Angus Logan : SQL Server

Greg Low gets his Podcast on with the SQL Down Under Podcast

anguslogan — Tue, 24 May 2005 13:13:00 GMT

Listen to Greg here.

Rock on!

Service Pack 2 of SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services Released

anguslogan — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 05:24:00 GMT

I just got this email from Beta Mail announcing the release of SQL 20000 Reporting Services SP 2.

---

Hi Everyone,

The Reporting Services team has just released Service Pack 2 of SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services! The service pack is available for download from the Microsoft Download Center: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=502C0D89-1308-4662-8F58-CEC55EF1235B&displaylang=en

You also can get to the SP2 download information from the following sites:

Reporting Services Home: http://www.microsoft.com/sql/reporting/default.asp
Reporting Services Downloads: http://www.microsoft.com/sql/reporting/downloads/default.asp
SQL Server Service Packs: http://www.microsoft.com/sql/downloads/servicepacks.asp
SQL Server home page http://www.microsoft.com/sql/default.mspx

On behalf of the Reporting Services team, thank you for your involvement in releasing this service pack. With your input, we identified and addressed major issues -- thus making SP2 and Reporting Services as a whole a much better product.

Kind Regards,

The SQL Server Reporting Service Product Team

----

Key Functional Enhancements

SharePoint Web parts enable you to explore and view reports located on a report server by using Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services or SharePoint Portal Server.
Reports can now be printed directly from within Internet Explorer. A Microsoft ActiveX control is provided to support a rich client-side printing experience including full page preview.

----

A lis of the bugs that have been fixed in SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services SP2

For additional information about the bugs that have been fixed in SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services Service Pack 2 Beta, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

872774 : FIX: You may receive a zero-byte attachment in e-mail when e-mail subscriptions are sent to Lotus Domino e-mail servers by SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services
885286 FIX: The Reporting Services trace log file size may increase unexpectedly
883675 FIX: Invalid values appear in a chart if you change the default color for the value series of the chart in SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services Service Pack 1
875518 FIX: Width of a list that contains an embedded matrix grows unexpectedly when you export a report to PDF format
885444 FIX: PDF files that are exported by SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services can only be opened by using Adobe Acrobat Reader
883501 FIX: You receive a "Width of excel cell in the excel sheet exceeded the maximum limit of 1726.5 points" error message when you export a Reporting Services report to Excel
889400 FIX: Description of the problems that are fixed in hotfix build 8.0.902 in Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services
883647 FIX: When you render a report to a PDF file, the page breaks are incorrect in SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services
896374 An image is not repeated on every page of a PDF file after you click to select the "Repeat Report Item with data region on every page" check box and export the report to a PDF file in SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services
897126 FIX: Rendering of a report in Office Excel may unexpectedly contain margins when you export the report from SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services
897123 FIX: A hidden report table may unexpectedly appear in an Office Excel worksheet when the table was exported from SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services

The following Microsoft Knowledge Base article describes a new feature in SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services Service Pack 2:

897121 How to disable client-side printing by using the EnableClientPrinting system property in SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services Service Pack 2

Another Data#3 consultant - Stephen Mew - presenting at Queensland SQL Server User Group (QSSUG)

anguslogan — Fri, 21 Jan 2005 07:26:00 GMT

QLD SQL SERVER USERS GROUP JANUARY MEETING NOTICE

Hi Folks,

Thanks to all that attended our meeting last month and to Mark Morton for his entertaining session.

This month we have a SQL Server 2000 topic.

Stephen Mew will present "High Availability for Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Using Failover Clustering and Log Shipping".

About Stephen:

Stephen started at D.E.C. on OpenVMS Migration to NT. He was at Microsoft Redmond for 5 Years on the SQL and XP Teams as a developer. In the SQL area he was working on High Availability and in the XP area he was working on the Real Time Streaming Buffer Engine for Media Player 10. Stephen lists his career highlights as having done some work for Bill Gates for Comdex, the Terra Server Upgrade and working on Barnes and Noble and Buy.com. He is now at Data#3 as a Senior Consultant in Toowong working for Pat Murphy.

