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    Wednesday, June 27, 2007

    Free online training on SQL Server 2008

    Microsoft released a first free online course on SQL Server 2008.

    Full details can be found on https://www.microsoftelearning.com/eLearning/courseDetail.aspx?courseId=78337

    Title: Clinic 7045: What's New in Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2008
    Course Type: Self-paced Course
    Available Offline: Yes
    Estimated Time of Completion: 2 Hours
    Language: English

    Description:
    In this clinic, you will learn about the new and enhanced features included in SQL Server 2008. You will explore the new data types and the data management features. Additionally, you will learn about the enhanced Integration Services, Analysis Services, and Reporting Services included in SQL Server 2008. This online clinic is composed of a rich multimedia experience.

    To get the most out of this clinic, it is recommended that you have:
    • Knowledge of general SQL database concepts that are largely independent of a specific version of SQL Server.
    • Knowledge of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 features.
    • Knowledge of deploying and upgrading database solutions.
    • Knowledge of how to solve performance issues related to SQL Server hardware.
    • Performed the job role of a SQL Server 2005 database administrator or database developer.
    • Product or technology experience in Microsoft SQL Server 2000 or SQL Server 2005.

    Objectives:
    At the end of the course, students will be able to:
    • Describe the features of SQL Server 2008 and their benefits.
    • Describe the features of enterprise data platform that help you to secure data in applications.
    • Describe the dynamic development features that facilitate the development of database applications.
    • Describe the features of SQL Server 2008 that provide data storage solutions beyond relational databases.
    • Describe the enhanced features in SSIS that help you to integrate data effectively.
    • Describe the enhanced features in SSAS that help you to improve the BI infrastructure.
    • Describe the enhanced features in SSRS that help you to improve the scalability of the reporting engine.

    Saturday, June 23, 2007

    Speaking at Community Day

    On Thursday I will be presenting on the first Belgian Community Day.

    Five belgian usergroups, BIWUG, VISUG, SQLUG, IT-Talks, and Pro-Exchange, have decided to combine their efforts to organize a joint-event just before summer starts. This event will be the biggest community event in Belgium! So if you are eager to learn, eager to get answers to your questions and eager to socialize, come and join us for our very first Belgian Community Day.

    I will deliver a fun introduction to Microsoft BI. My collegue Werner Geuens will give an in depth session on statistics.

    Full details and free registration can be found on http://www.communityday.be/

    Here are the session abstracts.

    Intro Session - biTunes – A fun introduction to Microsoft BI with SQL Server 2005 and… iTunes !

    Session abstract:

    SQL Servers 2005 gives you all the tools you need for building end-to-end business intelligence (BI) applications. In this demo driven session we walk through the complete SQL Server 2005 BI stack. We'll use SQL Server Integration Services to import the iTunes (yes, that's right) music library. We'll build an OLAP cube on top of our MP3 library with SQL Server Analysis Services. Finally we'll use SQL Server Reporting Services and Excel 2007 to reveal information you thought you could never retrieve from iTunes. Come take a walk on the BI-side…


    Speaker:
    Frederik Vandeputte, Senior Consultant at Kohera and Vice President of the Belgium SQL Server User Group


    Deep dive: Statistics in SQL Server 2005, what can go wrong

    Session abstract:
    Maybe you are not aware of it but every index is accompanied by its statistics. You can create statistics without index, but why would you do that? Even the engine creates statistics when it feels like doing so, how can that be of use to us? We have new database settings concerning statistics in SQL Server 2005; let's take a look at these. Once you know the use of statistics you'll realize that they need maintenance, how should we do that?

    Speaker:
    Werner Geuens, Senior Consultant at Cronos.






    Friday, June 22, 2007

    SQL Server 2005 builds that were released after SP2

    This nice KB article lists the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 builds that were released after Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 (SP2) was released.
    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937137

    Saturday, June 16, 2007

    SQL 2008 - Declaring variables and assigning values in 1 statement

    I just discovered a little nice to have in Katmai (oops, SQL Server 2008). Finally we can declare variables and assign values in one statement.

    If you try this in SQL Server 2005 or earlier:

    declare @myVar VARCHAR(10) = 'Yoohoo';

    This is what you get:

    Msg 139, Level 15, State 1, Line 0
    Cannot assign a default value to a local variable.

    In SQL Server 2008 it just works:

    declare @myVar VARCHAR(10) = 'Yoohoo';

    The cool thing is that it also works for multiple variables:

    declare
    @myVar VARCHAR(10) = 'Yoohoo',
    @myVar2 VARCHAR(10) = 'Cool!!'


    Command(s) completed successfully.

    So ... bye, bye to:

    DECLARE ...

    DECLARE ...

    DECLARE ...

    DECLARE ...

    DECLARE ...

    DECLARE ...


    SET ...

    SET ...

    SET ...

    SET ...

    Saturday, June 09, 2007

    SQL 2008 - Truncating the logfile

    In the SQL Server 2005 the BACKUP LOG WITH TRUNCATE_ONLY statement was marked depricated, but still worked. In SQL Server 2008 it returns an error.

    BACKUP LOG testtrunc WITH TRUNCATE_ONLY

    Msg 155, Level 15, State 1, Line 3
    'TRUNCATE_ONLY' is not a recognized BACKUP option.

    So how can we truncate the logfile in SQL Server 2008? Well, just switch to SIMPLE RECOVERY and back to FULL.

    ALTER DATABASE testtrunc SET RECOVERY SIMPLE
    ALTER DATABASE testtrunc SET RECOVERY FULL

    Be carefull, don't run this on an production database. You are erasing the transaction log file and will loose the possibility to do point in time restores.

    SQL 2008 - MERGE is Back

    So what's is the MERGE statement all about? Well basically it's doing an INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE in a single statement. It used to be part of the early betas of SQL Server 2005 but didn't make in the RTM version. And now it's back :-)

    Here's a little example:

    MERGE Departments AS d
    USING Departments_delta AS dd
    ON (d.DeptID = dd.DeptID)
    WHEN MATCHED AND d.Manager <> dd.Manager OR d.DeptName <> dd.DeptName
    THEN UPDATE SET d.Manager = dd.Manager, d.DeptName = dd.DeptName
    WHEN NOT MATCHED THEN
    INSERT (DeptID, DeptName, Manager)
    VALUES (dd.DeptID, dd.DeptName, dd.Manager)
    WHEN SOURCE NOT MATCHED THEN
    DELETE;

    Departments_delta contains updated Department information. Based on the primary key we decide wether to insert, delete, or update the Department table.

    Wednesday, June 06, 2007

    Community day 2007

    Five belgian usergroups, BIWUG, VISUG, SQLUG, IT-Talks, and Pro-Exchange, have decided to combine their efforts to organize a joint-event just before summer starts. This event will be the biggest community event in Belgium! So if you are eager to learn, eager to get answers to your questions and eager to socialize, come and join us for our very first Belgian Community Day.

    The event will take place at the premises of SemCom in Keerbergen on Thursday, the 28th of June 2007.


    Free registration and full details can be found on communityday.be

    Tuesday, June 05, 2007

    Blog Silence Over

    Due to some technical problems with Blogger and SFTP issues I dind't blog very much recently. The problems are now fixed, so we are ready to go again :-)

    Microsoft released the first public CTP of Katmai yesterday ... so we have new stuff to play with and to blog about :-)