Search Results

Search found 10442 results on 418 pages for 'my blog'.

Page 85/418 | < Previous Page | 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92  | Next Page >

  • Some thoughts on the Virtualization Feedback in the SSWUG Newsletters

    - by Jonathan Kehayias
    Last Thursday, March 25, 2010, the topic of Virtualization of SQL Server came up in the SSWUG Newsletter , with Steven Wynkoop asking if peoples perceptions and experiences have changed since the last time he covered virtualizing SQL Server.  I unfortunately missed the last coverage of this topic, but it appears from the newsletter that there was a general consensus that “low-traffic solution could be fine, but if you had a heavy hitting application, the net advise was to avoid a virtual environment...(read more)

    Read the article

  • Oracle WebLogic Server 12c Launch Event - Dec 1, 2011, 10am PT

    - by arungupta
    Calling all IT managers, architects, and developers, to find out how the new release of Oracle WebLogic Server 12c is: Designed to help you seamlessly move into the public or private cloud with an open, standards-based platform Built to drive higher value for your current infrastructure and significantly reduce development time and cost Optimized to run your solutions for Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE); Oracle Fusion Middleware; and Oracle Fusion Enhanced with transformational platforms and technologies such as Java EE 6, Oracle’s Active GridLink for RAC, Oracle Traffic Director, and Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder When ? Dec 1, 2011, 10am - 12pm PT Where ? Register online! Here are some other links for you to follow: blogs.oracle.com/weblogicserver @OracleWebLogic youtube.com/OracleWebLogic facebook.com/OracleWebLogic Steve Button's Blog Jeff West's Blog WebLogic Forums WebLogic @ OTN Almost ready to unwrap the ribbons, pop open the cork, at the start line ... or whatever fits your analogy :-) And in case you are wondering ... here is a snapshot of WebLogic 12c administration console snapshot:

    Read the article

  • PowerPivot and Parent/Child hierarchies

    - by AlbertoFerrari
    Does PowerPivot handle Parent/Child hierarchies? The common answer is “no”, since it does not handle them natively. During last PowerPivot course in London, I have been asked the same question once more and had an interesting discussion about this severe limitation of the PowerPivot data modeling and visualization capabilities. On my way back in Italy, I started thinking at a possible solution and, after some work, I managed to make PowerPivot handle Parent/Child hierarchies in a very nice way, which...(read more)

    Read the article

  • Some thoughts on the Virtualization Feedback in the SSWUG Newsletters

    - by Jonathan Kehayias
    Last Thursday, March 25, 2010, the topic of Virtualization of SQL Server came up in the SSWUG Newsletter , with Steven Wynkoop asking if peoples perceptions and experiences have changed since the last time he covered virtualizing SQL Server.  I unfortunately missed the last coverage of this topic, but it appears from the newsletter that there was a general consensus that “low-traffic solution could be fine, but if you had a heavy hitting application, the net advise was to avoid a virtual environment...(read more)

    Read the article

  • White Paper/Case Study on ICONICS’ Use of StreamInsight for its Energy AnalytiX&#174; Solution

    - by Roman Schindlauer
    A couple of days ago, we released a new StreamInsight white paper/case study on TechNet and MSDN. The paper is joint work with ICONICS and discusses how ICONICS is using StreamInsight technology for its Energy AnalytiX® solution. The paper is available for download here in the Technical Articles section of the StreamInsight documentation. Today, businesses and organizations need to pay more and more attention to energy usage, as customers and the general public are becoming increasingly concerned about a respectful and sustainable use of resources. Organizations therefore need to carefully manage their use of energy and provide better visibility into their energy consumption. In this paper, we discuss how software solutions can help address these challenges. Besides providing some background on the drivers behind energy management, the paper discusses how organizations manage their use of energy with current product and service offerings from Microsoft and ICONICS. In the main body of the paper, a case study explains in depth how ICONICS Energy AnalytiX® is using Microsoft data platform components such as SQL Server StreamInsight to deliver market leading energy management solutions. Regards, The StreamInsight Team

    Read the article

  • An OLAP client!

