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  • Unit test project doesn't recognize the classes it was generated from

    - by DougLeary
    I have a fairly simple file-system website consisting of one aspx page and several classes in separate .cs files. Everything is on my own HD. The web app itself builds and runs fine. Out of curiosity I decided to try out Visual Studio's nifty, easy-to-use unit test feature. So I opened each class file and clicked Create Unit Tests. VS generated a test project containing a set of test classes and some other files. Easy! But when I try to build or run the test project it throws a series of build errors, one for every class: The type or namespace name 'class-name' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?). Somebody asked if my test project has a reference to the original project. Well no, because the original project is a file-system website. It has no bin folder and no DLL, so there's nothing to reference as far as I can tell. I would think that since VS generated these unit tests it would generate whatever references it needs, but apparently not. Is generating unit tests for file-system web apps an undocumented no-no, or is there a magic trick to getting it to work?

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  • Best Way to View Generated Source of Webpage?

    - by jeremy
    I'm looking for a tool that will give me the proper generated source including DOM changes made by AJAX requests for input into W3's validator. I've tried the following methods: Web Developer Toolbar - Generates invalid source according to the doc-type (e.g. it removes the self closing portion of tags). Loses the doctype portion of the page. Firebug - Fixes potential flaws in the source (e.g. unclosed tags). Also loses doctype portion of tags and injects the console which itself is invalid HTML. IE Developer Toolbar - Generates invalid source according to the doc-type (e.g. it makes all tags uppercase, against XHTML spec). Highlight + View Selection Source - Frequently difficult to get the entire page, also excludes doc-type. Is there any program or add-on out there that will give me the exact current version of the source, without fixing or changing it in some way? So far, Firebug seems the best, but I worry it may fix some of my mistakes. Solution It turns out there is no exact solution to what I wanted as Justin explained. The best solution seems to be to validate the source inside of Firebug's console, even though it will contain some errors caused by Firebug. I'd also like to thank Forgotten Semicolon for explaining why "View Generated Source" doesn't match the actual source. If I could mark 2 best answers, I would.

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  • IIS 6+ASP.NET - many temp files generated

    - by moshe_ravid
    I have a ASP.NET + some .NET web-services running on IIS 6 (win 2003 server). The issue is that IIS is generating a lot (!) of files in "c:\WINDOWS\Temp" directory. a lot of files means thousands of files, which get to more than 3G of size so far. The files are generated by this command: C:\WINDOWS\SysWOW64\inetsrv "C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\csc.exe" /t:library /utf8output /R:"C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Temporary ASP.NET Files\vfagt\113819dd\db0d5802\assembly\dl3\fedc6ef1\006e24d8_3bc9ca01\VfAgentWService.DLL" /R:"C:\WINDOWS\assembly\GAC_MSIL\System.Web.Services\2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a\System.Web.Services.dll" /R:"C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\mscorlib.dll" /R:"C:\WINDOWS\assembly\GAC_MSIL\System.Xml\2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089\System.Xml.dll" /R:"C:\WINDOWS\assembly\GAC_MSIL\System\2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089\System.dll" /out:"C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\9i_i2bmg.dll" /debug- /optimize+ /nostdlib /D:_DYNAMIC_XMLSERIALIZER_COMPILATION "C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\9i_i2bmg.0.cs" The files in the temp directory are pairs of *.out & *.err, where the *.err file is zero size, and the *.out file contains the compilation output messages. What is causing IIS to generate so many files? How can I prevent it? UPDATE: The problem is that the command i described above (csc.exe) is being executed many (many) times, causing the .out & .err to be generated so many times, until it consumes the disk space. So - my question is: what is causing this command to run so many times? (i don't have that many .aspx & .asmx files in my web app). Thanks, Moe

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  • Duplicate C# web service proxy classes generated for Java types

