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• PASS Business Intelligence Virtual Chapter Upcoming Sessions (November 2013)

  - by Sergio Govoni

  Let me point out the upcoming live events, dedicated to Business Intelligence with SQL Server, that PASS Business Intelligence Virtual Chapter has scheduled for November 2013. The "Accidental Business Intelligence Project Manager"Date: Thursday 7th November - 8:00 PM GMT / 3:00 PM EST / Noon PSTSpeaker: Jen StirrupURL: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/5018337449405969666 You've watched the Apprentice with Donald Trump and Lord Alan Sugar. You know that the Project Manager is usually the one gets firedYou've heard that Business Intelligence projects are prone to failureYou know that a quick Bing search for "why do Business Intelligence projects fail?" produces a search result of 25 million hits!Despite all this… you're now Business Intelligence Project Manager – now what do you do?In this session, Jen will provide a "sparks from the anvil" series of steps and working practices in Business Intelligence Project Management. What about waterfall vs agile? What is a Gantt chart anyway? Is Microsoft Project your friend or a problematic aspect of being a BI PM? Jen will give you some ideas and insights that will help you set your BI project right: assess priorities, avoid conflict, empower the BI team and generally deliver the Business Intelligence project successfully! Dimensional Modelling Design Patterns: Beyond BasicsDate: Tuesday 12th November - Noon AEDT / 1:00 AM GMT / Monday 11th November 5:00 PM PSTSpeaker: Jason Horner, Josh Fennessy and friendsURL: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/852881628115426561 This session will provide a deeper dive into the art of dimensional modeling. We will look at the different types of fact tables and dimension tables, how and when to use them. We will also some approaches to creating rich hierarchies that make reporting a snap. This session promises to be very interactive and engaging, bring your toughest Dimensional Modeling quandaries. Data Vault Data Warehouse ArchitectureDate: Tuesday 19th November - 4:00 PM PST / 7 PM EST / Wednesday 20th November 11:00 PM AEDTSpeaker: Jeff Renz and Leslie WeedURL: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/1571569707028142849 Data vault is a compelling architecture for an enterprise data warehouse using SQL Server 2012. A well designed data vault data warehouse facilitates fast, efficient and maintainable data integration across business systems. In this session Leslie and I will review the basics about enterprise data warehouse design, introduce you to the data vault architecture and discuss how you can leverage new features of SQL Server 2012 help make your data warehouse solution provide maximum value to your users. 

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• In-depth Coverage for Oracle Workflow

  - by Steven Chan (Oracle Development)

  I'm lucky to work with many talented people in the Applications Technology Group, and many of them contribute articles to this blog.  Some team members have their own blogs.  If you work with Oracle Workflow, here's one that you should be following: Oracle E-Business Suite - Workflow This blog is updated every few months by our development team with in-depth technical articles about Oracle Workflow-related topics.  For example, articles posted there include: Implementing a post-notification function to perform custom validation E-Business Suite Proactive Support - Workflow Analyzer Asynchronous Business Event Subscriptions - Troubleshooting Tips Oracle E-Busienss Suite RCD - Applications Technology Releases 12.1 and 12.2 SMTP Authentication Feature in R12.1.3 Configurable User LOV in Worklist UI Oracle Business Event and Subsciptions Execution Flow Understanding AQs in Workflow SSL in Oracle Workflow Leveraging Oracle Workflow for Declarative PageFlow If you have suggestions about Workflow topics that you'd like to see covered there, drop them a line.

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• SQLRally Nordic gets underway

  - by Rob Farley

  PASS is becoming more international, which is great. The SQL Community has always been international – it’s not as if data is only generated in North America. And while it’s easy for organisations to have a North American focus, PASS is taking steps to become international. Regular readers will be aware that I’m one of three advisors to the PASS Board of Directors, with a focus on developing PASS as a more global organisation. With this in mind, it’s great that today is Day 1 of SQLRally Nordic, being hosted in in Sweden – not only a non-American country, but one that doesn’t have English as its major language. The event has been hosted by the amazing Johan Åhlén and Raoul Illyés, two guys who I met earlier this year, but the thing that amazes me is the incredible support that this event has from the SQL Community. It’s been sold out for a long time, and when you see the list of speakers, it’s not surprising. Some of the industry’s biggest names from Microsoft have turned up, including Mark Souza (who is also a PASS Director), Thomas Kejser and Tobias Thernström. Business Intelligence experts such as Jen Stirrup, Chris Webb, Peter Myers, Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari are there, as are some of the most awarded SQL MVPs such as Itzik Ben-Gan, Aaron Bertrand and Kevin Kline. The sponsor list is also brilliant, with names such as HP, FusionIO, SQL Sentry, Quest and SolidQ complimented by Swedish companies like Cornerstone, Informator, B3IT and Addskills. As someone who is interested in PASS becoming global, I’m really excited to see this event happening, and I hope it’s a launch-pad into many other international events hosted by the SQL community. If you have the opportunity, thank Johan and Raoul for putting this event on, and the speakers and sponsors for helping support it. The noise from Twitter is that everything is going fantastically well, and everyone involved should be thoroughly congratulated! @rob_farley

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• Blogging from the PASS Summit : Nov. 7th keynote

  - by AaronBertrand

  Bill Graziano takes the stage at 8:15. He talks about how 3,894 attendees (and 5,611 total registrants) represent 57 countries at the 14th summit. There are over 127,000 members worldwide. Note that you can watch the keynotes and many sessions through Pass TV . PASS serves SQL Server community - expertise, support, commitment. He talks about SQL Saturdays, SQL Rally, 24 Hours of PASS, and the Summit. He announces that there will be a third annual SQL Rally Nordic event next November, and that there...(read more)

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• More Tables or More Databases?