He has lived in 4 continents (Oz, US, Africa, Europe), likes to build rockets, fly light aircraft and scuba dive for fun. He says he throws great BBQ's but anybody who talks geek or computers gets swiftly thrown out by his wife due to its thoroughly antisocial nature!

Our web site is at www.qssug.org and contains a repository of materials from past meetings and details of upcoming meetings. Other Australian SQL-Server related material can be found at www.sqlserver.org.au.

If you will be attending, please RSVP via email to greg@qssug.org to help us plan refreshments (normally pizzas and drinks).

WHERE & WHEN

Be there: 5:45pm for 6:00pm start Thursday, 27th January 2005

Finish: around 7:30pm

Location: Microsoft Brisbane Office, Level 9, Waterfront Place, 1 Eagle St, Brisbane.

Kind Regards

Greg Low

MSDN Webcast: New Features in Reporting Services Service Pack 2 (Level 400)

anguslogan — Sun, 19 Dec 2004 17:57:00 GMT

Man they are pumping out the Service Packs for SQL RS… anyway.

Via Patrick's Blog

Monday, January 10, 2005 - 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM Pacific Time

Geoff Snowman, MSDN DEVELOPER COMM CHAMPION, Microsoft Corp.

Service Pack 2 for Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services contains two improved features: client-side printing and Microsoft SharePoint integration, in addition to the usual rollup of any outstanding hot fixes. In this webcast, we'll investigate these two features, demonstrating both the print dialog box and the new Report Viewer and Report Explorer Web parts.

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032266509&Culture=en-US

Technical Demo Toolkit for Microsoft Gold Partners

anguslogan — Wed, 08 Dec 2004 18:35:00 GMT

Via Steve Luper

The Technical Demonstration Toolkit helps you quickly set up demonstration environments to showcase Microsoft software and solutions to your customers.

At the 2004 Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto, Steve Ballmer promised partners a selection of the best demonstrations that Microsoft uses with customers today. The Technical Demonstration Toolkit includes 66 different demonstrations featuring Microsoft Windows XP, the Microsoft Office System, SQL Server, Exchange Server, SharePoint Portal Server, and more.

Microsoft Gold Certified Partners and Certified Partners will receive the Technical Demonstration Toolkit in the December Partner Monthly Box. More information and additional copies at https://partner.microsoft.com/global/40016133.

Lots of SQL Server 2005 Webcasts

anguslogan — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 23:36:00 GMT

There are heaps of webcasts for SQL Server 2005 coming up in December.

Check them out at http://msdn.microsoft.com/SQL/2005Webcasts/default.aspx

A brief list:

Overview of the new Developer features in SQL Server 2005-Level 200
Introducing the New SQL Server Management Studio-Level 100
SQL Server 2005 as a .NET Runtime Host-Level 100
Introducing XML in SQL Server 2005-Level 200
Introducing ADO.NET 2.0 for SQL Server 2005-Level 200
T-SQL Enhancements in SQL Server 2005-Level 200
The New Security Model in SQL Server 2005-Level 200
Introducing Web Services in SQL Server 2005-Level 200
Introducing Service Broker in SQL Server 2005-Level 200
Introducing Reporting Services for SQL Server 2005-Level 200
Introducing SQL Server Integration Services for SQL Server 2005-Level 200
Introducing SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services for Developers-Level 200
Introducing Full-Text Search in SQL Server 2005-Level 200
Introducing Replication in SQL Server 2005-Level 200
Introducing Notification Services in SQL Server 2005-Level 200

SQL Server Reporting Services SP2 and Web Parts

anguslogan — Thu, 11 Nov 2004 04:53:00 GMT

Via Patrick

Nice announcement on SQL Server Connections by Marco Russo:

Tom Rizzo yesterday at SQL Server Connections announced that Reporting Services SP2 is coming soom and it will bring us a SharePoint WebPart to display reports.