    - by Davide Mauri
    While surfing CodePlex I’ve come across a very interesting tool for all BI Developers who misses a decent OLAP client where to write, run & test MDX queries http://ranetuilibraryolap.codeplex.com/ I’ve not tested it yet, but I’ll surely do this week and I’ll post my impressions ASAP. The first impression, just looking the CodePlex page, is that tool Rocks!!!!! Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

    Read the article

  • Metro: Understanding Observables

    - by Stephen.Walther
    The goal of this blog entry is to describe how the Observer Pattern is implemented in the WinJS library. You learn how to create observable objects which trigger notifications automatically when their properties are changed. Observables enable you to keep your user interface and your application data in sync. For example, by taking advantage of observables, you can update your user interface automatically whenever the properties of a product change. Observables are the foundation of declarative binding in the WinJS library. The WinJS library is not the first JavaScript library to include support for observables. For example, both the KnockoutJS library and the Microsoft Ajax Library (now part of the Ajax Control Toolkit) support observables. Creating an Observable Imagine that I have created a product object like this: var product = { name: "Milk", description: "Something to drink", price: 12.33 }; Nothing very exciting about this product. It has three properties named name, description, and price. Now, imagine that I want to be notified automatically whenever any of these properties are changed. In that case, I can create an observable product from my product object like this: var observableProduct = WinJS.Binding.as(product); This line of code creates a new JavaScript object named observableProduct from the existing JavaScript object named product. This new object also has a name, description, and price property. However, unlike the properties of the original product object, the properties of the observable product object trigger notifications when the properties are changed. Each of the properties of the new observable product object has been changed into accessor properties which have both a getter and a setter. For example, the observable product price property looks something like this: price: { get: function () { return this.getProperty(“price”); } set: function (value) { this.setProperty(“price”, value); } } When you read the price property then the getProperty() method is called and when you set the price property then the setProperty() method is called. The getProperty() and setProperty() methods are methods of the observable product object. The observable product object supports the following methods and properties: · addProperty(name, value) – Adds a new property to an observable and notifies any listeners. · backingData – An object which represents the value of each property. · bind(name, action) – Enables you to execute a function when a property changes. · getProperty(name) – Returns the value of a property using the string name of the property. · notify(name, newValue, oldValue) – A private method which executes each function in the _listeners array. · removeProperty(name) – Removes a property and notifies any listeners. · setProperty(name, value) – Updates a property and notifies any listeners. · unbind(name, action) – Enables you to stop executing a function in response to a property change. · updateProperty(name, value) – Updates a property and notifies any listeners. So when you create an observable, you get a new object with the same properties as an existing object. However, when you modify the properties of an observable object, then you can notify any listeners of the observable that the value of a particular property has changed automatically. Imagine that you change the value of the price property like this: observableProduct.price = 2.99; In that case, the following sequence of events is triggered: 1. The price setter calls the setProperty(“price”, 2.99) method 2. The setProperty() method updates the value of the backingData.price property and calls the notify() method 3. The notify() method executes each function in the collection of listeners associated with the price property Creating Observable Listeners If you want to be notified when a property of an observable object is changed, then you need to register a listener. You register a listener by using the bind() method like this: (function () { "use strict"; var app = WinJS.Application; app.onactivated = function (eventObject) { if (eventObject.detail.kind === Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ActivationKind.launch) { // Simple product object var product = { name: "Milk", description: "Something to drink", price: 12.33 }; // Create observable product var observableProduct = WinJS.Binding.as(product); // Execute a function when price is changed observableProduct.bind("price", function (newValue) { console.log(newValue); }); // Change the price observableProduct.price = 2.99; } }; app.start(); })(); In the code above, the bind() method is used to associate the price property with a function. When the price property is changed, the function logs the new value of the price property to the Visual Studio JavaScript console. The price property is associated with the function using the following line of code: // Execute a function when price is changed observableProduct.bind("price", function (newValue) { console.log(newValue); }); Coalescing Notifications If you make multiple changes to a property – one change immediately following another – then separate notifications won’t be sent. Instead, any listeners are notified only once. The notifications are coalesced into a single notification. For example, in the following code, the product price property is updated three times. However, only one message is written to the JavaScript console. Only the last value assigned to the price property is written to the JavaScript Console window: // Simple product object var product = { name: "Milk", description: "Something to drink", price: 12.33 }; // Create observable product var observableProduct = WinJS.Binding.as(product); // Execute a function when price is changed observableProduct.bind("price", function (newValue) { console.log(newValue); }); // Change the price observableProduct.price = 3.99; observableProduct.price = 2.99; observableProduct.price = 1.99; Only the last value assigned to price, the value 1.99, appears in the console: If there is a time delay between changes to a property then changes result in different notifications. For example, the following code updates the price property every second: // Simple product object var product = { name: "Milk", description: "Something to drink", price: 12.33 }; // Create observable product var observableProduct = WinJS.Binding.as(product); // Execute a function when price is changed observableProduct.bind("price", function (newValue) { console.log(newValue); }); // Add 1 to price every second window.setInterval(function () { observableProduct.price += 1; }, 1000); In this case, separate notification messages are logged to the JavaScript Console window: If you need to prevent multiple notifications from being coalesced into one then you can take advantage of promises. I discussed WinJS promises in a previous blog entry: http://stephenwalther.com/blog/archive/2012/02/22/windows-web-applications-promises.aspx Because the updateProperty() method returns a promise, you can create different notifications for each change in a property by using the following code: // Change the price observableProduct.updateProperty("price", 3.99) .then(function () { observableProduct.updateProperty("price", 2.99) .then(function () { observableProduct.updateProperty("price", 1.99); }); }); In this case, even though the price is immediately changed from 3.99 to 2.99 to 1.99, separate notifications for each new value of the price property are sent. Bypassing Notifications Normally, if a property of an observable object has listeners and you change the property then the listeners are notified. However, there are certain situations in which you might want to bypass notification. In other words, you might need to change a property value silently without triggering any functions registered for notification. If you want to change a property without triggering notifications then you should change the property by using the backingData property. The following code illustrates how you can change the price property silently: // Simple product object var product = { name: "Milk", description: "Something to drink", price: 12.33 }; // Create observable product var observableProduct = WinJS.Binding.as(product); // Execute a function when price is changed observableProduct.bind("price", function (newValue) { console.log(newValue); }); // Change the price silently observableProduct.backingData.price = 5.99; console.log(observableProduct.price); // Writes 5.99 The price is changed to the value 5.99 by changing the value of backingData.price. Because the observableProduct.price property is not set directly, any listeners associated with the price property are not notified. When you change the value of a property by using the backingData property, the change in the property happens synchronously. However, when you change the value of an observable property directly, the change is always made asynchronously. Summary The goal of this blog entry was to describe observables. In particular, we discussed how to create observables from existing JavaScript objects and bind functions to observable properties. You also learned how notifications are coalesced (and ways to prevent this coalescing). Finally, we discussed how you can use the backingData property to update an observable property without triggering notifications. In the next blog entry, we’ll see how observables are used with declarative binding to display the values of properties in an HTML document.