  - by BuckWoody

  I got an e-mail from someone that has an interesting situation. He has 15,000 customers, and he asks if he should have a database for their data per customer. Without a LOT more data it’s impossible to say, of course, but there are some general concepts to keep in mind. Whenever you’re segmenting data, it’s all about boundary choices. You have not only boundaries around how big the data will get, but things like how many objects (tables, stored procedures and so on) that will be involved, if there are any cross-sections of data (do they share location or product information) and – very important – what are the security requirements? From the answer to these types of questions, you now have the choice of making multiple tables in a single database, or using multiple databases. A database carries some overhead – it needs a certain amount of memory for locking and so on. But it has a very clean boundary – everything from objects to security can be kept apart. Having multiple users in the same database is possible as well, using things like a Schema. But keeping 15,000 schemas can be challenging as well. My recommendation in complex situations like this is similar to a post on decisions that I did earlier – I lay out the choices on a spreadsheet in rows, and then my requirements at the top in the columns. I  give each choice a number based on how well it meets each requirement. At the end, the highest number wins. And many times it’s a mix – perhaps this person could segment customers into larger regions or districts or products, in a database. Within that database might be multiple schemas for the customers. Of course, he needs to query across all customers, that becomes another requirement. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• #SSAS #Tabular Workshop and Community Events in Netherlands and Denmark

  - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

  Next week I will finally start the roadshow of the SSAS Tabular Workshop, a 2-day seminar about the new BISM Tabular model for Analysis Services that has been introduced in SQL Server 2012. During these roadshows, we always try to arrange some speeches at local community events in the evening - we already defined for Copenhagen, we have some logistic issue in Amsterdam that we're trying to solve. Here is the timetable: Netherlands SSAS Workshop in Amsterdam, NL – April 16-17, 2012 2-day seminar, I and Alberto will be the trainers for this event, register here We're trying to manage a Community event but we still don't have a confirmation, stay tuned        Denmark SSAS Workshop in Copenhagen, DK – April 26-27, 2012 2-day seminar, I and Alberto will be the trainers for this event, register here Community event on April 26, 2012 This event will run in Hellerup, at Microsoft venue All details available here: http://msbip.dk/events/26/msbip-mode-nr-5/ People from Sweden are welcome! Just register to this private group on LinkedIn in order to announce your presence, so we’ll know how many people will attend In community events we’ll deliver two speeches – here are the descriptions: Inside xVelocity (VertiPaq) PowerPivot and BISM Tabular models in Analysis Services share a great columnar-based database engine called xVelocity in-memory analytics engine (VertiPaq). If you want to improve performance and optimize memory used, you have to understand some basic principles about how this engine works, how data is compressed, and how you can design a data model for better optimization. Prepare yourself to change your mind. xVelocity optimization techniques might seem counterintuitive and are absolutely different than OLAP and SQL ones! Choosing between Tabular and Multidimensional You have a new project and you have to make an important decision upfront. Should you use Tabular or Multidimensional? It is not easy to answer, because sometime there is a clear choice, but most of the times both decisions might be correct, at least at the beginning. In this session we’ll help you making an informed decision, correctly evaluating pros and cons of each one according to common scenarios, considering both short-term and long-term consequences of your choice. I hope to meet many people in this first dates. We have many other events coming in May and June, including an online event (for US time zones), and you can also attend our PreCon Day at TechEd US in Orland (PRC06) or TechEd Europe in Amsterdam. I’ll be a good customer for airline companies in the next three months! I’m just sorry that I hadn’t time to write other articles in the last month, but I’m accumulating material that I will need to write down during some flight – stay tuned…

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• VirtualBox appliance for the Oracle Communications Service Delivery Platform (SDP) Products

  - by chlander

  It's been quite awhile since we last blogged. This blog is written by Leif Lourie, a Curriculum Developer for the Oracle Communications Service Delivery Platform (SDP) products. For the last 8 years, Leif has worked as a Curriculum Developer for many of the telecom-oriented products that Oracle offers. He has been working in the telecom industry for about 25 years and has also worked as a software developer, project manager, and solutions architect. He is currently working on courseware for an upcoming release for one of the Service Delivery Platform products. Thanks to Leif not only for this blog, but for making the VM described in the blog available. Cheryl Lander, Oracle Communications InfoDev Senior Director To be able to download, install and test a product within a day is many times very important for people that are doing the primary evaluation of a software product. If it takes longer, it will require a bigger effort, like a proof-of-concept project with many people involved. Of course, if the product is chosen for a more thorough test, it will probably happen anyway, but then maybe with focus on integration instead of product features. We have a long tradition of creating complex software that is easy to install and test and we have often been praised for the ease of getting our products up and running. One key for this has been that there has always been an installer for Windows, as well as for the production environments that usually are Unix and Linux. And, the windows installer has, in most cases, been released for developing and testing purposes. Lately, this has changed. Our products are very seldom released for the Windows platform, at all. And even the Linux versions are almost always released for 64-bit systems. This is creating problems for many of the people that want to try out our products, since few have access to a 64-bit Linux system of the right platform. Most of us are using a laptop with Windows or Mac OS. Some of us are using Linux or Solaris, but probably a non certified distribution for the product you want to test. My job, among other things, is to develop hands-on practices for our products. For me, it is crucial to have access to environments for installing and using our products. For this reason I have been using virtual machines for many years.I have a ready-made base system, with the necessary tools installed for all the products I create hands-on practices for. Whenever I start working on hands-on practices for a new product or a new version, I just copy the base system and start working with a clean slate. This saves me a lot of time! Now, I would like to start saving time for my favorite student: You! If you are using our products and regularly test new versions you might benefit from the virtual machine that is now available on Oracle Technology Network: The Virtual Machine for the Oracle Communications Service Delivery Platform (SDP) Products. This virtual machine contains an installation of the 64-bit version of Oracle Enterprise Linux, version 6. It also has Oracle Database Express Edition (XE), Oracle Java and Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse installed. By using Oracle VM VirtualBox you may use Windows, OS X, Linux or Solaris on your laptop. VirtualBox can be installed on top of any of these platforms and give you the ability to run virtual machines in your laptop. After downloading and starting the virtual machine you will also need to download the installation files for the product you want to test; for example Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper or Oracle Communications Online Mediation Controller. In some cases there are lessons and practices available for the products. The freely available courses are listed in Oracle Learning Library as a Collection of Oracle Communications Service Delivery Platform Courses. As time goes by, we will make this list collection bigger. Also, the goal is to update the virtual machine about one to two times per year. So you will always be able to get a well maintained virtual machine for the Service Delivery Platform products from us. We Value Your Feedback If you would like to suggest improvements or report issues on any of the product documentation, curriculum, or training produced by the Oracle Communications Information Development team, you can use these channels: Email [email protected]. Post a comment on this blog. Thanks for reading!