If you can't wait however, read Bryan Like's posting on how to create your own Reporting Services Web part here.

SQL Reporting Services Packs for CRM/Exchange & Financials Sample

anguslogan — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 02:33:00 GMT

Finally some product centric reports. Looks great for the products & for SQL Reporting Services.

SQL Server 2000 Report Pack for Microsoft CRM
Download this set of six predefined CRM-based reports and a sample database that let you easily visualize and author managed reports to support key sales activities. - I am excited about this because using Crystal Reports in Microsoft CRM is not a pleasant experience; but I would like to see how their support agreements stay intact with users directly querying the database (this isn't allowed in some other Microsoft products eg. Content Management Server)

Reports Included

Account Chart - Shows a doughnut chart of revenue grouped by Account, Industry, Salesperson, State/Province, Status, or Territory. You can also filter the report to show the groupings for only the top n accounts.
Account Details - Shows detailed account information. This report lets you group the Account Details by City, Industry, Salesperson, State/Province, Status, Territory, or ZIP/Postal Code. You can also filter by the first letter of the Account Name, and view results in the document map.
Customer Account Details - Shows detailed account information for a single customer. This report has the same layout as the Account Details report, and it is a subreport linked to the Pipeline report.
Knowledge Base List - Shows a list of knowledge base articles by subject. This report is organized in a table to show what articles exist for each subject and the count of articles by status area for each subject area.
Lead Summary - Displays a summarized list and chart of lead information. This report includes a chart to show the percentage of leads by Salesperson, Lead Source, or State/Province, followed by a table that displays a detailed list of leads grouped by the selected parameter.
Pipeline - Shows details about potential customers that are in the pipeline. This report includes a chart embedded into a table, as well as attributes of the opportunities. The report can be sorted ascending or descending by a number of fields: Customer, Close %, Est Close, Est Value, Salesperson, and Status. This report is also linked to the Customer Account Details report.

SQL Server 2000 Report Pack for Microsoft Exchange
Download this set of 13 predefined Exchange-based reports and a sample database that let you easily visualize and author managed reports for e-mail administration.

Reports Included

Current - All Mailboxes (By Folder) - Shows folder statistics over all folders. Tip: Be on the lookout for especially large mailboxes.
Current - Folder Tree Sizes (By User) - Shows the folder tree and size of items contained within each folder of a specific user's folder. Drill down for breakdown. Tip: Find the largest folders and the largest items so you can free up space.
Folder Tree Sizes (All) - Shows the folder tree and size of items contained within each folder for all user's folders since the last extraction. Drill down for breakdown. Tip: Find the largest folders and the largest items so you can free up space.
Outgoing - Sent E-mails for User (Plain Table) - Compares the number of items found in users' Sent Items box. Tip: The highest send the most e-mail, which often correlates to the hardest workers.
Outgoing Sent E-mails for User (With Graph) - Compares the number of items found in users' Sent Items box. Tip: The highest send the most email, which often correlates to the hardest workers.
Outgoing Sent E-mails for User (With Bar Chart) - Compares the number of items found in users' Sent Items box. Drill down for breakdown. Tip: The highest send the most email, which often correlates to the hardest workers.
Outgoing - Busy Receivers of Our E-mail - The top 50 people who were sent email from members of our organization.
Incoming - Received E-mails for User (By Date) - Compares the number of items found in users' Sent Items box. Drill down for breakdown. Tip: The highest receive the most e-mail, they probably stress out the most.
Incoming - Busy Receivers of Incoming E-mail - Shows how many emails were received into peoples' inbox.
Outgoing - By Keyword - Examines the content of mail items to indicate which key phrases are being used by employees based on items in their Sent Items folders. Tip: Configure with your product names to see the e-mail activity by product.
Outgoing - Largest E-mail Senders - Shows the people who sent e-mail with the largest sizes.
Extraction Log (All Records) - Shows all of the Extraction Log records, including time to extract data from Exchange and store to the database for each user.
Extraction Log (Last Extraction) - Shows the Extraction Log records for the most recent extraction, including time to extract data from Exchange and store to the database for each user.