    Read the article

  • PowerPivot and the Slowly Changing Dimensions

    - by AlbertoFerrari
    Slowly changing dimensions are very common in the data warehouses and, basically, they store many versions of the same entity whenever a change happens in the columns for which history needs to be maintained. For example, the AdventureWorks data warehouse has a type 2 SCD in the DimProduct table. It can be easily checked for the product code “FR-M94S-38” which shows three different versions of itself, with changing product cost and list price. This is exactly what we can expect to find in any data...(read more)

    Read the article

  • PowerPivot and the Slowly Changing Dimensions

    - by AlbertoFerrari
    Slowly changing dimensions are very common in the data warehouses and, basically, they store many versions of the same entity whenever a change happens in the columns for which history needs to be maintained. For example, the AdventureWorks data warehouse has a type 2 SCD in the DimProduct table. It can be easily checked for the product code “FR-M94S-38” which shows three different versions of itself, with changing product cost and list price. This is exactly what we can expect to find in any data...(read more)

    Read the article

  • Do you need all that data?

    - by BuckWoody
    I read an amazing post over on ars technica (link: http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/03/the-software-brains-behind-the-particle-colliders.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss) abvout the LHC, or as they are also known, the "particle colliders". Beyond just the pure scientific geek awesomeness, these instruments have the potential to collect more data than you can (or possibly should) store. Actually, this problem has a lot in common with a BI system. There's so much granular detail available in the source systems that a designer has to decide how, and how much, to roll up the data. Whenver you do that, you lose fidelity, but in many cases that's OK. Take, for example, your car's speedometer. You don't actually need to track each and every point of speed as it happens. You only need to know that you're hovering around the speed limit at a certain point in time. Since this is the way that humans percieve data, is there some lesson we should take in the design of data "flows" - and what implications does this have for new technologies like StreamInsight? Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

    Read the article

  • Storage Configuration

    - by jchang
    Storage performance is not inherently complicated subject. The concepts are relatively simple. In fact, scaling storage performance is far easier compared with the difficulties encounters in scaling processor performance in NUMA systems. Storage performance is achieved by properly distributing IO over: 1) multiple independent PCI-E ports (system memory and IO bandwith is key) 2) multiple RAID controllers or host bus adapters (HBAs) 3) multiple storage IO channels (SAS or FC, complete path) most importantly,...(read more)

    Read the article

  • MVPs and the Community

    - by andyleonard
    Introduction Earlier this month, David Woods decided to drop his MVP award . The move inspired some interesting comments and discussion among MVPs. David's points are: MVP Expertise Microsoft Technology Products Microsoft "Listens" Cost-Benefits for an MVP MVP Expertise After mentioning he's encountered MVPs who are not experts, David states: "The way you get in is by contributing to the community." Honestly, I don't know the specifics of how someone becomes a Microsoft MVP . And I'm ok with that....(read more)

    Read the article

  • Intel Xeon 5600 (Westmere-EP) and 7500 (Nehalem-EX)

    - by jchang
    Intel Xeon 5600 (Westmere-EP) and 7500 (Nehalem-EX) Performance Intel launched the Xeon 5600 series (Westmere-EP, 32nm) six-core processors on 16 March 2010 without any TPC benchmark results. In the performance world, no results almost always mean bad or not good results. Yet there is every reason to believe that the Xeon 5600 series with six-cores (X models only) will performance exactly as expected for a 50% increase in the number of cores at the same frequency (as the 5500) with no system level...(read more)

    Read the article

