Coming up this November 18-21 st is the SQL PASS Conference in Seattle, WA (right in Microsoft’s backyard). See http://summit2008.sqlpass.org/ for all the details. This SQL PASS will be very special. The SQL Server engineering team is sending up to 300...

For my #SQLPASS Summit 2012 talk SQLCAT: Big Data – All Abuzz About Hive ( slides available to all | recording available to PASS Summit 2012 attendees ) I showed a mash-up of Hive, SQL Server, and Excel data that had been imported to PowerPivot...

In some cases, it is not obvious or easy to create a default measure in AS2005 cubes. In fact, there is no default measure by default, which can lead to long query times for queries that specify no measures. We have seen slow behavior with several query...

The SQL Customer Advisory Team has put the final touches on the site http://sqlcat.com/ which is our new hub for all things that are part of the SQLCAT! Our new site is a portal to all SQLCAT resources including: Top 10 Lists : Summary list of Best...

Author: Denny Lee Contributors: John Desch, Kevin Cox Reviewers: Robert Zare DRILLTHROUGH MDX Overview DRILLTHROUGH MDX is a very powerful way to drillthrough to your original data source of detail data that make up the aggregations...

Issue We have seeing some strange behavior when rebuilding indexes. · Total Fragmentation prior to rebuild is 99%. · You rebuild the index. (using both the alter index and the dbcc dbreindex) · Fragmentation is at 0% · You recheck fragmentation...

When a business grows internationally, its database system must support multilingual characters in tables. Businesses that previously needed to manage only non-Unicode information must now support database tables that include non-Unicode data types such...

Written by : Ed Katibah, Milan Stojic, Michael Rys, Nicholas Dritsas Technical reviewers : Chuck Heinzelman Introduction : Spatial Point Data queries require particular tuning efforts to enhance performance and improve overall application throughput...

The installation of PowerPivot for SharePoint can be a little complex at times - especially the PowerPivot for SharePoint multi-server farm scenario. In order to help with this, the Analysis Services team and the SQLCAT team came together and created...

As you may already know from Brian Moran's SQL Server Magazine article " SQLCAT to Offer Six Sessions at PASS ", the SQLCAT team will be providing 6 SQLCAT tracks at the 2007 SQLPASS event in Denver this year. Below are the SQLCAT tracks schedule. (The...

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/bestpractice/default.mspx

Four new best practices articles are available at the SQL Server Best Practices site on Technet ( http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/bb331794.aspx ). Two of the articles are on Analysis Services Processing and Querying best practices: ...

Are you going to SQLPASS in Seattle on Nov 3 rd -Nov 5 th ? If you are going or even thinking about it, then read about how you can spend some quality time with the SQLCAT team. We will be there with our famous ugly lime green shirts, so you won’t miss...

Identifying and Resolving MDX Query Performance Bottlenecks in SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services There are a variety of things that you can do to improve the performance of an individual MDX query. To begin, you must identify the source(s) of the performance...

Scale-Out Querying with Analysis Services Using SAN Snapshots

The database system in a company that is growing internationally must support multilingual characters in tables with Unicode data types. Existing d atabases that support only non-Unicode information must be migrate d from non-Unicode data type to Unicode...

If a report does not use formatted cell values, query time can be reduced. An example is a Reporting Services report that does its own formatting and therefore would not use the formatted values from SSAS. By returning only the value of the cell and not...

SQL Server 2008 is just around the corner. SQLCAT has been working with our customers and partners implementing pre-release builds. We have a lot good lessons learned to share, here are some of the upcoming best practices papers: · Index Defragmentation...

After the great work from the ETL World Record (for more information, refer to our other blog at: http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlcat/archive/2008/09/18/scaling-heavy-network-traffic-with-windows.aspx ), Thomas and I (with the help of many others) have created...

Check out the new look and feel of the sqlcat.com ! Now you have easy access and views of our Top 10 Lists, Technical Notes, Whitepapers, and Toolbox. As well, now our blogs our mirrored to sqlcat.com for easy access to all SQLCAT tips, best practices...

SQLCAT members have published several tools on Codeplex and other places. They are all consolidated here at SQLCAT.com. http://sqlcat.com/toolbox/default.aspx

Many Analysis Services applications query members to populate a dropdown or find those that match some criteria – starting or ending with a string, existing with other members, having a member property with a certain value, whatever. For example, say...

When I talk to people about adding self-service BI to their company's environment I generally get a list of reasons why it won't work. Some things I commonly hear: I can't get anyone in IT or on the business side to even try it. The business...

For those of you whom want to know a little more about precision considerations for Analysis Services users, please check out this recently released whitepaper at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=bae8beec-9892-4ecd-a9db-292254895f9c&displaylang...

You can check out the three new Best Practices Articles Predeployment I/O Best Practices http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/bestpractice/pdpliobp.mspx by Mike Ruthruff Partial Database Availability http://www.microsoft.com/technet...