Linked Servers and Ingres

One of the first technologies I used in my early SQL Server days were linked servers. I used them to migrate data from Ingres to SQL Server.

Yesterday Michel Ulens gave an excellent presentation on this topic on our latest SQLUG.BE event. Michel will be presenting the same presentation on the upcoming SQL Connections convention in Orlando. If you are lucky to attend this event, make sure to mark Michel's session in your agenda. For the rest of us, keep an eye the SQLUG.BE website, we will be posting the PPT and scripts soon.

SQL Server 2008 - February CTP (6) released

New stuff to play around: Microsoft released CTP 6 of SQL Server 2008.

BI Demo VPC

The BI demo VPC is a VPC with all the Microsoft BI related products preinstalled and configured. The VPC is bulk loaded with samples, presenter scripts and many more.

The latest version (5.1) contains the RTM version of Performance Point Server and Softartisans Officewriter. I have been using this VPC in demos and trainings for quite some time now. The VPC is now available as a public download.

If you wanna get a jumpstart on Microsoft BI, without going through the installation jungle (SQL Server, SSIS, SSRS, SSAS, PPS, Sharepoint, ...) this is a must have download.


Downloads: Part1 and Part2.

This is the full list of preinstalled sofware:

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 Service Pack 2
Internet Explorer 7
Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007
Microsoft Office Visio 2007
Microsoft Office Project 2007
Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007
Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2007
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 w/ Service Pack 1
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 w/ Service Pack 2 (w/ SSIS, SSAS, SSRS)
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Data Mining Add-ins
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 SharePoint Integration Add-in
ProClarity Analytics Server 6.3
ProClarity Dashboard Server 6.3
ProClarity Desktop Professional 6.3
ProClarity Web Professional 6.3
Microsoft PerformancePoint Planning Server 2007
Microsoft PerformancePoint Monitoring Server 2007
Microsoft PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer
Microsoft PerformancePoint Planning Add-In for Excel
Microsoft PerformancePoint Planning Business Modeler
Project REAL Reference Implementation
SoftArtisans OfficeWriter 3.8.1 and Designer
BI Demo Files
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Samples
Microsoft SQL Server BI Metadata Samples
Performance Point Planning Samples/Labs
Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Second Edition

Next SQLUG.BE event on linked servers and SQL Server on SAP

We opened registration for our next SQLUG.BE evening.

We will have 2 sessions:

Session 1: "linked servers" in Sql Server given by Michel Ulens

Abstract:
MS SQL Server has been enjoying increasing popularity as a database platform. But of course, many organizations have other RDB platforms installed. Linked servers provide an elegant solution for organizations wanting to integrate MS SQL server apps with other (legacy) RDB platforms. We'll demonstrate how to accomplish this by linking to an Oracle database, and giving a clear example of how to extend the power and flexibility of your database needs.

Level: 200

Session 2: "SAP on Sql Server" given by Guy Germompre

Abstract:
Het gebruik van SQLserver onder SAP. Wat is SAP? Hoe maakt SAP gebruik van een database? Welke voordelen kunnen klanten hierbij halen? De verregaande integratie tussen SAP en Microsoft op vlak van database beheer.

Level: 200


Agenda:
18:00 - 18:30 Welcome with a drink
18:30 - 18:40 Intro
18:40 - 20:00 Session 1
20:00 - 20:30 Pause
20:30 - 21:30 Session 2
21:30 - 22:00 drink & sandwich

Location:
Delaware Consulting
Uitbreidingstraat 2 - 8
2600 Berchem

A route description can be found here.

Registration is needed, registration is open.

Registration will be closed on March 24

Heroes Happen Here

The marketing launch (February 27th) of SQL Server 2008 is just a few days away. The Belgian launch of SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and Windows Server2008 will take place on March 11th, in Ghent.

On March 12th and 13th things get a little more technical with the revamped TechDays. There are quite a few sessions on both SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008. The full agenda can be found here.

Looking forward to see you there.

Updated Free online SQL Server 2008 traininng

Some updated training material on SQL Server 2008 is now available online.

