The trouble with data…

Hey… they stole my blog title…..

On the SQL Server 2008 R2 site… what did I find…?

Would you Adam ‘n Eve it?

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog : Announcing SharePoint Server 2010 Preliminary System Requirements

Another key link for the 2010 Microsoft BI stack release wave

Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog : Announcing SharePoint Server 2010 Preliminary System Requirements

The Microsoft Office 2010 IT Blog

Something to keep an eye on as we move towards what is pretty likely to be Office 2010 by all accounts…

The Microsoft Office 2010 IT Blog

SQL Server 2008 SP1 Released

Now RTM, SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1

Download Here

Summary Functionality:

• Slipstream – You are now able to integrate the base installation with service packs (or Hotfixes) and install in a single step.
• Service Pack Uninstall – You are now able to uninstall only the Service Pack (without removing the whole instance)
• Report Builder 2.0 Click Once capability

SQLBits IV

Went up to Manchester for SQLBits yesterday. For those who don’t know, it’s the largest SQL Server conference in Europe with 28 sessions & same number of speakers (The likes of Simon Sabin, Jamie Thompson, Chris Webb, Allan Mitchell etc) – Not really a place for huge learning experiences, however great for networking and I always pick up a few golden nuggets in most of the sessions.

Davide Mauri presented an excellent session on SSIS Logging & Auditing, an area that causes many people problems – and one where I feel that the lack of “out of the box” features from Microsoft actually promotes laziness and poor practice (i.e. people just don’t bother because it’s so hard!) As he himself says

If you’re using Sql Server 2005/2008 Integration Services, you should know that the packages you’ve created can be launched via DTExec or SQL Server Agent. In both cases you’ll find that, though an extensive logging infrastucture seems to be present, logged information doesn’t really help you to understand why and how a package that has always run correctly someday decides to go wrong.

Anyway, check out the website for DTExec and the associated Codeplex site – it may well save you time and trouble, even if it’s only debugging your SSIS packages.

Another excellent session was from Tomislav Piasevoli on using the Axis() command in MDX – check out his blog – not everything he proposes would meet Mosha’s approval, but used in the right context, some of the approaches are excellent!

All in all a good day – also good to see some friends there, both old and new & be able to share a few free beers afterward. The less said about the “Stoke Singers” on the train home the better…luckily following 3 or 4 bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale I slept through most of their rendition of “there were sixteen noisy tossers on the train”

The Steve Rule

On Friday I spent the day with Lawyers, Accountants and a few programmers/developers, discussing data migration and reporting requirements for a new claims handling system.

It reminded me that the change of direction that I decided upon (from Accounting to Business Intelligence) a few years ago was essentially a good move. Actually, this shouldn’t be a bad reflection on the Accounting company of the day, just that it served to remind me that BI offers so much more variation to me than ensuring that the books balance

The meeting also reminded me of “The Steve Rule” first seen a while back at the Daily WTF. This rule allows for the fact that in a random sample of programmers, there will be more named Steve then there will be females… Well, yesterday’s room did contain about five Steve’s and only three women so maybe there is some truth in it after all.

Report Builder 2.0 “Click Once Launch” for SSRS 2008 SP1

As mentioned in the previous post, Report Builder 2.0 will be available in the forthcoming SP1 of SQL Server 2008 (currently in CTP - you can get it here)

In the current version, it is the old  Report Builder 1.0 that is installed and launched when you click the link shown below.

Once you have applied the service pack, the ability to deploy/launch RB 2.0 is available, however there are a couple of configuration steps to fulfil, as following the SP, the launcher will still default to RB 1.0

Firstly, you need to find the report server application location on your server, the default location being

\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSRS10.MSSQLSERVER\Reporting Services\ReportServer

Within this folder you will see a folder named ReportBuilder

SP1 has made some additional files available here - notice the addition of the following app ReportBuilder_2_0_0_0.application

Now, I can’t tell you if this is the “correct” way to do this, but it worked for me

1. Rename the ReportBuilder.application and ReportBuilderLocalIntranet.application files (I just added .old extension)
2. Rename ReportBuilder_2_0_0_0.application files to be ReportBuilder.application AND ReportBuilderLocalIntranet.application
3. Browse to your ReportServer
4. Try Launching ReportBuilder

You should now see something like this

And so we now can launch RB 2.0 from the report server!