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June 2005 - Posts

Thursday, June 30, 2005 10:55 PM

Roger Sessions ObjectWatch: TechEd USA - his digest - insight from a true sage that can't be ignored

This issue’s feature article is “Tech-Ed 2005; The Elephant That Wasn’t There”.  This article reports on  Microsoft’s major Tech-Ed 2005 conference in Orlando earlier this month. This was the conference at which Microsoft laid out its strategy
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Tuesday, June 28, 2005 10:22 PM

The QFE for SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services Service Pack 2 is now available.

The QFE for SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services Service Pack 2 is now available.  The QFE is a generally distributed release that can be obtained from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=7FFE50D4-AFF8-4C1E-9609-6798190C2D58&displaylang=en.
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Tuesday, June 28, 2005 1:40 PM

SQL Server Reporting Services: Custom colour in charts

A frequently asked question is, 'how does one customise the colours in a chart?'  Below is a link to a blog post from Brian Welcker, which is actually a post on how to overcome the encumberence of the chart legend when it takes up too much space
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Friday, June 24, 2005 4:40 PM

Business Intelligence (BI): The way it is, without the blah blah

I've just completed an article which gives my definition of BI, its written for people new to this area and who are still trying to get their heads round it.  BI is traditionally swamped in marketing and analyst 'blah blah', which only serves
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Thursday, June 23, 2005 5:40 PM

Cool new OVER Clause (Transact-SQL) in SQL Server 2005

Cool new OVER Clause (Transact-SQL) in SQL Server 2005 to circumvent the not so efficient correlated subquery. Imagine a table: create table grades( StudentID int not null,StudentName varchar(10) not null,Subject varchar(10) not null,Score 
posted by Mat_Stephen | 1 Comments
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Wednesday, June 22, 2005 9:31 PM

Follow up on Database snapshot performance question from SQL Server™ 2005 High Availability TechNet evening 21/6/05

Follow up on Database snapshot performance question from SQL Server™ 2005 High Availability TechNet evening 21/6/05   Question; how does a snapshot database perform compared to the original database when it comes to querying – can it make use of
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Wednesday, June 22, 2005 5:28 PM

Querying and Reporting on Report Execution Log Data

Well I didn't realise, or maybe I just plain forgot, that these reports and the necessary support infrastrucuture come with Reporting Services under the extras folder on the CD - all useful stuff for report heads. Longest Running ReportsMost Executed
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Wednesday, June 22, 2005 4:55 PM

Follow up on Replication Columns question in my TechNet SQL 2005 presentation (14/6/05)

Question:  How many columns does SQL Server 2005 allow in a published article (SQL Server 2000 was linited to 254)? Answer: The column limit for transactional replication, I'm informed, is now in excess of 1000. 
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Wednesday, June 22, 2005 2:29 PM

Follow up on Witnesses question from SQL Server™ 2005 High Availability TechNet evening 21/6/05

Database Mirroring: How many witness can you have in quorum? - One How many witnesses can you have on one box? - Many
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Monday, June 20, 2005 5:47 PM

Blogcast: SQL Server 2000 Performance Demo 1-3 Managing indexes

Here's a Blogcast, the third in a series of three from the US, looking at Performance tuning techniques with SQL 2000 'Managing indexes' http://www.microsoft.com/winme/0506/24231/TNT1-160_Demo_1-3.asx
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Monday, June 20, 2005 5:44 PM

Blogcast: SQL Server 2000 Performance Demo 1-2 Analyzing an execution plan

Here's a Blogcast, second in a series of three from the US, looking at Performance tuning techniques with SQL 2000 'Analyzing an execution plan' http://www.microsoft.com/winme/0506/24231/TNT1-160_Demo_1-2.asx
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Monday, June 20, 2005 5:40 PM

Blog cast SQL Server 2000 Performance Demo 1-1 Searching and browsing objects

Here's a Blogcast, one of a series of three from the US, looking at Performance tuning techniques with SQL 2000 http://www.microsoft.com/winme/0506/24231/TNT1-160_Demo_1-1.asx
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Thursday, June 16, 2005 11:13 PM