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• Upcoming speaking engagements – want to meet me?

  - by Hugo Kornelis

  I have a very busy time ahead of me, with lots of travel, lots of speaking engagements, and hence lots of opportunity to meet and catch up with what has become known as the SQL Family. (An excellent term, by the way – it describes exactly how it has always felt to me!) So, for everyone who want to know when and where they can meet me (as well as for everyone who wants to make sure to stay as far away from me as possible), here is my schedule for the rest of the year, in chronological order: · September...(read more)

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, November 25, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, November 25, 2012Popular ReleasesMath.NET Numerics: Math.NET Numerics v2.3.0: Common: Continued major linear algebra storage rework, in this release focusing on vectors (previous release was on matrices) Static CreateRandom for all dense matrix and vector types Thin QR decomposition (in additin to existing full QR) Consistent static Sample methods for continuous and discrete distributions (was previously missing on a few) Portable build adds support for WP8 (.Net 4.0 and higher, SL5, WP8 and .NET for Windows Store apps) Various bug, performance and usability ...ExtJS based ASP.NET 2.0 Controls: FineUI v3.2.1: +2012-11-25 v3.2.1 +????????。 -MenuCheckBox?CheckedChanged??????，??????????。 -???????window.IDS??????????????。 -?????（??TabCollection，ControlBaseCollection）???，????????????????。 +Grid??。 -??SelectAllRows??。 -??PageItems??，?????????????，?????、??、?????。 -????grid/gridpageitems.aspx、grid/gridpageitemsrowexpander.aspx、grid/gridpageitems_pagesize.aspx。 -???????????????????。 -??ExpandAllRowExpanders??，?????????????????（grid/gridrowexpanderexpandall2.aspx）。 -??????ExpandRowExpande...VidCoder: 1.4.9 Beta: Updated HandBrake core to SVN 5079. Fixed crashes when encoding DVDs with title gaps.ZXing.Net: ZXing.Net 0.10.0.0: On the way to a release 1.0 the API should be stable now with this version. sync with rev. 2521 of the java version windows phone 8 assemblies improvements and fixesCharmBar: Windows 8 Charm Bar for Windows 7: Windows 8 Charm Bar for Windows 7BlackJumboDog: Ver5.7.3: 2012.11.24 Ver5.7.3 (1)SMTP???????、?????????、??????????????????????? (2)?????????、?????????????????????????? (3)DNS???????CNAME????CNAME????????????????? (4)DNS????????????TTL???????? (5)???????????????????????、?????????????????? (6)???????????????????????????????TEncoder: 3.1: -Added: Turkish translation (Translators, please see "To translators.txt") -Added: Profiles are now stored in different files under "Profiles" folder -Added: User created Profiles will be saved in a differen directory -Added: Custom video and audio options to profiles -Added: Container options to profiles -Added: Parent folder of input file will be created in the output folder -Added: Option to use 32bit FFmpeg eventhough the OS is 64bit -Added: New skin "Mint" -Fixed: FFMpeg could not open A...Liberty: v3.4.3.0 Release 23rd November 2012: Change Log -Added -H4 A dialog which gives further instructions when attempting to open a "Halo 4 Data" file -H4 Added a short note to the weapon editor stating that dropping your weapons will cap their ammo -Reach Edit the world's gravity -Reach Fine invincibility controls in the object editor -Reach Edit object velocity -Reach Change the teams of AI bipeds and vehicles -Reach Enable/disable fall damage on the biped editor screen -Reach Make AIs deaf and/or blind in the objec...Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.11.0: NugetNuGet BlogRead the release blog post for 4.11.0. Whats new50 bugfixes (see the issue tracker for a complete list) Read the documentation for the MVC bits. Breaking changesGetPropertyValue now returns an object, not a string (only affects upgrades from 4.10.x to 4.11.0) NoteIf you need Courier use the release candidate (as of build 26). The code editor has been greatly improved, but is sometimes problematic in Internet Explorer 9 and lower. Previously it was just disabled for IE and...Audio Pitch & Shift: Audio Pitch And Shift 5.1.0.3: Fixed supported files list on open dialog (added .pls and .m3u) Impulse Media Player splash message (can be disabled anyway)WiX Toolset: WiX v3.7 RC: WiX v3.7 RC (3.7.1119.0) provides feature complete Bundle update and reference tracking plus several bug fixes. For more information see Rob's blog post about the release: http://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2012/11/20/WiX-v3.7-Release-Candidate-availablePicturethrill: Version 2.11.20.0: Fixed up Bing image provider on Windows 8Excel AddIn to reset the last worksheet cell: XSFormatCleaner.xla: Modified the commandbar code to use CommandBar IDs instead of English names.Json.NET: Json.NET 4.5 Release 11: New feature - Added ITraceWriter, MemoryTraceWriter, DiagnosticsTraceWriter New feature - Added StringEscapeHandling with options to escape HTML and non-ASCII characters New feature - Added non-generic JToken.ToObject methods New feature - Deserialize ISet<T> properties as HashSet<T> New feature - Added implicit conversions for Uri, TimeSpan, Guid New feature - Missing byte, char, Guid, TimeSpan and Uri explicit conversion operators added to JToken New feature - Special case...HigLabo: HigLabo_20121119: HigLabo_2012111 --HigLabo.Mail-- Modify bug fix of ExecuteAppend method. Add ExecuteXList method to ImapClient class. --HigLabo.Net.WindowsLive-- Add AsyncCall to WindowsLiveClient class.SharePoint CAML Extensions: Version 1.1: Beta version! <Membership>, <Today/>, <Now/> and <UserID /> tags are not supported!mojoPortal: 2.3.9.4: see release notes on mojoportal.com http://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2394-released Note that we have separate deployment packages for .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0, but we recommend you to use .NET 4, we will probably drop support for .NET 3.5 once .NET 4.5 is available The deployment package downloads on this page are pre-compiled and ready for production deployment, they contain no C# source code and are not intended for use in Visual Studio. To download the source code see getting the lates...Keleyi: keleyi-1.1.0: ????： .NET Framework 4.0 ??：MD5??，?????IP??（??????），????? www.keleyi.com keleyi.codeplex.comHoliday Calendar: Calendar Control: Month navigation introduced.NDateTime: Version 1.0: This is the first releaseNew Projects.NET vFaceWall: .NET vFaceWall is autility script written in asp.net which allows developer to build next generation facebook wall style user profiles for asp.net websites.29th Infantry Division Engineer Corps: Code repository and project management hub for the 29th Infantry Division's Engineer Corps.A.M. Lost: A.M. Lost is game project developed during the GameDevParty Jam 3 event (23-24-25 november 2012).ABAP BLOG MIKE: ABAP blog AgileNETSlayer: Agile.Net Deobfuscator, supports all obfuscation methods.BERP Games: This project site contains XNA game development concepts and software produced by BERP Games.CFileUpload: This project will let you upload files with progress bar, without using Flash, HTML5 or similar technologies that the user's browser might not have. CharmBar: Windows 8 Charm Bar is a application that works just like the Windows 8 CharmBar. The word charmbar, the Windows 8 Logo are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.Confidentialité des données: Développer une application permettant de faciliter la mise en œuvre, l’utilisation et la gestion de ces outils, en exploitant les API .NET.End of control: Project has not been started yet. Just absorbing attentions.Enhanced XML Search: Easy and fastest methods to manipulate XML Data.Exchange Automatic Replies Administrator: Exchange Automatic Replies Administrator is a PowerShell GUI tool for Helpdesk and Sysadmins to set a users' Out-Of-Office without using the command line.File Explorer for WPF: FileExplorer is a WPF control that's emulate the Windows Explorer, it supports both FIleSystem and non-FileSystem class.ForcePlot: Using brute force, plots any difficult equation even some popular software cannot plot. Currently supports 2D graphs, trigonometric and logarithmic functions.Game Dev: Currently in ideas phaseGroupEmulationEMK11: Discussion and sharing of member data Group Emulation Engineering Mechanical 2011Jenkins CI: Views, Jobs, Build status and color. mvcMusicOnLine: mvcMusicOnLinemy own site project no 1: still testing...Nauplius.KeyStore: Provides secure application key storage backed by SQL 2008 and Active Directory.Noctl Library: Noctl is a C# multiplatform Library.open Archive Mediator: High-performance middle-ware for process historiansOpen Source Game - Prince's Revenge: Open Source Game.PackToKindle: Project allow to send folder content to your kindle. Functionality is the same as the official SendToKindle application, but this project is designed to use froPunkPong: PunkPong is an open source "Pong" alike game totally written in DHTML (JavaScript, CSS and HTML) that uses keyboard or mouse. This cross-platform and cross-browser game was tested under BeOS, Linux, NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Windows and others.Quick Data Processor: A simple and quick data processor for csv files.SFProject: It'll be a game at some pointsilverlight ? flash? policy ??: silverlight? flash? policy socket server? ??Universe.WCF.Behaviors: Universe.WCF.Behaviors provides behaviors: - Easy migration from Remoting - Transparent delivery - Traffic Statistics - WCF Streaming Adaptor for BinaryWriter and TextWriter - etc WowDotNetAPI for Silverlight: Silverlight class library implementation of Briam Ramos World Of Warcraft WowDotNetAPI .NET library on GitHub ( https://github.com/briandek/WowDotNetAPI ) C# .Net library to access the new World of Warcraft Community Platform API.WP7NUMConvert: A really simple project to create a small library for number conversions in multiple formats. Written in VB for Windows PhoneWPF CodeEditor: The Dev Tools project is intended to contain a set of features, tools & controls useful for development purposes.