    - by Sergey
    My question is about integration between a Java web service and a C# .NET client. Service: CXF 2.2.3 with Aegis databinding Client: C#, .NET 3.5 SP1 For some reason Visual Studio generates two C# proxy enums for each Java enum. The generated C# classes do not compile. For example, this Java enum: public enum SqlDialect { GENERIC, SYBASE, SQL_SERVER, ORACLE; } Produces this WSDL: <xsd:simpleType name="SqlDialect"> <xsd:restriction base="xsd:string"> <xsd:enumeration value="GENERIC" /> <xsd:enumeration value="SYBASE" /> <xsd:enumeration value="SQL_SERVER" /> <xsd:enumeration value="ORACLE" /> </xsd:restriction> </xsd:simpleType> For this WSDL Visual Studio generates two partial C# classes (generated comments removed): [System.CodeDom.Compiler.GeneratedCodeAttribute("System.Runtime.Serialization", "3.0.0.0")] [System.Runtime.Serialization.DataContractAttribute(Name="SqlDialect", Namespace="http://somenamespace")] public enum SqlDialect : int { [System.Runtime.Serialization.EnumMemberAttribute()] GENERIC = 0, [System.Runtime.Serialization.EnumMemberAttribute()] SYBASE = 1, [System.Runtime.Serialization.EnumMemberAttribute()] SQL_SERVER = 2, [System.Runtime.Serialization.EnumMemberAttribute()] ORACLE = 3, } [System.CodeDom.Compiler.GeneratedCodeAttribute("System.Xml", "2.0.50727.3082")] [System.SerializableAttribute()] [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlTypeAttribute(Namespace="http://somenamespace")] public enum SqlDialect { GENERIC, SYBASE, SQL_SERVER, ORACLE, } The resulting C# code does not compile: The namespace 'somenamespace' already contains a definition for 'SqlDialect' I will appreciate any ideas...

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  • Android - Where to store generated bitmaps?

    - by Josh
    I've got an app which dynamically generates anywhere from 6 to 100 small bitmaps for the user to move around the screen in a given session. I currently generate them in onCreate and store them to the sd card, so that after an orientation change I can grab them out of external storage and display them again. However, this takes time (the loading) and I'd like to keep the bitmap references around between lifecyle changes for quicker access. My question is, is there a better place to store my generated bitmaps? I was thinking about creating a static storage library in my base activity, something that would only need to be reloaded when the app is completely removed from memory (shutdown, other apps need resources, 30 minute restart, etc). Ideally, I'd like the user to be able to back out to the title screen, click a "Resume" button, and in onCreate I just have access to those resident bitmap references instead of having to load them from storage again. For this reason I don't think Activity.onRetainNonConfigurationInstance is what I need. Alternatively, is there a better way to handle multiple generated bitmaps than what I'm doing or the plan I described?

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  • Why the “Toilet” Analogy for SQL might be bad

    - by Jonathan Kehayias
    Robert Davis(blog/twitter) recently blogged The Toilet Analogy … or Why I Never Recommend Increasing Worker Threads , in which he uses an analogy for why increasing the value for the ‘max worker threads’ sp_configure option can be bad inside of SQL Server.  While I can’t make an argument against Robert’s assertion that increasing worker threads may not improve performance, I can make an argument against his suggestion that, simply increasing the number of logical processors, for example from...(read more)

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  • Microsoft SQL Server High-Availability Videos and Q&A Log

    - by KKline
    You Want Videos? We Got Videos! I always enjoy getting the chance to catch up with author, consultant, and Microsoft Clustering MVP Allan Hirt . Allan and I recently presented two sessions covering an overview of high availability in Microsoft SQL Server and, the following week, a demo of how to implement several different kinds of high availability techniques including database mirroring, transactional replication, and Windows clustering services. You can see videos of these presentations at the...(read more)

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  • Sep 10 Week - I'll be on the West Coast Speaking in Irvine and San Fran