  • Guest Post: Instantiate SharePoint Workflow On Item Deleted

    - by Brian Jackett
    In this post, guest author Lucas Eduardo Silva will walk you through the steps of instantiating a workflow using an item event receiver from a custom list.  The ItemDeleting event will require approval via the workflow. Foreword     As you may have read recently, I injured my right hand and have had it in a cast for the past 3 weeks.  Due to this I planned to reduce my blogging while my hand heals.  As luck would have it, I was actually approached by someone who asked if they could be a guest author on my blog.  I’ve never had a guest author, but considering my injury now seemed like as good a time as ever to try it out. About the Guest Author     Lucas Eduardo Silva (email) works for CPM Braxis, a sibling company to my employer Sogeti in the CapGemini family.  Lucas and I exchanged emails a few times after one of my  recent posts and continued into various topics.  When I posted that I had injured my hand, Lucas mentioned that he had a post idea that he would like to publish and asked if it could be published on my blog.  The below content is the result of that collaboration. The Problem     Lucas has a big problem.  He has a workflow that he wants to fire every time an item is deleted from a custom list. He has already created the association in the "item deleting event", but needs to approve the deletion but the workflow is finishing first. Lucas put an onWorkflowItemChanged wait for the change of status approval, but it is not being hit. The Solution Note: This solution assumes you have the Visual Studio Extensions for Windows SharePoint Services (VSeWSS) installed to access the SharePoint project templates within VIsual Studio. 1 - Create a workflow that will be activated by ItemEventReceiver. 2 - Create the list by Visual Studio clicking in File -> New -> Project. Select SharePoint, then List Definition. 3 - Select the type of document to be created. List, Document Library, Wiki, Tasks, etc.. 4 - Visual Studio creates the file ItemEventReceiver.cs with all possible events in a list. 5 – In the workflow project, open the workflow.xml and copy the ID. 6 - Uncomment the ItemDeleting and insert the following code by replacing the ID that you copied earlier.   //Cancel the Exclusion properties.Cancel = true;   //Activating Exclusion Workflow SPWorkflowManager workflowManager = properties.ListItem.Web.Site.WorkflowManager;   SPWorkflowAssociation wfAssociation = properties.ListItem.ParentList.WorkflowAssociations. GetAssociationByBaseID(new Guid("37b5aea8-792a-4ded-be25-d283d9fe1f9d"));   workflowManager.StartWorkflow(properties.ListItem, wfAssociation, wfAssociation.AssociationData, true);   properties.Status = SPEventReceiverStatus.CancelNoError;   7 - properties.Cancel cancels the event being activated and executes the code that is inside the event. In the example, it cancels the deletion of the item to start the workflow that will be active as an association list with the workflow ID. 8 - Create and deploy the workflow and the list for SharePoint. 9 - Create a list through the model that was created. 10 - Enable the workflow in the list and Congratulations! Every time you try to delete the item the workflow is activated. TIP: If you really want to delete the item after the workflow is done you will have to delete the item by the workflow.   this.workflowProperties.Site.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true; this.workflowProperties.Item.Delete(); this.workflowProperties.List.Update();   Conclusion     In this guest post Lucas took you through the steps of creating an item deletion approval workflow with an event receiver.  This was also the first time I’ve had a guest author on this blog.  Many thanks to Lucas for putting together this content and offering it.  I haven’t decided how I’d handle future guest authors, mostly because I don’t know if there are others who would want to submit content.  If you do have something that you would like to guest author on my blog feel free to drop me a line and we can discuss.  As a disclaimer, there are no guarantees that it will be published though.  For now enjoy Lucas’ post and look for my return to regular blogging soon.         -Frog Out   <Update 1> If you wish to contact Lucas you can reach him at [email protected] </Update 1>

