A journey through database heaven & hell (and other stuff)
Archive for the ‘SQL 2008’ Category.
This is a pretty good resource for those people wanting to get started with the latest versions of the Microsoft BI stack.
Download details: SQL Server 2008 R2 Update for Developers Training Kit (January 2011 Update)
Sadly, out of the box, you can’t connect from BIDS 2008 (the SQL 2008 or 2008 R2 version) to TFS 2010. I guess this will come with Denali where hopefully the new Juneau Development Environment will be integrated with TFS 2010.
I managed to get SQL Server 2008 R2 BI development tools (BIDS 2008) to work with TFS 2010 by doing the following:
1. Install BI Development Tools that come with SQL Server 2008 R2
2. Install VS2008 Team Explorer (for BIDS/VS2008 from MSFT available here)
3. Install VS2008 Service Pack 1 (available here)
4. Install VS2008 SP1 Forward Compatibility Update for TFS 2010 (available here)
Once I had done that, I was able to connect to a TFS 2010 Project and successfully check VS2008 projects in and out of source control, raise bugs etc.
Have attached a few screen grabs showing the integration from BIDS and also from the Web Client Portal (basically Sharepoint for TFS) showing some of the out of the box dashboard stuff.
Note that when entering a TFS server to connect to in BIDS, a change from TFS 2008 means that you now need to fully qualify your TFS Project
When asked for which TFS Server to connect to, type http://VM2008BITFS:8080/TFS (assuming you use default ports etc)
Team Web Access in TFS 2010
Portal Dashboard in TFS 2010
BIDS check-in & source control access (similar to TFS 2008)
Live from the conference call
Just 20 months after the release of SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 R2 (“Gemini”/”Kilimanjaro”) is today released to manufacturing…
The conference call featured Ted Kummert and Tom Casey of Microsoft.
Parallel Data Warehouse (project “Madison”) will be released later in the year.
The MSDEV people are about to launch a series of training courses for Master Data Services that covers early concepts, setup, model building, configuration, security model setup and the object model. This should be a great series and promises to be a solid introduction to the product.
Well, I finally got around to taking a look at R2 and specifically Master Data Services (due mostly to some strange decisions on my current data migration project).
First impressions – I actually quite like it. I can see that it is going to require some deep late-night learning to completely get my head around it all but it’s certainly not what I would call a Version 1 product (actually given that it’s born out of Stratature +EDM it’s more like version 4/5) . The new web based UI is pretty clunky though and for sure left me a little frustrated at times. However mosts of my other issues primarily centred around “de-nannying” Windows Server 2008 R2… all I can say (from a guy who likes to be fairly agile) is AAAAAARRRRGGGGHHH!
So here was the set up.
Virtual Server
SQL Server
Some things I needed to do for later on but may as well have done here
After the SQL Install, you need to run the MDS install from the SQL Install Media.
Rather than reinvent the wheel, I will point you to the msdn installation area and two excellent posts to get installed, web app configured (this took me a couple of attempts until I found Sutha’s article) and run in some test data to see how it works.
Baby Steps (Nick Barclay’s 7 step tutorials)
And the result was this
first hierarchy
One last useful link – when you are importing data, there are a set of error codes applied to the datasets (nice touch). The problem is that they are not documented anywhere (crap touch…attention to detail!!). The result, I spent a couple of hours looking for ERR210000 and what I might have done wrong only to find from Kirk’s helpful list that ERR210000 means “all is well” (great “ERR” can now mean “OK”)
Have a play…
It’s available today for Technet & MSDN subscribers…
SQL Server 2008 R2 is the next generation of the Microsoft SQL Server database platform, planned for release in the first half of calendar year 2010. MSDN and TechNet Subscribers can download the SQL Server 2008 R2 November CTP today. Non-subscribers will be able to download the November CTP later this month. The R2 release brings significant new capabilities and enhancements that can help your business keep pace with today’s growing and changing data management needs. Increase productivity and reduce data management costs by taking advantage of an even more scalable platform with comprehensive database and application management tools. SQL Server 2008 R2 helps users to build rich analysis and reports and helps organizations improve the quality of their data. Find out more, download the Community Technology Preview pre-release and let us know what you think. Also, join the SQL Server communities around the world and the SQL Server development team in the conversation.
Here’s a link to a useful article by Kristen Hodges about using the new 2008 MERGE SQL construct to carry out Type 1 & Type 2 Dimension updates
Based on our experience, this is certainly worth a look over the old SCD component – we have seen some major performance improvements using MERGE over the SCD components (and other workarounds that we had previously used).
I'm a Business Intelligence Architect/Developer. I spend my working life working with BI tools such as QlikView, SQL Server, Analysis Services, Sharepoint and other well known BI tools. Thought I'd share some stuff with others who may or may not be interested...