    - by RickHeiges
    In my role as a Solutions Architect for Scalability Experts, I often get to present to customers about the work that we performed. Unfortunately, this is often on short notice and I can't coordinate a trip to participate in a User Group Meeting. Next week, I was able to coordinate my west coast trip to be able to present. I am heading to Irvine at the MTC on Sepember 11 and San Francisco at the MSFT offices on Sep 13 to speak to customers who want to learn more about SQL Server 2012.To register for...(read more)

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  • Rumor Mill: New Features SQL 11

    - by Mike Femenella
    For those of you that remember the old Mike Myers SNL skit, talk amongst yourselves..I’ll give you a topic: This is purely based on 1 conversation with 1 person from the mothership (Microsoft). SQL 11 is in the works and supposedly includes readable mirrors and in the version beyond that read/write mirrors. Given the name I would assume that release would be (drum roll) 2011 some time. Discuss.

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  • Hugh Bin-Haad's SQL Rumours

    - by Paul Nielsen
    Insider rumours and gossip from the murky world of the Database Industry, and from the colourful characters that inhabit it http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/editors-corner/insider-insights/ Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!...(read more)

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  • Hugh Bin-Haad's SQL Rumours

    - by Paul Nielsen
    Insider rumours and gossip from the murky world of the Database Industry, and from the colourful characters that inhabit it http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/editors-corner/insider-insights/ Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!...(read more)

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  • Good practices - database programming, unit testing

    - by Piotr Rodak
    Jason Brimhal wrote today on his blog that new book, Defensive Database Programming , written by Alex Kuznetsov ( blog ) is coming to bookstores. Alex writes about various techniques that make your code safer to run. SQL injection is not the only one vulnerability the code may be exposed to. Some other include inconsistent search patterns, unsupported character sets, locale settings, issues that may occur during high concurrency conditions, logic that breaks when certain conditions are not met. The...(read more)

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  • Simon Sabin has a great discount for the SQL Server Masterclass

    - by Testas
    Check out Simons blog post to get a discount of £100 for this event http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/simons/archive/2010/05/14/paul-and-kimberly-are-coming-the-uk.aspx   Remember as well  Pencil the 17th June in your diary, send an email [email protected] with the title of Masterclass in the subject line. On Friday 25th May we will draw out a name and the winner will have free entrance to a must see seminar on SQL Server from two of the industry’s leading experts. Thanks Chris

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  • Implementing User-Defined Hierarchies in SQL Server Analysis Services

    To be able to drill into multidimensional cube data at several levels, you must implement all of the hierarchies on the database dimensions. Then you'll create the attribute relationships necessary to optimize performance. Analysis Services hierarchies offer plenty of possibilities for displaying the data that your business requires. Rob Sheldon continues his series on SQL Server Analysis Services 2008.

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  • Plan Operator Tuesday round-up