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• In-Memory OLTP Sample for SQL Server 2014 RTM

  - by Damian

  I have just found a very good resource about Hekaton (In-memory OLTP feature in the SQL Server 2014). On the Codeplex site you can find the newest Hekaton samples - https://msftdbprodsamples.codeplex.com/releases/view/114491. The latest samples we have were related to the CTP2 version but the newest will work with the RTM version.There are some issues fixed you might find if you tried to run the previous samples on the RTM version:Update (Apr 28, 2014): Fixed an issue where the isolation level for sample stored procedures demonstrating integrity checks was too low. The transaction isolation level for the following stored procedures was updated: Sales.uspInsertSpecialOfferProductinmem, Sales.uspDeleteSpecialOfferinmem, Production.uspInsertProductinmem, and Production.uspDeleteProductinmem. 

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• The 2013 PASS Summit - Day 2

  - by AllenMWhite

  Good morning! It's Day 2 of the PASS Summit 2013 and it should be a busy one. Douglas McDowell, EVP Finance of PASS opened up the keynote to welcome people and talked about the financial status of the organization. Last year's Business Analytics Conference left the organization $100,000 ahead, and he went on to show the overall financial health, which is very good at this point. Bill Graziano came out to thank Doug, Rob Farley and Rushabh Mehta for their service on the board, as they step down from...(read more)

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• Two BULK INSERT issues I worked around recently

  - by AaronBertrand

  Since I am still afraid of SSIS, and because I am dealing mostly with CSV files and table structures that are relatively simple and require only one of the three letters in the acronym "ETL," I find myself using BULK INSERT a lot. I have been meaning to switch to using CLR, since I am doing a lot of file system querying using xp_cmdshell, but I haven't had the chance to really explore it yet. I know, a lot of you are probably thinking, wow, look at all those bad habits. But for every person thinking...(read more)

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• Back from PASS Europe 2010