Collection 6187: What's New in Microsoft SQL Server 2008

• Clinic 6188: What's New in SQL Server 2008 for Enterprise Data Platform
• IT Professionals will learn about the new features in SQL Server 2008 that will help them to secure the enterprise data platform. Topics covered in this clinic include:
• Data Protection Features in SQL Server 2008
• Data Monitoring Features in SQL Server 2008
• Data Management Features in SQL Server 2008
• Clinic 6189: What's New in SQL Server 2008 for Business Intelligence
• Database developers will learn about the new features in SQL Server 2008 that will help them to improve the Business Intelligence infrastructure. Topics covered in this clinic include:
• Integration Services in SQL Server 2008
• Reporting Services in SQL Server 2008
• Analysis Services in SQL Server 2008
• Clinic 6190: What's New in SQL Server 2008 for Database Development
• Database developers will learn about the new features in SQL Server 2008 that will help them to develop database applications. Topics covered in this clinic include:
• Dynamic Development
• Beyond Relational Databases

Yoohoo - I am an MVP

Today I received this e-mail from Microsoft:

"Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2008 Microsoft® MVP Award! The MVP Award is our way of saying thank you for promoting the spirit of community and enhancing people’s lives and the industry’s success every day. Your extraordinary efforts in Windows Server System - SQL Server technical communities during the past year are greatly appreciated."

I am really honored and want to thank everyone at Microsoft for their enormous support. I see this award as an extra motivation to continue to work hard for the SQL Server community and in particular SQLUG.BE.

See you soon!!

SQLUG.BE - next session on SQL Server 2008

Our next SQLUG.BE evening will take place on Thursday, January 17th, 2008. The session will be given by Gunther Beersaerts who will be talking about the new features of Sql Server 2008.

Abstract:
In this session we will provide an overview of the next release of SQL Server, SQL Server 2008, codenamed "Katmai". The session will cover the core value-proposition, major themes and scenarios, and the specific engine improvements, including the new Management Framework, datatypes (spatial,…), new Reporting Engine, FileStream, etc. We also cover the new development processes being used to build this release, the release timeline and the disclosure calendar.

Level: 200 – 300
Depending on the audience, we'll remain high-level (management / decision maker audience) or go more deeper (DBA, Developer or technical BI audience).


Speaker:
Gunther Beersaerts is a Senior Technical Specialist at Microsoft Belgium & Luxembourg.

Agenda:
18:00 - 18:30 Welcome
18:30 - 21:00 Session with pause
21:00 - 22:00 Drink

Full details and free registration can be found here.

Chopsticks, Technet Evening on HA and the 1 Euro SAN

Microsoft Belux recently launched MSDN Chopsticks and Technet Chopsticks. These community focused websites are some kind of a Youtube with technical content. The sites already contain quite a few interesting videos. The videos are webcasts, funcasts, demos, and complete sessions.

My Technet Evening on high availability in SQL Server 2005 was recorded and is now available online, including the demo with the 1 Euro SAN.

AITScripts - Nice bunch of Scripts

Nice bunch of DBA related scripts ... written by the folks of the Database Operations team at Microsoft.


Download here.

SQLBackupAll – Performs Full database backup for non-excluded databases by SQL native or Litespeed backup commands. The job has parameters to specify the desired backup location and compress (SQL Litespeed backup) or nocompress (SQL native backup) , whether to backup or not to backup read only database etc.

SQLBackupDiffAll - Performs Differential database backup for non-excluded databases by SQL native or Litespeed backup commands. This job is disabled by default. This can be enabled based on the customer’s needs for the recovery requirements.

SQLBackupTranAll – Performs Transaction Log backup for non-excluded databases by SQL native or Litespeed backup commands. The job has parameters to specify the desired backup location and compress (SQL Litespeed backup) or nocompress (SQL native backup)

SQLBackupChecker – Checks for backups that have not occurred in more than the specified number of hours in the job. There is a parameter to specify the desired number of hours to specify for the alert.

SQLDBCCAll - Performs database consistency checks on all system and user databases.

SQLIndexDefragAll – Performs Index defrag maintenance for non-excluded SQL 2000 databases. This job is disabled by default. It can be enabled based on the customer’s needs. This job helps to run the index defrag for all the databases in the SQL instance or any particular database or any particular table in a database.

SQLUpdateStatistics - Runs Update Statistics maintenance for non-excluded databases.
This job is disabled by default. This job is disabled by default. It can be enabled based on the customer’s needs. This job helps to run the update statistics for all the databases in the SQL instance or any particular database or any particular table in a database.

SQLCleanupMsdbBackupHistory – Cleans up the backup history information from msdb database.

SQLCycleErrorLog - Cycle the SQL Error log periodically so the size is manageable for viewing through SQL tools.