    - by Rob Farley
    Eighteen posts for T-SQL Tuesday #43 this month, discussing Plan Operators. I put them together and made the following clickable plan. It’s 1000px wide, so I hope you have a monitor wide enough. Let me explain this plan for you (people’s names are the links to the articles on their blogs – the same links as in the plan above). It was clearly a SELECT statement. Wayne Sheffield (@dbawayne) wrote about that, so we start with a SELECT physical operator, leveraging the logical operator Wayne Sheffield. The SELECT operator calls the Paul White operator, discussed by Jason Brimhall (@sqlrnnr) in his post. The Paul White operator is quite remarkable, and can consume three streams of data. Let’s look at those streams. The first pulls data from a Table Scan – Boris Hristov (@borishristov)’s post – using parallel threads (Bradley Ball – @sqlballs) that pull the data eagerly through a Table Spool (Oliver Asmus – @oliverasmus). A scalar operation is also performed on it, thanks to Jeffrey Verheul (@devjef)’s Compute Scalar operator. The second stream of data applies Evil (I figured that must mean a procedural TVF, but could’ve been anything), courtesy of Jason Strate (@stratesql). It performs this Evil on the merging of parallel streams (Steve Jones – @way0utwest), which suck data out of a Switch (Paul White – @sql_kiwi). This Switch operator is consuming data from up to four lookups, thanks to Kalen Delaney (@sqlqueen), Rick Krueger (@dataogre), Mickey Stuewe (@sqlmickey) and Kathi Kellenberger (@auntkathi). Unfortunately Kathi’s name is a bit long and has been truncated, just like in real plans. The last stream performs a join of two others via a Nested Loop (Matan Yungman – @matanyungman). One pulls data from a Spool (my post – @rob_farley) populated from a Table Scan (Jon Morisi). The other applies a catchall operator (the catchall is because Tamera Clark (@tameraclark) didn’t specify any particular operator, and a catchall is what gets shown when SSMS doesn’t know what to show. Surprisingly, it’s showing the yellow one, which is about cursors. Hopefully that’s not what Tamera planned, but anyway...) to the output from an Index Seek operator (Sebastian Meine – @sqlity). Lastly, I think everyone put in 110% effort, so that’s what all the operators cost. That didn’t leave anything for me, unfortunately, but that’s okay. Also, because he decided to use the Paul White operator, Jason Brimhall gets 0%, and his 110% was given to Paul’s Switch operator post. I hope you’ve enjoyed this T-SQL Tuesday, and have learned something extra about Plan Operators. Keep your eye out for next month’s one by watching the Twitter Hashtag #tsql2sday, and why not contribute a post to the party? Big thanks to Adam Machanic as usual for starting all this. @rob_farley

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  • Today’s Performance Tip: Views are for Convenience, Not Performance!

    - by Jonathan Kehayias
    I tweeted this last week on twitter and got a lot of retweets so I thought that I’d blog the story behind the tweet. Most vendor databases have views in them, and when people want to retrieve data from a database, it seems like the most common first stop they make are the vendor supplied Views.  This post is in no way a bash against the usage or creation of Views in a SQL Server Database, I have created them before to simplify code and compartmentalize commonly required queries so that there...(read more)

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  • Generate DROP statements for all extended properties

    - by jamiet
    This evening I have been attempting to migrate an existing on-premise database to SQL Azure using the wizard that is built-in to SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). When I did so I received the following error: The following objects are not supported = [MS_Description] = Extended Property Evidently databases containing extended properties can not be migrated using this particular wizard so I set about removing all of the extended properties – unfortunately there were over a thousand of them so I needed a better way than simply deleting each and every one of them manually. I found a couple of resources online that went some way toward this: Drop all extended properties in a MSSQL database by Angelo Hongens Modifying and deleting extended properties by Adam Aspin Unfortunately neither provided a script that exactly suited my needs. Angelo’s covered extended properties on tables and columns however I had other objects that had extended properties on them. Adam’s looked more complete but when I ran it I got an error: Msg 468, Level 16, State 9, Line 78 Cannot resolve the collation conflict between "Latin1_General_100_CS_AS" and "Latin1_General_CI_AS" in the equal to operation. So, both great resources but I wasn’t able to use either on their own to get rid of all of my extended properties. Hence, I combined the excellent work that Angelo and Adam had provided in order to manufacture my own script which did successfully manage to generate calls to sp_dropextendedproperty for all of my extended properties. If you think you might be able to make use of such a script then feel free to download it from https://skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx?cid=550f681dad532637&resid=550F681DAD532637!16707&parid=550F681DAD532637!16706&authkey=!APxPIQCatzC7BQ8. This script will remove extended properties on tables, columns, check constraints, default constraints, views, sprocs, foreign keys, primary keys, table triggers, UDF parameters, sproc parameters, databases, schemas, database files and filegroups. If you have any object types with extended properties on them that are not in that list then consult Adam’s aforementioned article – it should prove very useful. I repeat here the message that I have placed at the top of the script: /* This script will generate calls to sp_dropextendedproperty for every extended property that exists in your database. Actually, a caveat: I don't promise that it will catch each and every extended property that exists, but I'm confident it will catch most of them! It is based on this: http://blog.hongens.nl/2010/02/25/drop-all-extended-properties-in-a-mssql-database/ by Angelo Hongens. Also had lots of help from this: http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Metadata/72609/ by Adam Aspin Adam actually provides a script at that link to do something very similar but when I ran it I got an error: Msg 468, Level 16, State 9, Line 78 Cannot resolve the collation conflict between "Latin1_General_100_CS_AS" and "Latin1_General_CI_AS" in the equal to operation. So I put together this version instead. Use at your own risk. Jamie Thomson 2012-03-25 */ Hope this is useful to someone! @Jamiet