SQL Server 2000 Report Pack for Financial Reporting
Download this set of six predefined financial reports and a sample database that let you easily visualize and author managed reports to support key finance activities.

Reports Included (to work with the FabriKam FinDBSample)

Balance Sheet - FabriKam, Inc. Balance Sheet by Fiscal Year and Current Period. This report illustrates the use of a table to group Account Balances to emulate a standard Balance Sheet.
IncomeStmtCurYTD-Company - FabriKam, Inc. Income Statement for the current month and year to date by Company, Fiscal Year, and Current Period. This report includes a table to display income statement line items and also displays drilldown features.
IncomeStmtCurYTD-Region - FabriKam, Inc. Income Statement for the current month and year to date by Company, Fiscal Year, Current Period, and Region. This report includes a table to display income statement line items and also displays drilldown features. Parameters let you filter by different dimensions.
IncomeStmtTrended - FabriKam, Inc. Income Statement by Company, Fiscal Year, and trended over periods. This report includes a matrix to display trends of different line items in an income statement. It also includes a chart that graphs Revenues trended over periods, which can be set with parameters. Drilldown and drillthrough features are also inlcuded.
Trial Balance - The trial balance is an arithmetic check of the double-entry system. It checks that both aspects of every transaction have been recorded accurately and that for every debit entry there is an equal value for its corresponding credit. The trial balance provides figures for the balance sheet including assets and liabilities.
Variance Report - The Variance Report contains actual, budget, and variance information for FabriKam, Inc. Variances are calculated by taking Budget – Actual for Expense items and Actual – Budget for Income items on the report. This report is sorted in descending order, with negative variances highlighted to aid the business community to identify which income statement line items have the largest absolute dollar value variance in the current period.

Some content & images have been copied from www.microsoft.com

SQL Server Health and History Tool (SQLH2)

anguslogan — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 02:07:00 GMT

I'm loving all the new tools coming out for SQL DBA's - check out the SQL Server Best Practice Analyzer as well.

The Microsoft SQL Server Health and History Tool (SQLH2) allows you to collect information from instances of SQL Server, store this information, and run reports against the data in order to determine how SQL Server is being used.

You then view this data using SQL Server Reporting Services using "SQL Server Health and History Tool (SQLH2) Reports"

Overview
SQLH2 collects four main types of information:

Feature Usage – What services/features are installed, running and level of workload on the service.
Configuration Settings – Machine, OS and SQL configuration settings, SQL instance and database metadata.
Uptime of the SQL Server service
Performance Counters (optional) – Used to determine performance trends

System Requirements

Supported Operating Systems - Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, Windows 2000 Service Pack 2, Windows 2000 Service Pack 3, Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, Windows NT, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP

Download it from here

-by way of Darrell Norton's blog -

Get Ready for SQL Server 2005 with Two New Courses

anguslogan — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 02:04:00 GMT

Ask your trainers about these 3-day courses, designed for database developers and database administrators who are experienced on SQL Server 2000 or 7.0 and want to "upgrade" their skills to SQL Server 2005:

Course 2733A: Updating Your Database Administration Skills to Microsoft SQL Server 2005
Course 2734A: Updating Your Database Development Skills to Microsoft SQL Server 2005

- from MCP flash newsletter -

I would be interested in finding out when the exams are available.

Deploying Reporting Services Reports - Damn this sh*t is cool !

anguslogan — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 00:24:00 GMT

So the Solution with it All can only be deployed by installer scripts because:

Its a damn good way to deploy applications
It stops 'oh just deploy that file and it will work'
Even a monkey could install this solution across 5 servers

Problem being... Visual Studio .NET 2003 has Web Setup Projects, Database Projects etc. so I can easily deploy all my web apps, my sql databases etc. but there is no easy way to deploy SQL Reporting Services Reports...

Guess Again...

