Download SQL Server CTP 2.3 and check out enhancements

SQL Server 2016 CTP 2.3 is available since September 2, 2015. Several features have been enhanced. Looks like integration of R Language with SQL Server 2016 is built-in.

The following are the stated enhancements in this preview:

• Row Level Security support for in-memory OLTP tables
• A core engine scalability improvement, dynamically partitioning thread safe memory objects by NUMA or CPU, which enables higher scalability
• In-memory data warehouse (column store) performance optimizations
• Many-to-many derived hierarchies in Master Data Services
• Several performance improvements to SQL Server Analysis Services, including DAX query performance
• Enhancements to Reporting Services, including an updated Report Builder with a modern theme and report rendering for modern browsers

These are additional enhancements besides the above:
Improvements to the SQL Server Integration Service, Query Execution, and DBCC CHECKDB.

Technical Datasheet is  here (download PDF).

Download the evaluation edition here.

BI projects in SQL Server Data Tools

SQL Server  Data Tools(SSDT) installs when you install SQL Server 2012 (even the SQL Server 2012 Express edition). SSDT has all the necessary project templates to start a Business Intelligence project. However it will not have the templates for other language projects such as C#, VB.NET etc.

SSDT allows you to create all the Business Intelligence related projects by providing templates for the projects. You can also create SQL Server projects as shown here:

ssisProj03
Here is an example of creating a SQL Server Integration Services project using the Visual Studio Shell launched by SSDT that gets installed with the SQL Server.

http://hodentekmsss.blogspot.com/2015/02/sql-server-data-toolsssdt-installs-when.html

More posts on SSDT here:
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2013/10/ssdt-bi-templates-for-sql-server-2012.html

http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2014/07/new-update-to-sql-server-data-tools.html

http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2014/03/sql-server-data-tools-to-go-with-sql.html

Microsoft, SAP Alliance - Enriching the Cloud

Microsoft canopy in the cloud.

Your employees can now dig deeper to get value out of your business and the Microsoft / SAP alliance makes it lot more flexible, lot easier and more enriching. Now, this alliance makes it possible to have integrated solutions  meshing up these two technologies making the any where, anytime information critical to business available without much effort.

This alliance covers all of MSFT, Cloud, Mobile, Office, BI, etc..

There are many facets to this alliance which can be briefly summarized as follows:

• PowerBI connectivity to SAP Business Objects
• SAP on Windows 8
• SAP Gateway (GWM) for Microsoft
• SQL Server for SAP installations
• Real time  SAP data access in the Azure cloud-Customers can run SAP Applications, Databases, platforms to run in the cloud

This comes not so long after its alliance with Oracle. Microsoft Azure has spread its tentacles so to speak far and wide. Review the following posts.

http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2014/03/windows-azureoracle-colloboration-is.html
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2013/09/oracle-software-on-windows-azure.html

Packt celebrates its 2000th book

ALOHA

PACKT has published so far, 5 of my books (0.25% of Packt books). Actually I am one of the early non-open source authors writing on Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services 2005. Packt has covered a wide area of software, both Open Source and proprietary and PACKT champions the Open Source movement.

Here are my books:

https://www.packtpub.com/authors/profiles/jayaram-krishnaswamy

To mark this important event in its publishing history, PACKT isoffering a very good deal beginning 18th-Mar-2014 and continuing up until 26th-Mar-2014. Following are the benefits readers can avail during this period.

·         Unlimited purchases during the offer period

·         Offer is automatically applied at checkout

Packt books are known for their focus and technical excellence.

Perhaps it will do good for yo to check out the offerings yourself. Kindly follow this link to take full advantage of this offer:

http://bit.ly/1j26nPN

If you want to take a look at my books and parts of its contents there is no better way than following these links.

http://hodentek.blogspot.com

http://hodentekMSSS.blogspot.com - 100% SQL Server

http://hodentekHelp.blogspot.com - free help Q&A type

Also Packt article archives have 100's or more of my articles on database and web related topics.

Mahalo

Jay

These may just be the types of articles you are looking for

There are some 50 articles covering most areas of contemporary database/web related technologies.

SQL Server 2008, MySQL, Oracle, Analysis Services, Twitter, Microsoft Lightswitch, SSIS, SSRS, Linked Servers, Enterprise DB, SQL Anywhere 10, Data Transfer Access to SQL Server, LinqDataSource, XAML. XBAP, Data Migration, jquery in Dojo, PocketPC, and many more...

Review the following link: Articles on Packt
 

Are you serious about SQL Server 2012?