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  • COLUMNS_UPDATED() for audit triggers

    - by Piotr Rodak
    In SQL Server 2005, triggers are pretty much the only option if you want to audit changes to a table. There are many ways you can decide to store the change information. You may decide to store every changed row as a whole, either in a history table or as xml in audit table. The former case requires having a history table with exactly same schema as the audited table, the latter makes data retrieval and management of the table a bit tricky. Both approaches also suffer from the tendency to consume...(read more)

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  • Service Broker, not ETL

    - by jamiet
    I have been very quiet on this blog of late and one reason for that is I have been very busy on a client project that I would like to talk about a little here. The client that I have been working for has a website that runs on a distributed architecture utilising a messaging infrastructure for communication between different endpoints. My brief was to build a system that could consume these messages and produce analytical information in near-real-time. More specifically I basically had to deliver a data warehouse however it was the real-time aspect of the project that really intrigued me. This real-time requirement meant that using an Extract transformation, Load (ETL) tool was out of the question and so I had no choice but to write T-SQL code (i.e. stored-procedures) to process the incoming messages and load the data into the data warehouse. This concerned me though – I had no way to control the rate at which data would arrive into the system yet we were going to have end-users querying the system at the same time that those messages were arriving; the potential for contention in such a scenario was pretty high and and was something I wanted to minimise as much as possible. Moreover I did not want the processing of data inside the data warehouse to have any impact on the customer-facing website. As you have probably guessed from the title of this blog post this is where Service Broker stepped in! For those that have not heard of it Service Broker is a queuing technology that has been built into SQL Server since SQL Server 2005. It provides a number of features however the one that was of interest to me was the fact that it facilitates asynchronous data processing which, in layman’s terms, means the ability to process some data without requiring the system that supplied the data having to wait for the response. That was a crucial feature because on this project the customer-facing website (in effect an OLTP system) would be calling one of our stored procedures with each message – we did not want to cause the OLTP system to wait on us every time we processed one of those messages. This asynchronous nature also helps to alleviate the contention problem because the asynchronous processing activity is handled just like any other task in the database engine and hence can wait on another task (such as an end-user query). Service Broker it was then! The stored procedure called by the OLTP system would simply put the message onto a queue and we would use a feature called activation to pick each message off the queue in turn and process it into the warehouse. At the time of writing the system is not yet up to full capacity but so far everything seems to be working OK (touch wood) and crucially our users are seeing data in near-real-time. By near-real-time I am talking about latencies of a few minutes at most and to someone like me who is used to building systems that have overnight latencies that is a huge step forward! So then, am I advocating that you all go out and dump your ETL tools? Of course not, no! What this project has taught me though is that in certain scenarios there may be better ways to implement a data warehouse system then the traditional “load data in overnight” approach that we are all used to. Moreover I have really enjoyed getting