SQL Server 2008 - Virtual Labs

Get a jumpstart on SQL Server 2008 with those virtual labs:

TechNet Virtual Lab: Administering Servers by Using Declarative Management Framework (DMF) Policies

TechNet Virtual Lab: Authoring Reports Using SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services

TechNet Virtual Lab: Implementing Change Data Capture (CDC) in SQL Server 2008

TechNet Virtual Lab: Learn How to Build Occasionally Connected Applications with SQL Server 2008

TechNet Virtual Lab: What's new in SQL Server 2008 for Database Administrators

TechNet Virtual Lab: Working with the new DATE data type in SQL Server 2008

SQL Stuff at Tech Ed IT Forum

I had some other stuff to do, so I didn't make to TechEd this year. Fortunately Peter made an excellent review on TechEd IT Forum.
Looking forward the hear Peter's review on Day 5 ;-) See you Thursday!!

SQL Server 2008 - November CTP (5) released

Today Microsoft released CTP 5 aka The November CTP of SQL Server. This release is a major step forward and includes 18 major improvements:

• Data Collection and Performance Warehouse for Relational Engine
• Service Broker Enhancements
• Registered Servers Enhancements
• Synchronous net-changes change tracking for SQL Server
• T-SQL IntelliSense
• Declarative Management Framework (DMF) Enhancements
• Geo-spatial Support
• Analysis Services Query and Writeback Performance
• Robust Report Server Platform
• Integration Services - Lookup Enhancements
• Analysis Services MDX Query Optimizer - Block Computation
• Analysis Services Aggregation Design
• Analysis Services Cube Design
• Reporting Services Scale Engine
• Transparent Data Encryption
• Resource Governor - Limit Specification
• Backup Compression
• Plan Freezing
• Fully Parallel Plans Scale on Partitioned Tables

Yoohoo, Intellisense is back and the stand alone Report Designer got a major GUI upgrade!!

You can read the details in the "What's new" doc for the November CTP.

Download it here.

BIDS Helper 1.2 released

The great developers of BIDS Helper released an updated version of my favorite add-on for SQL Server BI development. Version 1.2 includes 21 (!!) add-ons, including 5 new ones focusing on Integration Services.



This is the version 1.2 features list:

• Analysis Services
• Aggregation Manager
• Calculation Helpers
• Column Usage Reports
• Delete Unused Aggregations
• Deploy Aggregation Designs
• Deploy MDX Script
• Dimension Health Check
• Dimension Optimization Report
• Measure Group Health Check
• Printer Friendly Dimension Usage
• Tri-State Perspectives
• Show Extra Properties
• Update Estimated Counts
• Validate Aggregations
• Visualize Attribute Lattice
• Integration Services
• Create Fixed Width Columns
• dtsConfig File Formatter
• Expression and Configuration Highlighter
• Expression List
• Smart Diff
• General
• Enable/Disable features

A must have download for serious BI development!!

TechNet Evening: High Availability in SQL Server 2005 - Delivering 99.999 % uptime

On December 5th, I will be presenting a Microsoft Technet Evening on High Availability in SQL Server.

Session Abstract:
SQL Server 2005 is designed to reduce both planned and unplanned downtime, provide solutions for disaster recovery, and provide greater system availability to database users through High Availability technologies. In this presentation Frederik will discuss various features (including Failover Clustering, Database Mirroring, Log Shipping, and Peer-to-Peer Replication) of SQL Server which help you meet your 99.999% uptime SLAs.

To finish off, we will have a sneak preview on the new high availability features of the upcoming SQL Server 2008.

Frederik Vandeputte is a Senior Consultant and trainer for Kohera, the Microsoft SQL Server/Business Intelligence Competence Center of the Cronos Group. Frederik is the Vice-President and co-founder of the Belgian SQL Server User Group (SQLUG.BE).


Free registration here.

Next SQLUG.BE Session on Reporting Services

On November, 22nd we are organizing our next SQLUG.BE event. Marc Martens will talk about Reporting Services.

Reporting Services is Microsoft's server based reporting solution that is delivered together with SQL Server 2005. In this session you will learn how to create a report, deploy and manage it. Also covered is how you can use Reporting Services to control the load on your source system when running a report. If there is time left we will shown how to write custom extensions for your reports.

Prepare yourself for a long night. First we have the session, afterwards we are offered a guided tour in "Huis van de Toekomst". Doors will be closed far after 22:00 hour.

The starting hour will be 18:30, doors open from 18:00 hour.