With a bit of R&D and some help from Teo Lachev (Author: "Microsoft Reporting Services in Action") I re-configured the ReportPublishing Sample.

The deployment solution consists of:

Base Folder - C:\Deployment\Anguss_Reports

Anguss Timesheets.rdl - a standard Report Definition created with VS.NET 2003
Anguss Phone Bill By Person.rdl - a standard Report Definition created with VS.NET 2003

Deploy.bat
rs -i PublishReports.rss -s http://localhost/reportserver -v parentFolder="Angus's Reports"

PublishReports.rss
Dim definition As [Byte]() = Nothing
Dim warnings As Warning() = Nothing
Dim parentPath As String = "/" + parentFolder
Dim filePath As String = "C:\Deployment\Anguss_Reports\"

Public Sub Main()

rs.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials
Dim name As String

    'Create the parent folder
    Try
        rs.CreateFolder(parentFolder, "/", Nothing)
        Console.WriteLine("Parent folder created: {0}", parentFolder)
    Catch e As Exception
        Console.WriteLine(e.Message)
    End Try
    CreateSampleDataSource()

PublishReport("Anguss Timesheets")
PublishReport("Anguss Phone Bill By Person")

End Sub

Public Sub CreateSampleDataSource()
Dim name As String = "AngussDatasource"
Dim parent As String = "/" + parentFolder

    'Define the data source definition.
    Dim definition As New DataSourceDefinition()
    definition.CredentialRetrieval = CredentialRetrievalEnum.Integrated
    definition.ConnectString = "data source=(local);initial catalog=AngussDatabase"
    definition.Enabled = True
    definition.EnabledSpecified = True
    definition.Extension = "SQL"
    definition.ImpersonateUser = False
    definition.ImpersonateUserSpecified = True
    'Use the default prompt string.
    definition.Prompt = Nothing
    definition.WindowsCredentials = False

Try
rs.CreateDataSource(name, parent, False, definition, Nothing)

Catch e As Exception
Console.WriteLine(e.Message)
End Try

End Sub

Public Sub PublishReport(ByVal reportName As String)
    Try
        Dim stream As FileStream = File.OpenRead(filePath + reportName + ".rdl")
        definition = New [Byte](stream.Length) {}
        stream.Read(definition, 0, CInt(stream.Length))
        stream.Close()

    Catch e As IOException
        Console.WriteLine(e.Message)
    End Try

Try
warnings = rs.CreateReport(reportName, parentPath, False, definition, Nothing)

        If Not (warnings Is Nothing) Then
            Dim warning As Warning
            For Each warning In warnings
                Console.WriteLine(warning.Message)
            Next warning

        Else
            Console.WriteLine("Report: {0} published successfully with no warnings", reportName)
        End If

    Catch e As Exception
        Console.WriteLine(e.Message)
    End Try
End Sub
pause

Hot Fix Hell ! - from now i'm calling Microsoft UK

anguslogan — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 00:20:00 GMT

7.50pm Friday - I'm writing one of my patented massive sql queries when I get a nice error "Server: Msg 4414, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 Could not allocate ancillary table for view or function resolution. The maximum number of tables in a query (256) was exceeded." I find that it is actually KB 828269.

So I jumped on the phone at about 7.59pm to 13 20 58 (Microsoft Support Australia) and request the hotfix.

8pm Friday - I'm then informed that they can't find the hotfix file on the server and I need to call back Monday to get this resolved (even though I impressed upon the Support Professional that our developer(s) were working over the weekend to delivery the system.

After calling a few other Australian numbers & an unreachable MCS consultant I decided to take this offshore.

A quick email to MCMS MVP (even though the hotfix was for SQL Server)Spencer Harbar (www.mcmsfaqs.com) got me the phone number of Microsoft UK Support.

1.55am Saturday - Supprisingly the phone was answered within 1 ring by a person(!) and they quickly took my request, created a case, transferred me to the SQL Team and then things started getting wierd...