If the answer is yes, I recommed that you download immediately the SQL Server 2012 Developer Training Kit. This can be installed from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=27721



Before you install the KIT you need to install the Web Platform Installer 4.0. You can get it from the same link. Read the previous post here for installing Web PI 4.0: http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2012/12/you-can-get-lots-of-stuff-from-web.html

Note that the KIT's executable may not necessariloy show up in WEB PI4.0!!

When you run the Kit related exe (http://download.microsoft.com/download/D/0/9/D098DCF2-1888-4624-920B-B2DE71B2728F/SQL2012DevTrainingKit.WebInstaller.exe) file you will download the kit.

On this computer it was installed in the default folder "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Web Platform Installer\WebPlatformInstaller.exe". Note that you have to allow Activex on your IE and you may get this warning, better pay attention to it and enable it.

When you run this program you will find the default.htm, the starting point of your journey.
C:\SQL2012UpdateForDevsTrainingKit\Default.htm

Default.htm opens out like this. You can learn a lot, not just DBA, but also development and of course BI.

Good luck.

Aloha from Honolulu

SQL Saturday in Honolulu, August 2, 2012

Guys here in Honolulu are serious and proactive when it comes to SQL Server. They had the
SQL Saturday event two days ahead of Saturday on 8/2/2012. The event was held at the Honolulu Community College.

This PASS event was organized locally by the Pacific Center for Advanced Technology Training.
These were the talks delivered at the event:

SQL Server 2012 EIM (SSIS, DQS, and MDS) at intermediate level was delivered by Matt Hollingsworth of Microsoft. He gave a reasonably good demo of data cleansing using all of the three tools. He barely touched on Project Barcelona (new data lineage and impact analysis) still under wraps.

Rushabh Mehta of SolidQ gave talks on:
A beginner level Introduction to Data Quality Services (DqS)
An intermediate lelvel introduction to Master Data Management
and
SSIS 2012 Management Considerations and Best Practices

I only attended the 3rd talk which was very good. Lots of enhancements to SSIS since I published my book on SSIS.

Matt gave two other talks:
Building a BI Semantic Model for Power View
SQL Server 2012 Always On Enhancements

I have not dabelled with SharePoint but Wen He of eWorld gave two talks on
Reporting Nirvana -SQL 2012 and SharePoint 2010
Self_service BI with SharePoint

Power View rhymes with Power Point!

I attended the first one which was reasonably good.

There was also a lunch break vendor talk from Nimble Storage. The talk was around Nimble Storage Solutions, I only caught the last bit.

Microsoft Web Camps-Bengaluru Nov 3_2011

I managed to attend this event in Bengaluru and it was quite interesting. The Microsoft staff who made the presentations did quite a good job. The presentations were around HTML5 and Web Matrix. Deploying a web matrix application to Windows Azure was presented quite effectively. However I am not sure how many in the audience worked with Windows Azure. Here are some msdn blogs of those who presented:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/saranyas/archive/2011/10/12/deploying-a-webmatrix-application-to-windows-azure-part-1-using-command-line.aspx

http://geekswithblogs.net/ranganh/Default.aspx

I also took the opportunity to introduce myself briefly. I wanted to raffle one copy each (eBook version) to the audience but this practice does not appear common. In any case I spoke for a few minutes and explained that the audience could participate in a raffle.

Here is how you can enter the raffle:

Send me an email here (mysorian@gmail.com). In the subject line write one of the following:
SSIS
SSRS
SQLAzure
Lightswitch

If you want to check out the books you may follow the links:

Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch Business Application Development



Microsoft SQL Azure Enterprise Application Development




Learning SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services



Beginners Guide to SQL Server Integration Services Using Visual Studio 2005









Apart from the above, if you are interested you can buy the books at deep discounts. I believe there is a deadline.Use the following:
Discount Codes:
      Print book : qdecpri
      E Book : qdecebk
The Packt web site is here:
http://www.packtpub.com/

That's all, thanks.

Denali gets installed on Windows 7 but...

I have VS 2008 SP3 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express on my machines as well as a number of SQL Servers including 2008, 2008 R2, and Express.

After installing Denali the integration services does not work. There are three types of templates for using SSIS with Visual Studio 2008 and none of them work. Looks like when you install Denali on a machine with SQL Server 2008 or 2008 R2, the integration services package cannot be created as the program becomes inoperative as the earlier version is not supported anymore. The option therefore is to place the program on a virtual machine.

Review the error messages for the three templates for creating a package or use SSIS import template:

With Integration Services Package :

With SSIS Project Wizard: Whatever it means?