    Read the article

  • SQL Server 2012 : Changes to system objects in RC0

    - by AaronBertrand
    As with every new major milestone, one of the first things I do is check out what has changed under the covers. Since RC0 was released yesterday, I've been poking around at some of the DMV and other system changes. Here is what I have noticed: New objects in RC0 that weren't in CTP3 Quick summary: We see a bunch of new aggregates for use with geography and geometry. I've stayed away from that area of programming so I'm not going to dig into them. There is a new extended procedure called sp_showmemo_xml....(read more)

    Read the article

  • My Name is Andy and I Have an Associates of Applied Science Degree

    - by andyleonard
    Introduction This post is the forty-first part of a ramble-rant about the software business. The current posts in this series can be found on the series landing page . This post is about the education requirements for job listings. Bachelor’s Degree Required I’m not qualified for any job that requires a bachelor’s degree because I don’t have one. I regularly receive email from recruiters asking if I’m available and interested in a position they have open, or a position they’ve been asked to fill...(read more)

    Read the article

  • 2010: It’s a Wrap

    - by merrillaldrich
    So, last day of the year, and I can see many people are in a reflective mood. I don’t usually deep dive into goals or resolutions, but I’m not immune either :-). But I’ll try to keep this short and to-the-point. First a big shout out to Adam for letting me have a presence here on sqlblog.com. I am humbled by the other SQL experts we have on this site, and I am certainly one of the least qualified, but I hope my small contributions are useful. Also thanks, Adam, for all the other community support...(read more)

    Read the article

  • Hang In There

    - by andyleonard
    Introduction This post is about persistence in the face of adversity. Losing Everything Isn't Losing When I was in Army Basic Training, I heard the senior drill sargeant tell a soldier "This is just a thing, and things can't hurt you." It seemed an odd thing to say. So odd that it stuck with me all these years since boot camp. I believe part of the reason was the truth in that statement. Things can't hurt you. Does fear of losing everything paralyze you? Have you ever lost everything? I have. Well,...(read more)

