The initial release of SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 (SP2) contained an issue that caused maintenance plan cleanup tasks to remove data before the specified cleanup interval. Install this update to correct the interpretation of existing cleanup task intervals, and to avoid this issue in new cleanup tasks. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer. If you already installed…
Read articleOne of my favorite modeling tricks when I need an UDM calculated measure is implementing it as a regular measure by creating a named calculated column in DSV. I set the expression of the named calculation column to NULL to minimize storage. This approach has a couple of advantages: It allows you to set a default aggregation function, e.g. SUM(). In comparison, a calculated member…
Read articleMicrosoft has just let me know that my proposal for a TechEd 2007 breakout session has been approved. I've been honored to present Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services for four consecutive years at TechEd. This time, I will share practical lessons and tips harvested from report-enabling a real-life application. Here is the formal session description (not yet on the TechEd website): One of the most…
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Dundas is currently developing a Dundas Chart for SharePoint 3.0/MOSS 2007 (currently in Beta). The chart is designed to work in ASP.NET and supports binding to ADO.NET datasets. A step-by-step tutorial for configuring the chart can be found here.
Read articleAn unfortunate bug that was discovered late in the SQL Server 2005 SP2 design cycle may cause a black report preview in the ReportViewer Windows Form control (see attached file) with some video cards. The RS team is aware of this and they are working on a hotfix. I am partly to blame for this issue ([:S]) because I've noticed it since the early builds…
Read articleAs an update to my previous post, SQL Server 2005 SP2 is now officially available. The SP2 build is 9.00.3042. A SP2 landing page is available too that includes links to the SP2 release, KB articles, marketing information about the benefits of SP2. As a personal contributor to Service Pack 2 (mainly in the areas of Reporting Services SharePoint integration and Analysis Services), I hope…
Read articleThanks for Russell Christopher's blog, we now know that the final release of SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 is very close to going live. I will update this blog when the download link is known. I listed the SP2 major BI-related enhancements in this blog. The most significant ones (RS-SharePoint integration, enhanced Excel OLAP and data mining features) makes SP2 a major milestone in…
Read articleIt's time for my annual presentation for the Atlanta.MDF group. This time, the topic will be the SSRS-SharePoint integration mode with SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 which I blogged about before. I've uploaded the PowerPoint slides to my website.
Read articleNow that I've read the Analysis Services Performance Guide (or shall we call it a mini-book) which I announced in my previous blog, I found it to be a great read. I'd recommend it to anyone who would like to get more insights not only about performance tuning UDM but also about the inner workings of the server. Some caveats… The guide doesn't answer the…
Read articleThe highly-anticipated Analysis Services 2005 performance whitepaper is finally here. I found a few things intresting glancing at it: This is a colossal work spanning some 120 pages (no wonder it took so long [:)]. The guide was written by the top architects on the SSAS team. It specifically references SQL Server 2005 SP2 probably because SP2 brings many performance optimizations to SSAS. The guide mentions a new aggregation utility (Appendix C)…
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