Business Intelligence and Report Ramblings...

SQL Pass – Seattle 2009 – Day 4

Steve Carroll — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:51:42 GMT

Keynote : Wow… I feel smarter now. David Dewitt, a Microsoft Technical Fellow who works in the Data and Storage Platform Division, presented this morning all I can say is WOW. If I had professors in college that could speak half as well...(read more)

SQL Pass – Seattle 2009 – Day 3

Steve Carroll — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 02:12:57 GMT

Bright and early this AM. I couldn’t sleep this morning and found myself up and awake at some crazy hour of the dark. Not wanting to force sleep when I’ll be going home to the east coast soon enough, I decided to take a walk and went down...(read more)

SQL Pass – Seattle 2009 – Day 2

Steve Carroll — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:35:05 GMT

OK… I’ve started to follow up on my promise to document my experiences here at SQL Pass. So on for my breakdown of my day 2. Keynote : Attended the keynote presentations from Bob Muglia and Ted Kummert. Bob brought a great history...(read more)

SQL Pass – Seattle 2009 – Day 1

Steve Carroll — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:24:24 GMT

Well… I realize that it has been a little while since I’ve blogged. Apologies for the delay, but I’ve been slightly distracted at work. Since I’ve last posted, I’ve spent a great deal of time working in SQL 2008 and have had the opportunity...(read more)

SQL Server 2005 SP3 - Shipped

Steve Carroll — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 15:10:00 GMT

After much waiting and grumbling from the SQL Server community, the much anticipated service pack 3 for SQL Server 2005 shipped on 12/15/08. Finally we have a single avenue to apply all of our rollup packages that is fully regression tested. I've been...(read more)

SQL Server 2008 Upgrade Information

Steve Carroll — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:06:31 GMT

I came across a fantastic piece of information for those who are looking to upgrade their existing SQL Server 2000 or 2005 instances to SQL Server 2008. I know from past experience that it is no fun flying into this type of upgrade blind so this is a...(read more)

Security Guidance for SQL Server

Steve Carroll — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 16:48:28 GMT

In my eager attempt yesterday to post my findings on SQL Server 2008 great new security features (read more here ) I neglected to provide some valuable security information I have accumulated over the last couple of years for the other editions of SQL...(read more)

Security Features in SQL Server 2008

Steve Carroll — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 19:30:43 GMT

As most DBA's are aware, applications sometimes store sensitive information. This may be Social Security numbers, credit card information, salary information... and data owners have a concern that prying eyes may be reviewing this sensitive data without...(read more)

SQL Server 2008 Features by Edition Breakdown

Steve Carroll — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 19:28:23 GMT

I've been helping people with SQL Server for quite a while now, and I continually hunt for information regarding what features are available in which edition of SQL Server. Well, SQL Server 2008 has improved in many ways, including new edition packages...(read more)

Report Builder Gotcha'

Steve Carroll — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:17:00 GMT

Using SQL Server 2005 sp3, running on 32bit Vista with sp1. I'm creating report models using Business Intelligence Development Studio and as I go to edit an expression I find that I get a message "Access to the path 'C:\Windows\system32\config' is denied."...(read more)

Best Practice Guidance

Steve Carroll — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 21:15:00 GMT

Ok... more often than not, I'm asked about best practices for SQL Server. I figured I'd share my best practices bookmarks in no particular order to hopefully give you a new resource to find these. I'd love to hear from you on what you use and what you...(read more)

SQL Server 2005 SP3

Steve Carroll — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 19:04:03 GMT

Patch time for SQL Server... Well almost. SP3 for SQL Server 2005 has been in CTP for a while now (10/27/08) and all is appearing to be really good. I finally got around to installing the beta patch the other night on my home servers and experienced no...(read more)

Changes in SQL Server 2008 Clustering

Steve Carroll — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 17:29:21 GMT

First and most important thing to remember when working on designing a SQL Server cluster is it is entirely dependent upon the underlying base architecture that you choose to implement for the operating system. Here, it really pays to do your homework...(read more)

Embrace the use of Conditional Formatting

Steve Carroll — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 19:31:00 GMT

One of the most underused functions I have found in Reporting Services is the use of conditional formatting. Lets face it, in today's Ridilin influenced ADD society, we need to draw attention to significant events. Lets face it, Outlook, pops up alerts...(read more)

Funny use of Excel

Steve Carroll — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 19:43:00 GMT

Technorati Tags: Excel Ok... I'm going to stretch a little bit on this one. Everyone knows the power Excel brings to the table in terms of data processing and crunching numbers. Someone pointed me to a funny web-site where the band AC/DC has created a...(read more)