My colleagues at SolidQ and I have been working with Microsoft to produce the Metro training materials for SQL Server 2008 R2. We've using those materials to train other trainers around the world. (If anyone will be in Reading in the UK next week, ping...(read more)

It's common to want to embed custom code within reports in Reporting Services. One thing I don't like is the inclusion of anything that looks like business logic directly in the reports. However, formatting functions, etc. seem totally appropriate. If...(read more)

DevWeek is on again this year http://www.devweek.com Should be good to catch up with many of my European colleagues again. DevWeek is on March 15 - 19 at the Barbican Centre in London. The early bird pricing runs till 19th February. A number of my SolidQ...(read more)

I spent quite a while earlier trying to make an RDP connection to another system on my network. The error message from the RDP client was: Your computer could not connect to another console session on the remote computer because you already have another...(read more)

Yesterday's blog post on the need for contracts for stored procedures caused a lot of comments and email. One of the most interesting comments came from Jamie Thomson regarding return values. Jamie's totally correct on this. Return values should be part...(read more)

One thing that seems confusing to people when they first look at StreamInsight is that there are several development models: 1. Implicit Server 2. Explicit Server 3. IObservable/IObserver Implicit server is fairly straightforward. You define your input...(read more)

Increasingly, developers are using tools that try to automate code generation when dealing with databases. Stored procedures have been a thorn in the side of this. Mostly that's because it's difficult to obtain the metadata that is really needed. RowSets...(read more)

One of the key decisions you'll make when working with StreamInsight is the payload that will be carried by each event. Events contain and EventKind (which is related to whether they're inserting a new event or modifying an existing one), some temporal...(read more)

Another item I had on the Connect site was about pagination. I wanted to be able to restart page numbering within a report. In my case, this was because I wanted to output a set of invoices in a single report but I wanted each invoice to have its own...(read more)

I'm really happy with the Reporting Services team. I've had a few items on Connect where I've asked for features and they've come back and said "Done!". One of these is RenderFormat. I wanted the ability to change my formatting based upon where I was...(read more)

Continuing on the theme of describing StreamInsight, the next major concept is the Event Model. Events in StreamInsight are made up of two sets of data. One set is the basic information required by the StreamInsight engine such as when an event occurred....(read more)

Since I posted some StreamInsight info the other day, I've had a bunch of people asking me what StreamInsight is used for. StreamInsight is Microsoft's implementation of Complex Event Processing. This is not a new market but it is new territory for Microsoft....(read more)

Our Microsoft RD lead Kevin Schuler has asked us to post predictions for 2010 that will appear in a special edition of TheRegion. (Check out www.theregion.com for any interesting blog if you haven't already). Here's mine: Against all perceived wisdom,...(read more)

OK, I'm sure many will have already seen this but if you haven't: Create a folder in Windows 7 and rename it to: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} Then check out it's contents. That's seriously geeky and cool. Share this post: email it! |...(read more)

While building content for the upcoming Metro training for SQL Server 2008 R2, Bill Chesnut and I were puzzled about the Adjust option for AdvanceTimePolicy in the AdvanceTimeSettings for a stream. It was described in Books Online as causing the timestamp...(read more)

One of the new items coming with SQL Server 2008 R2 and Visual Studio 2010 is the Data-Tier Application. It is designed for (what are described as) departmental applications. What a "deparmental" application is deserves some thought. Mostly it relates...(read more)

I've been doing a lot of work lately with StreamInsight, coming in SQL Server 2008 R2. There are three development models you can use with StreamInsight: Implicit Server, Explicit Server and IObservable/IObserver. When I was working through material on...(read more)

Hi Folks, I was recently interviewed by Andrew and Michael and their Frankly Speaking podcast. Was great fun. The show is here: http://www.noisetosignal.com.au/franklyspeaking/?p=71 Greg Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! |...(read more)

I was doing some varied reading this morning and stumbled across this article by Paul Graham. I want to highlight this passage: " We now have several examples to prove that amateurs can surpass professionals, when they have the right kind of system to...(read more)

On a client site the other day, I came across a situation (unfortunately too common) where a column in a table was being used for two purposes. It could either hold an integer value or a string. Only about 100 rows out of many millions had the integer...(read more)