    Read the article

  • Community Events and Workshops in November 2012 #ssas #tabular #powerpivot

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    I and Alberto have a busy agenda until the end of the month, but if you are based in Northern Europe there are many chance to meet one of us in the next couple of weeks! Belgium, 20 November 2012 – SQL Server Days 2012 with Marco Russo I will present two sessions in this conference, “Data Modeling for Tabular” and “Querying and Optimizing DAX” Copenhagen, 21-22 November, 2012 – SSAS Tabular Workshop with Alberto Ferrari Alberto will be the speaker for 2 days – you can still register if you want a full immersion! Copenhagen, 21 November 2012 – Free Community Event with Alberto Ferrari (hosted in Microsoft Hellerup) In the evening Alberto will present “Excel 2013 PowerPivot in Action” Munich, 27-28 November 2012 - SSAS Tabular Workshop with Alberto Ferrari The SSAS workshop will run also in Germany, this time in Munich. Also here there is still some seat still available. Munich, 27 November 2012 - Free Community Event with Alberto Ferrari (hosted in Microsoft ) In the evening Alberto will present “Excel 2013 PowerPivot in Action” Moscow, 27-28 November 2012 – TechEd Russia 2012 with Marco Russo I will speak during the keynote on November 27 and I will present two session the day after, “Developing an Analysis Services Tabular Project BI Semantic Model” and “Excel 2013 PowerPivot in Action” Stockholm, 29-30 November 2012 - SSAS Tabular Workshop with Marco Russo I will run this workshop in Stockholm – if you want to register here, hurry up! Few seats still available! Stockholm, 29 November 2012 - Free Community Event (sold-out!) with Marco Russo In the evening I will present “Excel 2013 PowerPivot in Action” If you want to attend a SSAS Tabular Workshop online, you can also register to the Online edition of December 5-6, 2012, which is still in early bird and is scheduled with a friendly time zone for America’s countries (which could be good for Europe too, in case you don’t mind attending a workshop until midnight!).

    Read the article

  • TechEd 2010 Thanks and Demos

    - by Adam Machanic
    Thank you to everyone who attended my three sessions at this year's TechEd show in New Orleans. I had a great time presenting and answering the really great questions posed by attendees. My sessions were: DAT317 T-SQL Power! The OVER Clause: Your Key to No-Sweat Problem Solving Have you ever stared at a convoluted requirement, unsure of where to begin and how to get there with T-SQL? Have you ever spent three days working on a long and complex query, wondering if there might be a better way? Good...(read more)