to grips with a new technology and even if you don’t want to use Service Broker you might want to consider asynchronous messaging architectures for your BI/data warehousing solutions in the future. This has been a very high level overview of my use of Service Broker and I have deliberately left out much of the minutiae of what has been a very challenging implementation. Nonetheless I hope I have caused you to reflect upon your own approaches to BI and question whether other approaches may be more tenable. All comments and questions gratefully received! Lastly, if you have never used Service Broker before and want to kick the tyres I have provided below a very simple “Service Broker Hello World” script that will create all of the objects required to facilitate Service Broker communications and then send the message “Hello World” from one place to anther! This doesn’t represent a “proper” implementation per se because it doesn’t close down down conversation objects (which you should always do in a real-world scenario) but its enough to demonstrate the capabilities! @Jamiet ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /*This is a basic Service Broker Hello World app. Have fun! -Jamie */ USE MASTER GO CREATE DATABASE SBTest GO --Turn Service Broker on! ALTER DATABASE SBTest SET ENABLE_BROKER GO USE SBTest GO -- 1) we need to create a message type. Note that our message type is -- very simple and allowed any type of content CREATE MESSAGE TYPE HelloMessage VALIDATION = NONE GO -- 2) Once the message type has been created, we need to create a contract -- that specifies who can send what types of messages CREATE CONTRACT HelloContract (HelloMessage SENT BY INITIATOR) GO --We can query the metadata of the objects we just created SELECT * FROM   sys.service_message_types WHERE name = 'HelloMessage'; SELECT * FROM   sys.service_contracts WHERE name = 'HelloContract'; SELECT * FROM   sys.service_contract_message_usages WHERE  service_contract_id IN (SELECT service_contract_id FROM sys.service_contracts WHERE name = 'HelloContract') AND        message_type_id IN (SELECT message_type_id FROM sys.service_message_types WHERE name = 'HelloMessage'); -- 3) The communication is between two endpoints. Thus, we need two queues to -- hold messages CREATE QUEUE SenderQueue CREATE QUEUE ReceiverQueue GO --more querying metatda SELECT * FROM sys.service_queues WHERE name IN ('SenderQueue','ReceiverQueue'); --we can also select from the queues as if they were tables SELECT * FROM SenderQueue   SELECT * FROM ReceiverQueue   -- 4) Create the required services and bind them to be above created queues CREATE SERVICE Sender   ON QUEUE SenderQueue CREATE SERVICE Receiver   ON QUEUE ReceiverQueue (HelloContract) GO --more querying metadata SELECT * FROM sys.services WHERE name IN ('Receiver','Sender'); -- 5) At this point, we can begin the conversation between the two services by -- sending messages DECLARE @conversationHandle UNIQUEIDENTIFIER DECLARE @message NVARCHAR(100) BEGIN   BEGIN TRANSACTION;   BEGIN DIALOG @conversationHandle         FROM SERVICE Sender         TO SERVICE 'Receiver'         ON CONTRACT HelloContract WITH ENCRYPTION=OFF   -- Send a message on the conversation   SET @message = N'Hello, World';   SEND  ON CONVERSATION @conversationHandle         MESSAGE TYPE HelloMessage (@message)   COMMIT TRANSACTION END GO --check contents of queues SELECT * FROM SenderQueue   SELECT * FROM ReceiverQueue   GO -- Receive a message from the queue RECEIVE CONVERT(NVARCHAR(MAX), message_body) AS MESSAGE FROM ReceiverQueue GO --If no messages were received and/or you can't see anything on the queues you may wish to check the following for clues: SELECT * FROM sys.transmission_queue -- Cleanup DROP SERVICE Sender DROP SERVICE Receiver DROP QUEUE SenderQueue DROP QUEUE ReceiverQueue DROP CONTRACT HelloContract DROP MESSAGE TYPE HelloMessage GO USE MASTER GO DROP DATABASE SBTest GO

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  • Microsoft Business Intelligence Seminar 2011

