August 2008 - Posts

• Need to run SQL Server VPCs faster? -> Fast flash drives do help

  Fellow RD and Solid Quality colleague Ken Spencer posted a little while back that he was having good success loading VPC images off flash drives. I thought it was time to try it myself. The first concept is that not all flash drives are created equal. Read More... Posted Saturday, August 30, 2008 8:57 PM by Greg Low | 3 Comments

• SQL Down Under - show 39 - Kent Tegels - SQL Server 2008 Spatial Data

  SQL Down Under show 39 featuring Kent Tegels is now available for download from www.sqldownunder.com . In the show, Kent discusses the spatial data type in SQL Server 2008. Read More... Posted Saturday, August 30, 2008 8:56 PM by Greg Low | 0 Comments

• SQLCMD mode and batch separators

  I fell for this one this week. If you execute the following code in SQLCMD mode, what would you expect the output to be? : SETVAR PrincipalServer WINSTD2K8BASE : SETVAR MirrorServer WINSTD2K8BASE\SQLDEV02 : SETVAR WitnessServer WINSTD2K8BASE\SQLDEV03 Read More... Posted Friday, August 29, 2008 5:28 PM by Greg Low | 0 Comments

• PDCnoggin: The PDC Brain Relay

  You've seen the Olympic torch relay. Well PDC has a brain relay with the PDCnoggin. The Regional Directors are an awesome bunch of people that I'm really honoured to be part of. Many get together for the PDC each time it's held. Our RD lead Kevin Schuler Read More... Posted Friday, August 29, 2008 5:12 PM by Greg Low | 2 Comments

• Displaying HTML content in Reporting Services 2008

  A friend of mine that works for Microsoft pinged me yesterday about how to strip HTML tags out of text he was trying to display in Reporting Services. He just wanted the text displayed. The typical text looked like this: <div class=ExternalClassB9A517D3DE254676B8266F6B2D84FD05> Read More... Posted Monday, August 25, 2008 12:46 PM by Greg Low | 28 Comments

• OT: Political Compass

  Rob Sanders pointed me today at the Political Compass . I wondered where I sat in the spectrum. Well this is where . I felt quite a cringe reading some of the questions. I wasn't surprised that I was more libertarian in my views than authoritarian but Read More... Posted Thursday, August 21, 2008 4:23 PM by Greg Low | 6 Comments

• Database mirroring requires transaction log backup regardless

  I was setting up mirroring at a client site today and started as I usually do by backing up the primary database and restoring it at the mirror. It would not start mirroring and complained that I didn't have the latest transaction log backup: the mirror Read More... Posted Monday, August 18, 2008 8:07 PM by Greg Low | 9 Comments

• Fascinating demo of surface technology

  Fellow RD Tim Huckaby’s company has been really pushing the capabilities of the surface platform and building a really interesting set of apps. Most are still embargoed but this one is now allowed to be shown: http://silverlight.interknowlogy.com/Videos/VitruView/default.html Read More... Posted Sunday, August 17, 2008 10:47 AM by Greg Low | 0 Comments

• Modifying the Thesaurus in Full Text Search in SQL Server 2008

  While I was prepping my full-text search session for TechEd Australia today, I decided to modify the thesaurus. I found the discussion in books online a bit confusing regarding the locations of the files involved. What threw me was it said the default Read More... Posted Wednesday, August 13, 2008 7:47 PM by Greg Low | 1 Comments

• Data Driven Subscriptions in SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition

  Recently, I was working at a client's site where SQL Server 2000 was still in use. They wanted to upgrade to SQL Server 2005. The only reason they were looking at the Enterprise Edition was for data-driven subscriptions in Reporting Services. The CEO Read More... Posted Wednesday, August 13, 2008 7:28 PM by Greg Low | 30 Comments

• SP1 for SQL Server Compact Edition 3.5 also out now

  The title pretty much says it all but for more information, check out Steve Lasker's post . Read More... Posted Thursday, August 07, 2008 1:29 PM by Greg Low | 0 Comments

• SQL Server 2008 has RTM'd and VS 2008 SP1 Soon

  Well it was great news this morning that SQL Server 2008 RTM has hit the download sites. Also keep an eye out for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 which has been listed as coming August 11th. Read More... Posted Thursday, August 07, 2008 10:45 AM by Greg Low | 1 Comments