Mike @ Microsoft Tech Support started taking the mickey out of me for working so late, he then told me without having to look up his records exactly where on www.microsoft.com I should look; the fact that I don't actually want that hotfix and there is a better 'security roll-up' I should download that included another 20 builds of fixes and the fact that it is publicly accessible.

He then took my mobile number; keep in mind I'm in Australia and he's in the UK and said he would call me in a few days to make sure the installation went OK and my problem was resolved.

As much as I love Microsoft Australia I think as I do most of my work between 6pm and 2am I'll just call Microsoft UK from now on.

2.11am Saturday - At the end of this the hotfix I applied only increased the number of tables/views I could reference by 4.

Time for a re-write.

The solution with it all!

anguslogan — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 00:10:00 GMT

I am working on a monster solution that is really testing all the integration capabilities of the Microsoft's product range:

Client

Citrix or Terminal Services
- Internet Explorer
- InfoPath

Datastore

SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition (clustered)

Custom Interfaces

ASP.NET

Microsoft Products

Server Platform

Windows Server 2003

Development Environment

Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 (4gb ram maxed out)
Virtual Network
All servers Virtualized
All developers Virtualised using Windows XP boxes accessed via Remote Desktop Client
Approx 50gb of Virtual machines

Integration

.NET WebServices

Security

SecureID
Active Directory (2003 native mode)

Other Possible products and/or considerations

Project Server for task tracking and resource planning
BizTalk 2004 for Integration

If this dosen't become a Microsoft Case study I don't know what I'll do !!!

How to license SQL Reporting Services

anguslogan — Sun, 03 Oct 2004 23:57:00 GMT

7.19.2004 | 7:48 pm

I have been trying to broaden my skillset by taking an intense interest in the licensing surrounding solutions I implement.

There seems to be a lot of confusion around licensing SQL Reporting Services.

I have done a lot of research into it and here are some key points:

There are 3 Editions of SQL RS (http://www.microsoft.com/sql/reporting/productinfo/features.asp)

Developer
Standard
Enterprise

SQL RS can be deployed in many different scenarios (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2000/deploy/rsdepgd.mspx)

Database + Report Server on same machine;
Database on one machine, report server on another machine;
Database on one machine, report server on multiple machines in a web farm;

SQL Reporting Services Consists of 2 Components

The configuration database
The Report Server application (website + windows service)

Think of SQL RS as not being 'free' - think of it as an add on to SQL Server (Developer/Standard/Enterprise) edition.

SQL RS must be installed on a machine that is licensed for SQL Server (either by processor or by CAL)

The edition of SQL RS that can be installed must correspond to the edition of SQL Server that is installed :

SQL Edition	SQL RS Editions
Developer Edition	Developer Edition
Standard Edition	Standard Edition
Enterprise Edition	Enterprise (or Standard but why?)

SQL Server Developer Edition --- is licensed to work with ----> SQL Reporting Services Developer Edition

SQL Server Enterprise Edition --- is licensed to work with ----> SQL Reporting Services Enterprise

SQL Server Enterprise Edition --- is licensed to work with ----> SQL Reporting Services Standard (I dont know why you would want to do this)

SQL Server Standard Edition --- is licensed to work with ----> SQL Reporting Services Standard Edition

If you are using SQL Server Standard Edition the 'Configuration Database' must be installed on the same physical machine as the 'Report Server'

If you are running this configuration:

Physical Box 1
- Report Server
Physical Box 2
- SQL Server
Edition: Enterprise Edition

If you are running this configuration:

Physical Box 1
- Report Server
- SQL Server
Edition: Standard Edition or Enterprise Edition

If you are running this configuration:

Physical Box 1

Report Server (web farm)

Physical Box 2

Report Server (web farm)

Physical Box 3

SQL Server

Edition: Enterprise Edition

You must use SQL Server Reporting Services Enterprise Edition if:

Want to use multiple Report Servers i.e.. clustering
Want to use Security Extensions (extremely complex and not usually used)
Data Driven Subscriptions

SQL Script to clean up transaction logs on NON PRODUCTION servers

anguslogan — Sun, 03 Oct 2004 23:52:00 GMT

7.13.2004 | 5:41 pm

When you are developing you are always constantly hitting your development databases thus blowing out the transaction log.