  - by Davide Mauri

  PASS Europe 2010 is finished and I’m now finally back at home and will stay here for a while. I would like to thanks all the people who has come to my sessions for all their feedback, especially for the “Adaptive BI” session! Slides and demos should be available for download from the PASS European Conference website in a couple of days. Meanwhile if you want to rate my session online, you can do it here: Adaptive BI http://speakerrate.com/talks/3136-adaptive-bi-best-practices Blazing Fast Queries http://speakerrate.com/talks/3135-blazing-fast-queries-when-indexes-are-not-enough Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Part 1 - Load Testing In The Cloud

  - by Tarun Arora

  Azure is fascinating, but even more fascinating is the marriage of Azure and TFS! Introduction Recently a client I worked for had 2 major business critical applications being delivered, with very little time budgeted for Performance testing, we immediately hit a bottleneck when the performance testing phase started, the in house infrastructure team could not support the hardware requirements in the short notice. It was suggested that the performance testing be performed on one of the QA environments which was a fraction of the production environment. This didn’t seem right, the team decided to turn to the cloud. The team took advantage of the elasticity offered by Azure, starting with a single test agent which was provisioned and ready for use with in 30 minutes the team scaled up to 17 test agents to perform a very comprehensive performance testing cycle. Issues were identified and resolved but the highlight was that the cost of running the ‘test rig’ proved to be less than if hosted on premise by the infrastructure team. Thank you for taking the time out to read this blog post, in the series of posts, I’ll try and cover the start to end of everything you need to know to use Azure to build your Test Rig in the cloud. But Why Azure? I have my own Data Centre… If the environment is provisioned in your own datacentre, - No matter what level of service agreement you may have with your infrastructure team there will be down time when the environment is patched - How fast can you scale up or down the environments (keeping the enterprise processes in mind) Administration, Cost, Flexibility and Scalability are the areas you would want to think around when taking the decision between your own Data Centre and Azure! How is Microsoft's Public Cloud Offering different from Amazon’s Public Cloud Offering? Microsoft's offering of the Cloud is a hybrid of Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) which distinguishes Microsoft's offering from other providers such as Amazon (Amazon only offers IaaS). PaaS – Platform as a Service IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service Fills the needs of those who want to build and run custom applications as services. Similar to traditional hosting, where a business will use the hosted environment as a logical extension of the on-premises datacentre. A service provider offers a pre-configured, virtualized application server environment to which applications can be deployed by the development staff. Since the service providers manage the hardware (patching, upgrades and so forth), as well as application server uptime, the involvement of IT pros is minimized. On-demand scalability combined with hardware and application server management relieves developers from infrastructure concerns and allows them to focus on building applications. The servers (physical and virtual) are rented on an as-needed basis, and the IT professionals who manage the infrastructure have full control of the software configuration. This kind of flexibility increases the complexity of the IT environment, as customer IT professionals need to maintain the servers as though they are on-premises. The maintenance activities may include patching and upgrades of the OS and the application server, load balancing, failover clustering of database servers, backup and restoration, and any other activities that mitigate the risks of hardware and software failures.   The biggest advantage with PaaS is that you do not have to worry about maintaining the environment, you can focus all your time in solving the business problems with your solution rather than worrying about maintaining the environment. If you decide to use a VM Role on Azure, you are asking for IaaS, more on this later. A nice blog post here on the difference between Saas, PaaS and IaaS. Now that we are convinced why we should be turning to the cloud and why in specific Azure, let’s discuss about the Test Rig. The Load Test Rig – Topology Now the moment of truth, Of course a big part of getting value from cloud computing is identifying the most adequate workloads to take to the cloud, so I’ve decided to try to make a Load Testing rig where the Agents are running on Windows Azure.   I’ll talk you through the above Topology, - User: User kick starts the load test run from the developer workstation on premise. This passes the request to the Test Controller. - Test Controller: The Test Controller is on premise connected to the same domain as the developer workstation. As soon as the Test Controller receives the request it makes use of the Windows Azure Connect service to orchestrate the test responsibilities to all the Test Agents. The Windows Azure Connect endpoint software must be active on all Azure instances and on the Controller machine as well. This allows IP connectivity between them and, given that the firewall is properly configured, allows the Controller to send work loads to the agents. In parallel, the Controller will collect the performance data from the agents, using the traditional WMI mechanisms. - Test Agents: The Test Agents are on the Windows Azure Public Cloud, as soon as the test controller issues instructions to the test agents, the test agents start executing the load tests. The HTTP requests are issued against the web server on premise, the results are captured by the test agents. And finally the results are passed over to the controller. - Servers: The Web Server and DB Server are hosted on premise in the datacentre, this is usually the case with business critical applications, you probably want to manage them your self. Recap and What’s next? So, in the introduction in the series of blog posts on Load Testing in the cloud I highlighted why creating a test rig in the cloud is a good idea, what advantages does Windows Azure offer and the Test Rig topology that I will be using. I would also like to mention that i stumbled upon this [Video] on Azure in a nutshell, great watch if you are new to Windows Azure. In the next post I intend to start setting up the Load Test Environment and discuss pricing with respect to test agent machine types that will be used in the test rig. Hope you enjoyed this post, If you have any recommendations on things that I should consider or any questions or feedback, feel free to add to this blog post. Remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora.  See you in Part II.   Share this post : CodeProject

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• Have You Heard About the Microsoft TechNet Wiki?