    Read the article

  • Using SQL Execution Plans to discover the Swedish alphabet

    - by Rob Farley
    SQL Server is quite remarkable in a bunch of ways. In this post, I’m using the way that the Query Optimizer handles LIKE to keep it SARGable, the Execution Plans that result, Collations, and PowerShell to come up with the Swedish alphabet. SARGability is the ability to seek for items in an index according to a particular set of criteria. If you don’t have SARGability in play, you need to scan the whole index (or table if you don’t have an index). For example, I can find myself in the phonebook easily, because it’s sorted by LastName and I can find Farley in there by moving to the Fs, and so on. I can’t find everyone in my suburb easily, because the phonebook isn’t sorted that way. I can’t even find people who have six letters in their last name, because also the book is sorted by LastName, it’s not sorted by LEN(LastName). This is all stuff I’ve looked at before, including in the talk I gave at SQLBits in October 2010. If I try to find everyone who’s names start with F, I can do that using a query a bit like: SELECT LastName FROM dbo.PhoneBook WHERE LEFT(LastName,1) = 'F'; Unfortunately, the Query Optimizer doesn’t realise that all the entries that satisfy LEFT(LastName,1) = 'F' will be together, and it has to scan the whole table to find them. But if I write: SELECT LastName FROM dbo.PhoneBook WHERE LastName LIKE 'F%'; then SQL is smart enough to understand this, and performs an Index Seek instead. To see why, I look further into the plan, in particular, the properties of the Index Seek operator. The ToolTip shows me what I’m after: You’ll see that it does a Seek to find any entries that are at least F, but not yet G. There’s an extra Predicate in there (a Residual Predicate if you like), which checks that each LastName is really LIKE F% – I suppose it doesn’t consider that the Seek Predicate is quite enough – but most of the benefit is seen by its working out the Seek Predicate, filtering to just the “at least F but not yet G” section of the data. This got me curious though, particularly about where the G comes from, and whether I could leverage it to create the Swedish alphabet. I know that in the Swedish language, there are three extra letters that appear at the end of the alphabet. One of them is ä that appears in the word Västerås. It turns out that Västerås is quite hard to find in an index when you’re looking it up in a Swedish map. I talked about this briefly in my five-minute talk on Collation from SQLPASS (the one which was slightly less than serious). So by looking at the plan, I can work out what the next letter is in the alphabet of the collation used by the column. In other words, if my alphabet were Swedish, I’d be able to tell what the next letter after F is – just in case it’s not G. It turns out it is… Yes, the Swedish letter after F is G. But I worked this out by using a copy of my PhoneBook table that used the Finnish_Swedish_CI_AI collation. I couldn’t find how the Query Optimizer calculates the G, and my friend Paul White (@SQL_Kiwi) tells me that it’s frustratingly internal to the QO. He’s particularly smart, even if he is from New Zealand. To investigate further, I decided to do some PowerShell, leveraging the Get-SqlPlan function that I blogged about recently (make sure you also have the SqlServerCmdletSnapin100 snap-in added). I started by indicating that I was going to use Finnish_Swedish_CI_AI as my collation of choice, and that I’d start whichever letter cam straight after the number 9. I figure that this is a cheat’s way of guessing the first letter of the alphabet (but it doesn’t actually work in Unicode – luckily I’m using varchar not nvarchar. Actually, there are a few aspects of this code that only work using ASCII, so apologies if you were wanting to apply it to Greek, Japanese, etc). I also initialised my $alphabet variable. $collation = 'Finnish_Swedish_CI_AI'; $firstletter = '9'; $alphabet = ''; Now I created the table for my test. A single field would do, and putting a Clustered Index on it would suffice for the Seeks. Invoke-Sqlcmd -server . -data tempdb -query "create table dbo.collation_test (col varchar(10) collate $collation primary key);" Now I get into the looping. $c = $firstletter; $stillgoing = $true; while ($stillgoing) { I construct the query I want, seeking for entries which start with whatever $c has reached, and get the plan for it: $query = "select col from dbo.collation_test where col like '$($c)%';"; [xml] $pl = get-sqlplan $query "." "tempdb"; At this point, my $pl variable is a scary piece of XML, representing the execution plan. A bit of hunting through it showed me that the EndRange element contained what I was after, and that if it contained NULL, then I was done. $stillgoing = ($pl.ShowPlanXML.BatchSequence.Batch.Statements.StmtSimple.QueryPlan.RelOp.IndexScan.SeekPredicates.SeekPredicateNew.SeekKeys.EndRange -ne $null); Now I could grab the value out of it (which came with apostrophes that needed stripping), and append that to my $alphabet variable.   if ($stillgoing)   {  $c=$pl.ShowPlanXML.BatchSequence.Batch.Statements.StmtSimple.QueryPlan.RelOp.IndexScan.SeekPredicates.SeekPredicateNew.SeekKeys.EndRange.RangeExpressions.ScalarOperator.ScalarString.Replace("'","");     $alphabet += $c;   } Finally, finishing the loop, dropping the table, and showing my alphabet! } Invoke-Sqlcmd -server . -data tempdb -query "drop table dbo.collation_test;"; $alphabet; When I run all this, I see that the Swedish alphabet is ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVXYZÅÄÖ, which matches what I see at Wikipedia. Interesting to see that the letters on the end are still there, even with Case Insensitivity. Turns out they’re not just “letters with accents”, they’re letters in their own right. I’m sure you gave up reading long ago, and really aren’t that fazed about the idea of doing this using PowerShell. I chose PowerShell because I’d already come up with an easy way of grabbing the estimated plan for a query, and PowerShell does allow for easy navigation of XML. I find the most interesting aspect of this as the fact that the Query Optimizer uses the next letter of the alphabet to maintain the SARGability of LIKE. I’m hoping they do something similar for a whole bunch of operations. Oh, and the fact that you know how to find stuff in the IKEA catalogue. Footnote: If you are interested in whether this works in other languages, you might want to consider the following screenshot, which shows that in principle, it should work with Japanese. It might be a bit harder to run this in PowerShell though, as I’m not sure how it translates. In Hiragana, the Japanese alphabet starts ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ...

    Read the article

  • Who is Jeremiah Owyang?