The event will take place in Huis van de Toekomst

Indringingsweg 1
B-1800 Vilvoorde

Registration is needed and seats limited, so hurry up. You can register here.

SQL Server 2008 - White Papers

Microsoft released a first bunch of SQL Server 2008 whitepapers.

Happy reading ...

SQL Server 2008 Overview Whitepapers

· SQL Server 2008 What’s New

· Business Intelligence

· Data Warehousing

· Data Programmability

· Online Transaction Processing

· Server Consolidation

July CTP of SQL Server 2008 released

As expected, Micosoft released the July CTP of SQL Server 2008. The new download is available on the Connect website. This new CTP contains quite a bunch of nice features; including new datatypes and a first public release of TABLIX. See the full list below and in the updated Improvement Pillars. There is also a series of webcasts on the new features.

Analysis Services Time Series

This improvement adds a new time series forecasting algorithm (ARIMA: Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average) to the data mining algorithm suite that provides more stable long term predictions.

Enterprise Reporting Engine

Improvements represent the two major infrastructure changes for Reporting Services. Reporting Services enhances the processing engine and rendering extensions to enable new functionality, such as Tablix support, and scalability as well as remove the dependency on IIS. Additionally, new report designer and configuration tool are provided that improve usability and workflow for RS customers.

T-SQL Improvements

Object Dependencies: The object dependencies improvement provides reliable discovery of dependencies between objects through newly introduced catalog view and dynamic management functions. Dependency information is always up-to-date for both schema-bound and non-schema-bound objects. Dependencies are tracked for stored procedures, tables, views, functions, triggers, user-defined types, XML schema-collections, and more.

Database Mirroring Enhancements

SQL Server 2008 builds upon the momentum of SQL Server 2005 by providing a more reliable platform with enhanced database mirroring:

• Automatic bad page repair – allows the principal and mirror machines to transparently recover from 823/824 types of data page errors by requesting a fresh copy of the corrupted page from the mirroring partner.
• Log stream compression – compression of the outgoing log stream in order to minimize the network bandwidth used by database mirroring.
• Miscellaneous performance enhancements:

• using asynchronous log write requests on the mirror in order to shorten the log write time and thus speed-up the commit acknowledgement.
• better utilization of the mirroring log send buffers in order to pack multiple smaller log blocks into a single network send.

• Supportability and diagnosability improvements:

• additional performance counters to allow for more granular accounting of the time spent across the different stages of the DBM log processing.
• new DMVs and extensions of existing views in order to expose additional information about the mirroring sessions.
  

Extended Events

SQL Server Extended Events is a general event-handling system for server systems. The Extended Events infrastructure supports the correlation of data from SQL Server, and under certain conditions, the correlation of data from the operating system and database applications. In the latter case, Extended Events output must be directed to Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) in order to correlate the event data with operating system or application event data.

Performance Data Collection

Collect data from various sources in SQL Server and OS to help with performance troubleshooting and server maintenance. With this improvement, organizations improve their analysis of common performance issues:

• Define what data is collected and organize the collection into collection sets
• Start/stop/manipulate collection sets programmatically (T-SQL and .NET API)
• Define where data is stored (relational database)
• View data through reports in SQL Server Management Studio.
• Provide platform to plug in more data collectors in the future.

Improved XML Support

To leverages the new date and time types, SQL Server’s XML Schema collection now provides full support for the xs:date, xs:time and xs:dateTime data types. Support for union types is also enhanced by returning correct results for “instance of” queries when union types are involved, and adding support for lists of unions and unions of lists constructs in XML Schemas.


DATE/TIME Data Types

SQL Server 2008 introduces new date and time data types. The new data types enable applications to have separate date and time types, larger year ranges for date value, larger fractional seconds precision for time value, time-zone offset aware datetime type that containing date, time and time zone offset portion, user defined option on fractional seconds precision of time related types and datetime2 and datetimeoffset provide standards conformant semantics. Along with the T-SQL support on the new types, both native (ODBC, OLEDB) and managed (SqlClient) providers also provide the full support through the client driver APIs.

Large User-Defined Types Improvement

Large user-defined types allows users to expand the size of defined data types by eliminating the 8‑KB limit.

ORDPATH Improvement

ORDPATH improvement provides an important new functionality to our customers who use hierarchical data. It provides a superior way of modeling hierarchies in SQL Server by introducing the HierarchyID system data type and corresponding built-in methods which are designed to make it easier to store, query and operate hierarchical data. HierarchyID is also optimized for representing trees, the most common type of hierarchical data.

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.