  - by KKline

  Here's another one to add to your list of browser bookmarks! The TechNet Wiki covers Microsoft technologies from writers throughout the community for use by the community. As with all wikis, this grassroots effort needs your help. Microsoft is encouraging everyone to contribute the effort - all you have to do is join. So start a whole new article, add your knowledge or draw from your experience to improve an existing article. You can start small or large... Join in at http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/...(read more)

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• SQL Saturday 27 (Portland, Oregon)

  - by BuckWoody

  I’m sitting in the Seattle airport, waiting for my flight to Silicon Valley California for the SQL Server 2008 R2 Launch Event. By some quirk of nature, they are asking me to Emcee the event – but that’s another post entirely.   I’m reflecting on the SQL Saturday 27 event that was just held in Portland, Oregon this last Saturday. These are not Microsoft-sponsored events – it’s truly the community at work. Think of a big user-group meeting – I mean REALLY big – held in a central location, like at a college (as ours was) or some larger, inexpensive venue like that. Everyone there is volunteering – it’s my own money and time to drive several hours to a hotel for the night, feed myself and present. It’s their own time and money for the folks that organize the event – unless a vendor or two steps in to help. It’s their own time and money for the attendees to drive a long way, spend the night and their Saturday to listen to the speakers. Why do all this?   Because everybody benefits. Every speaker learns something new, meets new people, and reaches a new audience. Every volunteer does the same. And the attendees? Well, it’s pretty obvious what they get. A 7Am to 10PM extravaganza of knowledge from every corner of the product. In fact, this year the Portland group hooked up with the CodeCamp folks and held a combined event. We had over 850 people, and I had everyone from data professionals to developers in my sessions.   So I’ll take this opportunity to do two things: to say “thank you” to all of the folks who attended, from those who spoke to those who worked and those who came to listen, and to challenge you to attend the next SQL Saturday anywhere near you. You can find the list here: http://www.sqlsaturday.com/. Don’t see anything in your area? Start one! The PASS folks have a package that will show you how. Sure, it’s a big job, but the key is to get as many people helping you as possible. Even if you have only a few dozen folks show up the first time, no worries. The first events I presented at had about 20 in the room. But not this week.   See you at the Launch Event if you’re near the San Francisco area tomorrow, and see you at the Redmond SQL Saturday and TechEd if not.   Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Extension Manager in Visual Studio 2010

  One of the powerful aspect of Visual Studio is its ability to be extended and many people do that. You can find numerous extensions at the Visual Studio Gallery. The VSX team links to a 4-part blog series on how to create and share templates. You can also look find extension examples on the vsx code gallery.With Visual Studio 2010, you can search for items and install them directly from within Visual Studio's new Extension Manager. You launch it from the Tools menu:When the dialog comes up, be sure to explore the various actionable areas on the left and also note the search on the right. For example, I typed "MP" and it quickly filtered the list to show me the MPI Project Template:Others have written about this before me, just bing Extension Manager (and note that Beta2 introduced changes, some of which you can witness in the screenshot above). Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• PowerShell: Read Excel to Create Inserts

  - by BuckWoody

  I’m writing a series of articles on how to migrate “departmental” data into SQL Server. I also hold workshops on the entire process – from discovering that the data exists to the modeling process and then how to design the Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) process. Finally I write about (and teach) a few methods on actually moving the data. One of those options is to use PowerShell. There are a lot of ways even with that choice, but the one I show is to read two columns from the spreadsheet and output statements that would insert the data using a stored procedure. Of course, you could re-write this as INSERT statements, out to a text file for bcp, or even use a database connection in the script to move the data directly from Excel into SQL Server. This snippet won’t run on your system, of course – it assumes a Microsoft Office Excel 2007 spreadsheet located at c:\temp called VendorList.xlsx. It looks for a tab in that spreadsheet called Vendors. The statement that does the writing just uses one column: Vendor Code. Here’s the breakdown of what I’m doing: In the first block, I connect to Microsoft Office Excel. That connection string is specific to Excel 2007, so if you need a different version you’ll need to look that up. In the second block I set up a selection from the entire spreadsheet based on that tab. Note that if you’re only after certain data you shouldn’t get the whole spreadsheet – that’s just good practice. In the next block I create the text I want, inserting the Vendor Code field as I go. Finally I close the connection. Enjoy! $ExcelConnection= New-Object -com "ADODB.Connection" $ExcelFile="c:\temp\VendorList.xlsx" $ExcelConnection.Open("Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;` Data Source=$ExcelFile;Extended Properties=Excel 12.0;") $strQuery="Select * from [Vendors$]" $ExcelRecordSet=$ExcelConnection.Execute($strQuery) do { Write-Host "EXEC sp_InsertVendors '" $ExcelRecordSet.Fields.Item("Vendor Code").Value "'" $ExcelRecordSet.MoveNext()} Until ($ExcelRecordSet.EOF) $ExcelConnection.Close() 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. 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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• Disruption

  - by andyleonard

  Introduction This post is the thirty-first part of a ramble-rant about the software business. The current posts in this series are: Goodwill, Negative and Positive Visions, Quests, Missions Right, Wrong, and Style Follow Me Balance, Part 1 Balance, Part 2 Definition of a Great Team The 15-Minute Meeting Metaproblems: Drama The Right Question Software is Organic, Part 1 Metaproblem: Terror I Don't Work On My Car A Turning Point Human Doings Everything Changes Getting It Right The First Time One-Time...(read more)

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• Join Me May 19th for 24 Hours of PASS

  - by KKline

  Check out all the great SQL Server sessions you can attend for FREE in this on-line event....(read more)

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• Is Data Science “Science”?