    - by Michael Hylton
    Q: What’s your current role and what career path brought you here? J.O.: I'm currently a partner and one of the founding team members at Altimeter Group.  I'm currently the Research Director, as well as wear the hat of Industry Analyst. Prior to joining Altimeter, I was an Industry Analyst at Forrester covering Social Computing, and before that, deployed and managed the social media program at Hitachi Data Systems in Santa Clara.  Around that time, I started a career blog called Web Strategy which focused on how companies were using the web to connect with customers --and never looked back. Q: As an industry analyst, what are you focused on these days? J.O.: There are three trends that I'm focused my research on at this time:  1) The Dynamic Customer Journey:  Individuals (both b2c and b2b) are given so many options in their sources of data, channels to choose from and screens to consume them on that we've found that at each given touchpoint there are 75 potential permutations.  Companies that can map this, then deliver information to individuals when they need it will have a competitive advantage and we want to find out who's doing this.  2) One of the sub themes that supports this trend is Social Performance.  Yesterday's social web was disparate engagement of humans, but the next phase will be data driven, and soon new technologies will emerge to help all those that are consuming, publishing, and engaging on the social web to be more efficient with their time through forms of automation.  As you might expect, this comes with upsides and downsides.  3) The Sentient World is our research theme that looks out the furthest as the world around us (even inanimate objects) become 'self aware' and are able to talk back to us via digital devices and beyond.  Big data, internet of things, mobile devices will all be this next set. Q: People cite that the line between work and life is getting more and more blurred. Do you see your personal life influencing your professional work? J.O.: The lines between our work and personal lives are dissolving, and this leads to a greater upside of being always connected and have deeper relationships with those that are not.  It also means a downside of society expectations that we're always around and available for colleagues, customers, and beyond.  In the future, a balance will be sought as we seek to achieve the goals of family, friends, work, and our own personal desires.  All of this is being ironically written at 430 am on a Sunday am.  Q: How can people keep up with what you’re working on? J.O.: A great question, thanks.  There are a few sources of information to find out, I'll lead with the first which is my blog at web-strategist.com.  A few times a week I'll publish my industry insights (hires, trends, forces, funding, M&A, business needs) as well as on twitter where I'll point to all the news that's fit to print @jowyang.  As my research reports go live (we publish them for all to read --called Open Research-- at no cost) they'll emerge on my blog, or checkout the research tab to find out more now.  http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/research/ Q: Recently, you’ve been working with us here at Oracle on something exciting coming up later this week. What’s on the horizon?  J.O.: Absolutely! This coming Thursday, September 13th, I’m doing a webcast with Oracle on “Managing Social Relationships for the Enterprise”. This is going to be a great discussion with Reggie Bradford, Senior Vice President of Product Development at Oracle and Christian Finn, Senior Director of Product Management for Oracle WebCenter. I’m looking forward to a great discussion around all those issues that so many companies are struggling with these days as they realize how much social media is impacting their business. It’s changing the way your customers and employees interact with your brand. Today it’s no longer a matter of when to become a social-enabled enterprise, but how to become a successful one. Q: You’ve been very actively pursued for media interviews and conference and company speaking engagements – anything you’d like to share to give us a sneak peak of what to expect on Thursday’s webcast?  J.O.: Below is a 15 minute video which encapsulates Altimeter’s themes on the Dynamic Customer Journey and the Sentient World. I’m really proud to have taken an active role in the first ever LeWeb outside of Paris. This one, which was featured in downtown London across the street from Westminster Abbey was sold out. If you’ve not heard of LeWeb, this is a global Internet conference hosted by Loic and Geraldine Le Meur, a power couple that stem from Paris but are also living in Silicon Valley, this is one of my favorite conferences to connect with brands, technology innovators, investors and friends. Altimeter was able to play a minor role in suggesting the theme for the event “Faster Than Real Time” which stems off previous LeWebs that focused on the “Real time web”. In this radical state, companies are able to anticipate the needs of their customers by using data, technology, and devices and deliver meaningful experiences before customers even know they need it. I explore two of three of Altimeter’s research themes, the Dynamic Customer Journey, and the Sentient World in my speech, but due to time, did not focus on Adaptive Organization.

    Read the article

  • Jetzt geht’s los - speaking in Germany!

    - by Hugo Kornelis
    It feels just like yesterday that I went to Munich for the very first German edition of SQL Saturday – and it was a great event. An agenda that was packed with three tracks of great sessions, and lots of fun with the organization, attendees, and other speakers. That was such a great time that I didn’t have to hesitate long before deciding that I wanted to repeat this event this year. Especially when I heard that it will be held in Rheinland, on July 13 – that is a distance I can travel by car! The...(read more)

    Read the article

< Previous Page | 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92  | Next Page >