Richard Hundhausen: The DBAgilist

SQL Server 2008 Report Builder Available

2008-10-19T21:51:12Z

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services Report Builder 2.0 delivers an intuitive, Office-like report authoring environment enabling business and power users to leverage their experience with Microsoft Office 2007 products. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services Report Builder 2.0 supports the full capabilities of SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services including: Flexible report layout capabilities of SQL Server 2008 Report Definition Language Data Visualizations including charts and gauges...(read more)

Boise SQL Server User Group Presentation

2008-09-12T22:24:13Z

Thanks to those who attended the second meeting of the Boise SQL Server User Group . We had a good turnout of around 30 people and I hope everyone enjoyed my presentation of SQL Server 2008 Integration Services (SSIS). I tried to balance the presentation between those who hadn't used SSIS and those who have. If you are interested in the sample projects, packages, and data files from the talk, here they are....(read more)

Boise SQL Server User Group

2008-05-01T16:45:07Z

The newly formed Boise SQL Server User Group kicks off its first meeting with Kalen Delaney on June 25, 2008. I'm happy to see a Microsoft SQL Server user group in Boise. It will fit nicely with the other development and SharePoint groups in town. For more information, contact Cindy Gross of Microsoft....(read more)

Installing Team Edition(s) on your Team Foundation Build server

2008-03-19T15:29:07Z

It's generally known that if you want to run any tests, code analysis, or database project build/deployment that you need to install one or more Team Edition of VSTS on your build server. What's not so well known are the licensing ramifications around these scenarios. Fortunately Jeff Beehler , Team System Chief of Staff, has posted on this subject . To summarize: If the users creating the builds are licensed users of the edition in question (or Team Suite), that license extends to Team Foundation...(read more)

Photos from the Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Windows Server 2008 Launch in LA

2008-02-29T14:55:44Z

Back home now, and I have a moment to get the photos downloaded from my camera and uploaded to my blog. Next time I'll take my SD card reader with me. As you can see, registration was quite busy. I heard that there were 4000 people there, but didn't count them myself. The long lines delayed the keynote by about an hour: Douglas McDowell and I snuck into the press area. Well, he was officially press (SQL Server Magazine), but I wasn't - still I took more notes than most of the other pressies there....(read more)

Live from the VS/SQL/Windows 2008 launch

2008-02-27T17:49:38Z

In this, my first post of (hopefully) several today, I'm sitting in the keynote session (next to Douglas McDowell ), listening to Tom Brokaw warm up the audience. What a nice surprise. It definitely stopped all the geeks in their tracks, to listen to his wise words, gathered from years of experience in all matters mankind. I loved his opening line "I'm not here to write code, or wire this room". He did, however, wax poetic on the future of technology, the spirit and energy of the types of people...(read more)

Remembering Jim Gray and a Tribute

2008-02-12T15:01:58Z

Time flies. It's been a year since Dr. Gray, a Microsoft research fellow and Turing Award-winner, went missing while sailing off San Francisco. A year ago, at Boise Code Camp 2.0, I hosted a session on finding Jim Gray , using Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Now, a year after Dr. Gray went missing, the Association of Computing Machinery (the organization that holds the Turing Awards), the IEEE Computer Society and the University of California-Berkeley have joined to announce a tribute to Gray, planned...(read more)

Adding TFPT.exe to your PATH

2008-02-10T22:01:11Z

I know. I know. This doesn't sound like a very interesting post, but it saved me time, and hopefully it can save you some too. When you install Visual Studio 2008, Microsoft creates a "Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt" shortcut, under that program group. I like to take this shortcut and drop it on my Quick Launch toolbar: The problem is that when you install the Team Foundation Server Power Tools (or other new command line utilities) you need to put them in the path. Well, if you look at the file...(read more)

SQL Server 2008 November CTP Available

2007-11-20T18:03:00Z

I've been so involved with the VSTS RTM yesterday, that I almost didn't notice this one. Click here to download the latest SQL Server 2008 Community Technology Preview (CTP) and try out the latest features of SQL Server 2008....(read more)

US Tech-Ed 2008 To Be Two Conferences

2007-11-15T13:36:48Z

It seems that the US Tech-Ed is following Europe's lead, by breaking up the one large conference into two: one for developers and one for IT professionals. June 3-6, 2008 - Developers (developers, solution architects, designers, and testers) June 10-13, 2008 - IT Professionals Both events will have a similar format with the past Tech·Eds, but will focus on a single audience instead of a mixed audience, which was the case with the previous Tech·Ed model. Visit the main Tech-Ed site for more information,...(read more)

Creating and Customizing TFS Reports

2007-10-22T18:05:59Z

I just came across this download at Microsoft. It provides an introduction to the concepts and step by step instructions for creating and customizing TFS reports. The zip file contains instructional PDF documents as well as several sample reports....(read more)

Microsoft Positioned in the leader quadrant in Gartner’s latest Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse DBMS, 2007

2007-10-17T19:03:36Z

Way to go Microsoft, and SQL Server 2005! For the first time in the report’s history, Microsoft is positioned in the Leader quadrant in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse DBMS. The analysts say that SQL Server 2005 is expected to grow in the data warehouse space and Microsoft’s vision for SQL Server 2008 makes clear the company’s intent to become a major presence in the data warehouse market. Read more about this great announcement here ....(read more)

TFS Operations Guidance

2007-10-02T15:46:42Z

Thanks to the Team System Rangers (an elite squad of TFS experts inside Microsoft) for putting together this document, which serves as a single point of entry into the world of TFS Operations as well as Microsoft's recommended operational best practices. So, start learning/mastering TFS operations by clicking here ....(read more)

VSTS Web Access Power Tool - CTP released

2007-09-22T15:12:57Z

Microsoft has released a new version of VSTS Web Access Power tool. This release is a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of what will ultimately be the 2008 version of the VSTS Web Access Power Tool. Built against the TFS 2008 object model - In previous versions of Web Access you had to install Team Explorer 2005 on any machine you were installing Web Access on. With this version, you will now be installing Team Explorer 2008 instead. In some future version, Microsoft hopes to remove the requirement...(read more)

Code that Writes Code (or TSQL that writes ASP.NET)

2007-09-18T21:02:47Z

Call it a code generator, software factory, or just a clever script. If you can write code that writes code - you win, even if just a small victory for humans in this contest we call software development. For example, I've been working on an ASP.NET application which contains many data entry screens. You know the kind: very simple, table-format with a label and a textbox of a certain width, that may or may not require some validation. In other words, a whole lot of markup like this: <tr> <td...(read more)