    - by DavidWimbush
    I was lucky enough to attend the maiden presentation of this at Microsoft Reading yesterday. It was pretty gripping stuff not only because of what was said but also because of what could only be hinted at. Here's what I took away from the day. (Disclaimer: I'm not a BI guru, just a reasonably experienced BI developer, so I may have misunderstood or misinterpreted a few things. Particularly when so much of the talk was about the vision and subtle hints of what is coming. Please comment if you think I've got anything wrong. I'm also not going to even try to cover Master Data Services as I struggled to imagine how you would actually use it.) I was a bit worried when I learned that the whole day was going to be presented by one guy but Rafal Lukawiecki is a very engaging speaker. He's going to be presenting this about 20 times around the world over the coming months. If you get a chance to hear him speak, I say go for it. No doubt some of the hints will become clearer as Denali gets closer to RTM. Firstly, things are definitely happening in the SQL Server Reporting and BI world. Traditionally IT would build a data warehouse, then cubes on top of that, and then publish them in a structured and controlled way. But, just as with many IT projects in general, by the time it's finished the business has moved on and the system no longer meets their requirements. This not sustainable and something more agile is needed but there has to be some control. Apparently we're going to be hearing the catchphrase 'Balancing agility with control' a lot. More users want more access to more data. Can they define what they want? Of course not, but they'll recognise it when they see it. It's estimated that only 28% of potential BI users have meaningful access to the data they need, so there is a real pent-up demand. The answer looks like: give them some self-service tools so they can experiment and see what works, and then IT can help to support the results. It's estimated that 32% of Excel users are comfortable with its analysis tools such as pivot tables. It's the power user's preferred tool. Why fight it? That's why PowerPivot is an Excel add-in and that's why they released a Data Mining add-in for it as well. It does appear that the strategy is going to be to use Reporting Services (in SharePoint mode), PowerPivot, and possibly something new (smiles and hints but no details) to create reports and explore data. Everything will be published and managed in SharePoint which gives users the ability to mash-up, share and socialise what they've found out. SharePoint also gives IT tools to understand what people are looking at and where to concentrate effort. If PowerPivot report X becomes widely used, it's time to check that it shows what they think it does and perhaps get it a bit more under central control. There was more SharePoint detail that went slightly over my head regarding where Excel Services and Excel Web Application fit in, the differences between them, and the suggestion that it is likely they will one day become one (but not in the immediate future). That basic pattern is set to be expanded upon by further exploiting Vertipaq (the columnar indexing engine that enables PowerPivot to store and process a lot of data fast and in a small memory footprint) to provide scalability 'from the desktop to the data centre', and some yet to be detailed advances in 'frictionless deployment' (part of which is about making the difference between local and the cloud pretty much irrelevant). Excel looks like becoming Microsoft's primary BI client. It already has: the ability to consume cubes strong visualisation tools slicers (which are part of Excel not PowerPivot) a data mining add-in PowerPivot A major hurdle for self-service BI is presenting the data in a consumable format. You can't just give users PowerPivot and a server with a copy of the OLTP database(s). Building cubes is labour intensive and doesn't always give the user what they need. This is where the BI Semantic Model (BISM) comes in. I gather it's a layer of metadata you define that can combine multiple data sources (and types of data source) into a clear 'interface' that users can work with. It comes with a new query language called DAX. SSAS cubes are unlikely to go away overnight because, with their pre-calculated results, they are still the most efficient way to work with really big data sets. A few other random titbits that came up: Reporting Services is going to get some good new stuff in Denali. Keep an eye on www.projectbotticelli.com for the slides. You can also view last year's seminar sessions which covered a lot of the same ground as far as the overall strategy is concerned. They plan to add more material as Denali's features are publicly exposed. Check out the PASS keynote address for a showing of Yahoo's SQL BI servers. Apparently they wheeled the rack out on stage still plugged in and running! Check out the Excel 2010 Data Mining Add-Ins. 32 bit only at present but 64 bit is on the way. There are lots of data sets, many of them free, at the Windows Azure Marketplace Data Market (where you can also get ESRI shape files). If you haven't already seen it, have a look at the Silverlight Pivot Viewer (http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/06/29/silverlight-pivotviewer-now-available.aspx). The Bing Maps Data Connector is worth a look if you're into spatial stuff (http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/maps/archive/2010/07/13/data-connector-sql-server-2008-spatial-amp-bing-maps.aspx).  

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