  - by BuckWoody

  I hold the term “science” in very high esteem. I grew up on the Space Coast in Florida, and eventually worked at the Kennedy Space Center, surrounded by very intelligent people who worked in various scientific fields. Recently a new term has entered the computing dialog – “Data Scientist”. Since it’s not a standard term, it has a lot of definitions, and in fact has been disputed as a correct term. After all, the reasoning goes, if there’s no such thing as “Data Science” then how can there be a Data Scientist? This argument has been made before, albeit with a different term – “Computer Science”. In Peter Denning’s excellent article “Is Computer Science Science” (April  2005/Vol. 48, No. 4 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM) there are many points that separate “science” from “engineering” and even “art”.  I won’t repeat the content of that article here (I recommend you read it on your own) but will leverage the points he makes there. Definition of Science To ask the question “is data science ‘science’” then we need to start with a definition of terms. Various references put the definition into the same basic areas: Study of the physical world Systematic and/or disciplined study of a subject area ...and then they include the things studied, the bodies of knowledge and so on. The word itself comes from Latin, and means merely “to know” or “to study to know”. Greek divides knowledge further into “truth” (episteme), and practical use or effects (tekhne). Normally computing falls into the second realm. Definition of Data Science And now a more controversial definition: Data Science. This term is so new and perhaps so niche that the major dictionaries haven’t yet picked it up (my OED reference is older – can’t afford to pop for the online registration at present). Researching the term's general use I created an amalgam of the definitions this way: “Studying and applying mathematical and other techniques to derive information from complex data sets.” Using this definition, data science certainly seems to be science - it's learning about and studying some object or area using systematic methods. But implicit within the definition is the word “application”, which makes the process more akin to engineering or even technology than science. In fact, I find that using these techniques – and data itself – part of science, not science itself. I leave out the concept of studying data patterns or algorithms as part of this discipline. That is actually a domain I see within research, mathematics or computer science. That of course is a type of science, but does not seek for practical applications. As part of the argument against calling it “Data Science”, some point to the scientific method of creating a hypothesis, testing with controls, testing results against the hypothesis, and documenting for repeatability.  These are not steps that we often take in working with data. We normally start with a question, and fit patterns and algorithms to predict outcomes and find correlations. In this way Data Science is more akin to statistics (and in fact makes heavy use of them) in the process rather than starting with an assumption and following on with it. So, is Data Science “Science”? I’m uncertain – and I’m uncertain it matters. Even if we are facing rampant “title inflation” these days (does anyone introduce themselves as a secretary or supervisor anymore?) I can tolerate the term at least from the intent that we use data to study problems across a wide spectrum, rather than restricting it to a single domain. And I also understand those who have worked hard to achieve the very honorable title of “scientist” who have issues with those who borrow the term without asking. What do you think? Science, or not? Does it matter?

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• Windows Azure Virtual Machine Readiness and Capacity Assessment for SQL Server

  - by SQLOS Team

  Windows Azure Virtual Machine Readiness and Capacity Assessment for Windows Server Machine Running SQL Server With the release of MAP Toolkit 8.0 Beta, we have added a new scenario to assess your Windows Azure Virtual Machine Readiness. The MAP 8.0 Beta performs a comprehensive assessment of Windows Servers running SQL Server to determine you level of readiness to migrate an on-premise physical or virtual machine to Windows Azure Virtual Machines. The MAP Toolkit then offers suggested changes to prepare the machines for migration, such as upgrading the operating system or SQL Server. MAP Toolkit 8.0 Beta is available for download here Your participation and feedback is very important to make the MAP Toolkit work better for you. We encourage you to participate in the beta program and provide your feedback at [email protected] or through one of our surveys. Now, let’s walk through the MAP Toolkit task for completing the Windows Azure Virtual Machine assessment and capacity planning. The tasks include the following: Perform an inventory View the Windows Azure VM Readiness results and report Collect performance data for determine VM sizing View the Windows Azure Capacity results and report Perform an inventory: 1. To perform an inventory against a single machine or across a complete environment, choose Perform an Inventory to launch the Inventory and Assessment Wizard as shown below: 2. After the Inventory and Assessment Wizard launches, select either the Windows computers or SQL Server scenario to inventory Windows machines. HINT: If you don’t care about completely inventorying a machine, just select the SQL Server scenario. Click Next to Continue. 3. On the Discovery Methods page, select how you want to discover computers and then click Next to continue. Description of Discovery Methods: Use Active Directory Domain Services -- This method allows you to query a domain controller via the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and select computers in all or specific domains, containers, or OUs. Use this method if all computers and devices are in AD DS. Windows networking protocols --  This method uses the WIN32 LAN Manager application programming interfaces to query the Computer Browser service for computers in workgroups and Windows NT 4.0–based domains. If the computers on the network are not joined to an Active Directory domain, use only the Windows networking protocols option to find computers. System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) -- This method enables you to inventory computers managed by System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM). You need to provide credentials to the System Center Configuration Manager server in order to inventory the managed computers. When you select this option, the MAP Toolkit will query SCCM for a list of computers and then MAP will connect to these computers. Scan an IP address range -- This method allows you to specify the starting address and ending address of an IP address range. The wizard will then scan all IP addresses in the range and inventory only those computers. Note: This option can perform poorly, if many IP addresses aren’t being used within the range. Manually enter computer names and credentials -- Use this method if you want to inventory a small number of specific computers. Import computer names from a files -- Using this method, you can create a text file with a list of computer names that will be inventoried. 4. On the All Computers Credentials page, enter the accounts that have administrator rights to connect to the discovered machines. This does not need to a domain account, but needs to be a local administrator. I have entered my domain account that is an administrator on my local machine. Click Next after one or more accounts have been added. NOTE: The MAP Toolkit primarily uses Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to collect hardware, device, and software information from the remote computers. In order for the MAP Toolkit to successfully connect and inventory computers in your environment, you have to configure your machines to inventory through WMI and also allow your firewall to enable remote access through WMI. The MAP Toolkit also requires remote registry access for certain assessments. In addition to enabling WMI, you need accounts with administrative privileges to access desktops and servers in your environment. 5. On the Credentials Order page, select the order in which want the MAP Toolkit to connect to the machine and SQL Server. Generally just accept the defaults and click Next. 6. On the Enter Computers Manually page, click Create to pull up at dialog to enter one or more computer names. 7. On the Summary page confirm your settings and then click Finish. After clicking Finish the inventory process will start, as shown below: Windows Azure Readiness results and report After the inventory progress has completed, you can review the results under the Database scenario. On the tile, you will see the number of Windows Server machine with SQL Server that were analyzed, the number of machines that are ready to move without changes and the number of machines that require further changes. If you click this Azure VM Readiness tile, you will see additional details and can generate the Windows Azure VM Readiness Report. After the report is generated, select View | Saved Reports and Proposals to view the location of the report. Open up WindowsAzureVMReadiness* report in Excel. On the Windows tab, you can see the results of the assessment. This report has a column for the Operating System and SQL Server assessment and provides a recommendation on how to resolve, if there a component is not supported. Collect Performance Data Launch the Performance Wizard to collect performance information for the Windows Server machines that you would like the MAP Toolkit to suggest a Windows Azure VM size for. Windows Azure Capacity results and report After the performance metrics are collected, the Azure VM Capacity title will display the number of Virtual Machine sizes that are suggested for the Windows Server and Linux machines that were analyzed. You can then click on the Azure VM Capacity tile to see the capacity details and generate the Windows Azure VM Capacity Report. Within this report, you can view the performance data that was collected and the Virtual Machine sizes.   MAP Toolkit 8.0 Beta is available for download here Your participation and feedback is very important to make the MAP Toolkit work better for you. We encourage you to participate in the beta program and provide your feedback at [email protected] or through one of our surveys. Useful References: Windows Azure Homepage How to guides for Windows Azure Virtual Machines Provisioning a SQL Server Virtual Machine on Windows Azure Windows Azure Pricing     Peter Saddow Senior Program Manager – MAP Toolkit Team

