Azure  Solution Brief   -       Run Highly Available SQL Server on Windows Azure Virtual Machines

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