More follow up from my TechNet SQL 2005 presentation (14/6/05) - SMP boxes and database files

During my TechNet presentation on Tuesday evening (14/6/05 in Reading), I got a little side tracked and, while talking about partitioning in SQL 2005, found myself drawing my audiences’ attention to the fact that only one thread can access a database
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Thursday, June 16, 2005 4:47 PM

Peer to Peer replication demo code from SQL Server 2005 TechNet evening on the 14th June at our Reading office

You can find all the code @ http://blogs.technet.com/mat_stephen/articles/406459.aspx
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Tuesday, June 14, 2005 11:53 PM

Steve Ballmer on Mendocino - video available

The Video from SAPPHIRE (Steve Ballmer on Mendocino) is now available on the website at http://www.microsoft-sap.com/alliance.aspx Mendocino is described at www.sap.com/mendocino, and www.microsoft.com/office/sap. I think mendocino is very significant
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Tuesday, June 14, 2005 3:42 PM

London roadshow follow up: Selective execution of SQL Server Integration Service Tasks and Transforms

I had a question, at the London roadshow (8th June), which I wasn’t sure if I could answer reliably, so I promised to blog the answer. The question: “Can I run selected (with mouse) tasks and transforms from inside the SQL Server Integration Services
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Tuesday, June 14, 2005 10:21 AM

Reporting Services: How to stop IE striping out leading spaces in report data values

Reporting Services: How to stop IE striping out leading spaces in report data values: My thanks to Russell Christopher and Mike Schetterer who recently discussed the problem that IE will strip out leading spaces from data in a report.  The solution:
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Saturday, June 11, 2005 5:52 PM

Blogcast: How to add a multicast transform to a SQL Server Integration Services package

Here is a 4min 8sec blogcast showing how to add a multicast transform to a SQL Server Integration Services package (the package created in the previous blogcast).  A multicast transform can create two or more replica data flows from one original
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Friday, June 10, 2005 3:57 PM

SQL 2005 Express to get Report Server and Workgroup edition to get Report Builder

Good news! Due to popular demand we have added Report Server to the Express edition of SQL 2005 and added Report Builder to the Workgroup edition - there are some caviats though so check the small print at the bottom of this feature guide. http://www.microsoft.com/sql/2005/productinfo/sql2005features.mspx
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Friday, June 10, 2005 1:10 PM

BUG: Not all memory is available when AWE is enabled on a computer that is running a 32-bit version of SQL Server 2000 SP4

Alas SQL Server 2000 SP4 has introduced a bug that prevents all one's memory being used if you are using AWE - please see the following article.  http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;899761 Microsoft will post a fix for
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Friday, June 10, 2005 11:15 AM

Blogcast: How to create a simple SQL Server Integration Services package

Here is an 8min 13sec blogcast showing how to create a simple SQL Server Integration Services package.  The package aggregates 2 million records from a raw data file and passes the resulting 64 aggregated rows into a table in tempdb.
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Tuesday, June 07, 2005 2:40 PM

SQL Server 2005 launch date anounced!

This morning, at TechEd USA, Paul Flessner announced the release date for SQL Server 2005.   This is an excerpt from his notes from TechEd:   "It is official — the countdown to launch has begun! During my Tech•Ed keynote this morning,
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Tuesday, June 07, 2005 12:15 PM

Two SQL 2005 TechNet Evenings I'll be delivering in Reading, UK

For those of you in the area, I'll be presenting these two TechNet evenings in Reading UK - it would be good to see you there! 14 th June Session Abstract: Microsoft SQL Server 2005 is the next version of the successful SQL Server product family. This
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Friday, June 03, 2005 1:15 PM

SQL Server TechCenter Launches

Well, how about this - looks good to me!  Definitely one for your favourites.  I'll say no more and just paste in the general announcememt for customers.    SQL Server TechCenter Launches The new SQL Server TechCenter is live
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