BIDS Helper - A must have for BI developers

BIDS Helper is a set of Visual Studio.Net add-ins that extend and enhance the functionality of the SQL Server BI Development Studio. The current release (1.1.0.1) containts the following add-ins:

• Aggregation Manager
• Calculation Helpers
• Deploy MDX Script
• Dimension Health Check
• Printer Friendly Dimension Usage
• Show Extra Properties
• Update Estimated Counts
• Visualize Attribute Lattice

I really like the "Deploy MDX Script" add-in. This feature allows you to right click on a cube in an Analysis Services solution and deploy just the calculation script. This comes in very handing while debugging and testing MDX calculations in offline mode.




It's a open source and available as a free download on CodePlex. Toeltje van de week!!!

Rumor: new CTP of SQL Server 2008 coming soon

Rumor has it that a new CTP of SQL Server 2008 is on its way. A recent article on the MCP Magazine mentions the planned +/-60 days release schedule between CTPs. CTP3 aka the June CTP was released on June, 4. The June CTP was nice but lacks a lot of the announced features. So ... looking forward to the new stuff to spend those rainy Belgium summer evenings ;-)

If you wanna get a good overview of the new stuff, check out these resources:

• Bob Beauchemin's list of new features.
• If you have about 1 to 2 hrs to spend: the free online course on SQL Server 2008. It's really good, and for the moment, the best and most (public available) in depth overview available.
  

Next SQLUG.BE Session on Analysis Services

On September, 27th we are organizing our next SQLUG.BE event. The event - an introduction to Analysis Services 2005, will take place at the Kohera Office and will be presented by my colleague Nico Verbaenen.

Full details and free registration can be found on here.

SQL Internals Viewer

Just discovered a great tool via Kalen Delaney's Blog. This tool gives you a low level graphical view on how data is stored in a database. Toeltje van de week!!!

SQL Internals Viewer is a tool for looking into the SQL Server storage engine and seeing how data is physically allocated, organised and stored.

All sorts of tasks performed by a DBA or developer can benefit greatly from knowledge of what the storage engine is doing and how it works. This tool has been designed to make database internals more accessible.

The Quick Start section gives a guide on how to use SQL Internals Viewer.

The Resources section lists articles and books with information on SQL Server internals.

http://www.sqlinternalsviewer.com/

Office 2007 - mapping the old menus to the ribbon

I really like the ribbon in Office 2007. I think it is a great improvement over the old menus. However, every now and then I get lost in the ribbon and can't seem to find that very nice little menu option. Microsoft released an excellent set of Excel workbooks. The Excel sheets list every single menu option in the old Office applications and their corresponding place in the Office 2007 ribbon.

Excel ribbon mapping workbook

Outlook ribbon mapping workbook

Word ribbon mapping workbook

PowerPoint ribbon mapping workbook

Nice to see this one in the Help Menu ;-)

Show the Office Assistant

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Removed from product

Bye Bye Clippy :-)

SQL Server Launch Date: February 27, 2008

At it's annual Worldwide Partner Conference yesterday, Microsoft announced the release dates for it's next trio of products: Windows 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008. On February 27, 2008, Microsoft will launch these products in Los Angeles with a wave of kickoff events around the world to follow.

Try Catch

Bart Bultinck, fellow at SQLUG.BE, and some other top bloggers in the Belgian Blogsphere started the excellent blog site TryCatch.be. Chummy, Kurt Roggen, Peter De Tender, Tom Vandaele, any many more to come are blogging now on this must have RSS feed.

SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer RTM

Microsoft released a new version of the SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer (July 2007). "CTP" was dropped from the name, so we are RTM now, I guess.

The SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) gathers data from Microsoft Windows and SQL Server configuration settings. BPA uses a predefined list of SQL Server 2005 recommendations and best practices to determine if there are potential issues in the database environment.

Download here.