I forgot one thing on my recent post on Reporting services interop, Report Builder. What is Report Builder? it’s an end user (information worker in Microsoft speak), tool that creates a report that can run in SQL Server reporting services. What this actually means is that it creates a xml file with an .rdl extension… Read more
When I saw SQL Server redundancy on a recent internal e-mail I wondered if it was about a replacement for SQL Server , DBA job losses, or the rise of the NoSQL movement. It turned out to be nothing more than a general ask about the pros and cons of clustering and mirroring. If there… Read more
SQL Server Reporting Services is nearly ubiquitous as SQL Server itself, it is in nearly all versions of SQL Server from Express (with Advanced services) to DataCenter edition and will soon be available in SQL Azure. It’s been around for 8 years and if Microsoft used traditional version numbers it would now be on V5. … Read more
I have had a couple of queries about spatial data in SQL Server regarding SRIDs. I have posted already on some of this here, and while I mentioned SRIDs I didn’t really cover what that means so hopefully this explains it… First of all the term Spatial Reference Identifier (SRID) is a European Petroleum Survey… Read more
One of the challenges of consolidation and upgrades is that some applications might have hard coded or difficult to find references to the server instance they are connecting to. When you want to point this hypothetical application to the non-default instance on a new server you can often use DNS to create an alia to… Read more
Here’s a problem how do you give away 2 tickets to the SQL Server master class with Kimberly Trip and Paul Randall? The logical answer is to ask a technical question, but if it’s too hard the winner who answers it won’t get the same benefit from going to the master class. Of course if… Read more
In an ideal world a database engine would self heal and self tune, and the SQL Server product team work long and hard on each release to try and realise this. However in parallel with this they recognise that they can’t cater for every eventuality and so have provided more and more diagnostics and tools… Read more
If I search my blog for Policy Based Management in SQL Server, I notice there are a fair few posts on the matter. I am not going to apologise for this as it’s a vital tool in any DBA’s armoury in the world of ever increasing databases compliance and risk management. My blog is also… Read more
As I write this I am setting up a SQL Azure database to use as the source for some of my BI demos over the coming months, and the experience takes me back to when I first started in business intelligence. If you haven’t come across SQL Azure, imagine someone has set up SQL Server… Read more
I have to confess that I’m not a huge fan of certain type of social media, maybe this is an age thing but perhaps not. I just want to get stuff done and bizarrely at the end of the day I get out my paint brushes, play guitar, or dig for victory in my back… Read more