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• T-SQL Tuesday : Reflections on the PASS Summit and our community

  - by AaronBertrand

  Last week I attended the PASS Summit in Seattle. I blogged from both keynotes ( Keynote #1 and Keynote #2 ), as well as the WIT Luncheon - which SQL Sentry sponsored. I had a fantastic time at the conference, even though these days I attend far fewer sessions that I used to. As a company, we were overwhelmed by the positive energy in the Expo Hall. I really liked the notebook idea, where board members were assigned notebooks to carry around and take ideas from attendees. I took full advantage when...(read more)

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• DATEFROMPARTS

  - by jamiet

  I recently overheard a remark by Greg Low in which he said something akin to "the most interesting parts of a new SQL Server release are the myriad of small things that are in there that make a developer's life easier" (I'm paraphrasing because I can't remember the actual quote but it was something like that). The new DATEFROMPARTS function is a classic example of that . It simply takes three integer parameters and builds a date out of them (if you have used DateSerial in Reporting Services then you'll understand). Take the following code which generates the first and last day of some given years: SELECT 2008 AS Yr INTO #Years UNION ALL SELECT 2009 UNION ALL SELECT 2010 UNION ALL SELECT 2011 UNION ALL SELECT 2012SELECT [FirstDayOfYear] = CONVERT(DATE,CONVERT(CHAR(8),((y.[Yr] * 10000) + 101))),      [LastDayOfYear] = CONVERT(DATE,CONVERT(CHAR(8),((y.[Yr] * 10000) + 1231)))FROM   #Years y here are the results: That code is pretty gnarly though with those CONVERTs in there and, worse, if the character string is constructed in a certain way then it could fail due to localisation, check this out: SET LANGUAGE french;SELECT dt,Month_Name=DATENAME(mm,dt)FROM   (       SELECT  dt = CONVERT(DATETIME,CONVERT(CHAR(4),y.[Yr]) + N'-01-02')       FROM    #Years y       )d;SET LANGUAGE us_english;SELECT dt,Month_Name=DATENAME(mm,dt)FROM   (       SELECT  dt = CONVERT(DATETIME,CONVERT(CHAR(4),y.[Yr]) + N'-01-02')       FROM    #Years y       )d; Notice how the datetime has been converted differently based on the language setting. When French, the string "2012-01-02" gets interpreted as 1st February whereas when us_english the same string is interpreted as 2nd January. Instead of all this CONVERTing nastiness we have DATEFROMPARTS: SELECT [FirstDayOfYear] = DATEFROMPARTS(y.[Yr],1,1),    [LasttDayOfYear] = DATEFROMPARTS(y.[Yr],12,31)FROM   #Years y How much nicer is that? The bad news of course is that you have to upgrade to SQL Server 2012 or migrate to SQL Azure if you want to use it, as is the way of the world! Don't forget that if you want to try this code out on SQL Azure right this second, for free, you can do so by connecting up to AdventureWorks On Azure. You don't even need to have SSMS handy - a browser that runs Silverlight will do just fine. Simply head to https://mhknbn2kdz.database.windows.net/ and use the following credentials: Database AdventureWorks2012 User sqlfamily Password sqlf@m1ly One caveat, SELECT INTO doesn't work on SQL Azure so you'll have to use this instead: DECLARE @y TABLE ( [Yr] INT);INSERT @y([Yr])SELECT 2008 AS Yr UNION ALL SELECT 2009 UNION ALL SELECT 2010 UNION ALL SELECT 2011 UNION ALL SELECT 2012;SELECT [FirstDayOfYear] = DATEFROMPARTS(y.[Yr],1,1),      [LastDayOfYear] = DATEFROMPARTS(y.[Yr],12,31)FROM @y y;SELECT [FirstDayOfYear] = CONVERT(DATE,CONVERT(CHAR(8),((y.[Yr] * 10000) + 101))),      [LastDayOfYear] = CONVERT(DATE,CONVERT(CHAR(8),((y.[Yr] * 10000) + 1231)))FROM @y y; @Jamiet

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• Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools &ndash; January 2011 Update

  - by TechTwaddle

  Note: I am currently in the process of relocating my blog from http://www.geekswithblogs.net/techtwaddle to my new address at http://www.techtwaddle.net I suggest you point your feed readers to the new address as I slowly transition to my new shared-hosted, ad-free wordpress blog :) If you haven’t heard already, the Jan 2011 update of the windows phone 7 developer tools is out, er, in Feb. You can download the installation files from here, http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=49b9d0c5-6597-4313-912a-f0cca9c7d277 The performance increase with the new emulator is clearly noticeable and the first time deploy is real quick! The emulator image should also be a precursor to the windows phone 7 OS update that we’ve been waiting for ever. The emulator image includes copy-paste functionality which is enabled by default on all textboxes, password boxes and edit controls within web browser control, so existing apps get this feature for free. Go ahead and give the new tools a try. If you want to experiment more you might be interested in a unlocked emulator image, follow the link for more information. http://windowsphonehacker.com/latest_windows_phone_7_emulator_unlocked-02-05-11.php

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