I have uploaded a script (http://www.thespoke.net/downloads/details.aspx?ArtifactID=41d12201-971e-47c3-b972-27a48b8bf229) that you can run on your DEVELOPMENT SQL Server(s) that truncates the Transaction logs.

On one of my development sql server's @ Data#3 the script free's up about 4gb on the hard drive.

A rational guide to SQL Server Reporting Services

anguslogan — Sun, 03 Oct 2004 23:42:00 GMT

7.12.2004 | 7:38 pm

I just purchased 'A rational guide to SQL Server Reporting Services'.
McGills book store in Brisbane City has it for $18.50 absolute bargin :)
I am recommending this book to all my reporting services clients.

Best Practices Analyzer Tool for Microsoft SQL Server 2000 1.0

anguslogan — Sun, 03 Oct 2004 23:40:00 GMT

Microsoft have released the SQL Server Best Practices Analyzer.

It lets you verify the implementation of common Best Practices. These best practices typically relate to the usage and administration aspects of SQL Server databases and ensure that your SQL Servers are managed and operated well.

You can download it at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displayla%20ng=en&familyid=B352EB1F-D3CA-44EE-893E-9E07339C1F22&displaylang=en

(this description was copied & modified from the site)

SQL Reporting Services Service Pack 1 Released

anguslogan — Sun, 03 Oct 2004 23:36:00 GMT

6.27.2004 | 2:53 pm

Microsoft have released the Service Pack 1 for SQL Reporting Services.

The Service Pack can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=580febf7-2972-40e7-bccf-6cd90ac2f464&displaylang=en

The service pack fixed several bugs (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=839796) and added the following features:

Excel rendering extension has been improved and now supports viewing in Excel 97 and 2000.
PDF rendering extension is more robust and has better performance.
Chart control provides more control over display styles.
References to external URLs (images and resources) from within a report are now supported.
Data caching behavior for report preview is now supported.
Newline in expressions is now supported.
The style of the HTML Viewer toolbar can now be modified through a style sheet.
New URL parameters offer more options for customizing report presentation at run time
Report Manager proxy persists authentication cookies so that they can be used by custom security extensions.
Hidden parameters are now supported.
Temporary snapshots can be compressed as well as stored on the file system.
Integrated security support for accessing report data sources can be disabled.

Zero to BI and Reporting Workshops

anguslogan — Sun, 03 Oct 2004 23:34:00 GMT

6.17.2004 | 7:57 pm

Microsoft running an event called Zero to BI and Reporting Workshop Series. The "Zero to BI and Reporting Workshop Series" incorporates "Zero to BI in Two Intense Days" and "Zero to Corporate Reporting in Two Intense Days". These two workshops will equip you to start building powerful BI applications and reports from the moment you get back to the office.

Costs
Early Bird $625 inc GST if registered by July 1;
$745 inc GST before the events.

Dates & Locations
Brisbane 12 July - 13 July 2004
Canberra 15 July - 16 July 2004
Adelaide 19 July - 20 July 2004
Perth 22 July - 23 July 2004
Melbourne 26 July - 27 July 2004
Sydney 29 July - 30 July 2004

More Info
http://www.microsoft.com/australia/events/zeroto/

-- most of this content was ripped off from the MS Australia site --

Integrating SQL Server Reporting Services with Windows SharePoint Services

anguslogan — Sun, 03 Oct 2004 23:32:00 GMT

6.17.2004 | 11:29 am

Check out the great SQL Reporting Services integration with Windows SharePoint Services via some custom written WebParts.

http://www.gotdotnet.com/Community/Workspaces/workspace.aspx?id=176e78a1-4d90-4860-9bd8-da93dffa8fd1

I will have a demo up and running shortly; email or MSN me (angus_logan@data3.com.au) if you would like the rundown.