With Integration Services Import Project wizard:

On USING SSIS to transfer data between SQL Server 2008 and MySQL

There are a large number of posts on various difficulties experienced while transferring data from MySQL using Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services. While the transfer of data from MySQL to Microsoft SQL Server 2008 is not fraught with any blocking issues, transfer of data from SQL Server 2008 to MySQL has presented various problems.


For data interchange with MySQL there are two options one of which can be accessed in the connection wizards of SQL Server Integration Services assuming you have installed the programs. The other can be used to set up a ODBC DSN as described further down. The two connection options are:

• MySQL Connector/ODBC 5.1
• Connector/Net 5.2 New versions 6.0 & 6.1

In this article we will be using the ODBC connector for MySQL which can be downloaded from the MySQL Site. The connector will be used to create an ODBC DSN. The article describes in detail how the transfer is carried out. Read on ....
this article brought to you by PACKT PUBLISHING.


MySQL Data Transfer using Sql Server Integration Services (SSIS)


Pick up the mechanics of working with SQL Server Integration 2005 under 10 days reading my no brainer book on SQL Server Integration Serivces.

ActiveX Script Task to access a Report on a Report Server

You want to create a package to display a report on your report server in SQL Server 2008.

You may want to read this note in my other blog.

http://hodentekhelp.blogspot.com/2008/05/activex-script-task-to-access-report-on.html

New Data Flow Destinations in VS 2008's SSIS Designer

You will find the new destinations shown inside blue rectangles in the SSIS designer Toolbox when you work with VS 2008.

ADO.NET and SQL Server Compact Edition are new. SQL Server Mobile destination is out.

New Data Flow Source items in VS 2008's SSIS Designer

The items shown in red rectangles are new items that you will find in Visual Studio 2008's Toolbox. The ADO.NET Data Flow Source can be used to extract data from a relational data source using a .NET Provider.

Note that the DataReader Source is removed from this group

Do you want to mine text?

This article shows how you may mine information buried in the body of a text using the Term Extraction Transformation. You can find nouns, noun phrases, or both nouns and noun phrases in sentences presented to the transformation.

Term Extraction Transformation

Retrieve a saved package into Visual Studio 2005

Say, you have a package stored in your Integration Services Server adn you want to bring it up into Visual Studio.

This is what you need to do:

Create a BI Project. Right click the SSIS Packages node in the Solution Explorer and choose Add Existing Package.This brings up the screen where you need to locate the package you want to bring it in. You need to know the name of your server; provide authentication, and identify the packge on the server, or file system as shown in the following figure.

If you are a beginner I suggest you take a look at my book which will bring you up to speed in under two weeks.

Beginners book on SSIS

DTS packages with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005

You should be able to access a DTS package (Of course created in SQL Server 2000) using the Execute DTS 2000 package task. You need to provide all relevant information regarding the package, its storage location, permissions, etc.

If you want to migrate a package to SSIS then you may do so from Project-->Migrate DTS 2000 Package.

About my new book on SSIS

About this book

Beginners Guide to SQL Server Integration Services Using Visual Studio 2005 provides you with the basic knowledge that you should have before you move on to more advanced ETL [Extraction, Transformation, and Loading]. The book will also provide you with a comprehensive description of the many designer windows that you may encounter while working with the designer. A majority of SSIS tasks are covered in this book and they are described fully in the summary of table contents section. You start building packages right from Chapter 2 and continue on to Chapter 20 gathering and building upon your knowledge in each step.






The book will give you step-by-step explanation of the examples in the book. In each chapter you will get a little background of the SSIS task that you are going to create. You will then step through the numbered steps, creating, configuring, executing, and reviewing the results. The book has minimal coding (only two chapters) and exclusively uses the Visual Studio 2005 Designer.

This book is written for beginners in the developer track who are looking to get an exposure to SQL Server Integration Services; DBA's who are testing water with the Visual Studio IDE but without a wide programming experience; SQL 2000 Data Transformation Services users who are trying to move into SQL Server 2005 Integration Services; Microsoft programming professionals in Small Businesses who wear multiple hats (jack of all) - developer, programmer, and dba with a little bit of experience in each of these.

Guide to SSIS for real beginners

Look up for my beginners book on SSIS at http://www.packt.com end of Dec 2007 or early 2007. You will get to taste a large number of tasks in some 20 easy lessons.

Beginners Guide to SQL Server Integration Services Using Visual Studio 2005

This book is for the real beginners who may not like a lot of coding but would like to see how SSIS works.