Remove the Limitations Of LocalDB With This One Simple Trick**

**(not a trick) If you are developing your databases in SSDT, then chances are you are familiar with LocalDB. LocalDB is essentially as stripped-down version of the database engine that runs within Visual Studio, and whenever you hit F5 the database is deployed to LocalDB… sometimes. You see, LocalDB is in fact pretty much SQL Express, the free version of SQL Server. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, except that SQL Server Express does not support all features, like say for example, full text search.

Turbo LogShip 1.0 Released

Earlier this year, I wrote a long post about log shipping. One of the key points I mentioned was how slow restoring can be for a read only log shipped database. If going and reading the whole thing is too much effort for you now, I’ll save you the effort (you child of the internet you) and tell you it’s because the database needs to be kept transactionally consistent in between restores when making it available for read-only. It creates a .tuf file (transaction undo file) to keep the progress of all the pages that have uncommitted transactions saved to them. The checking, creation, applying and re-applying of this can take some time where there is a significant amount of uncommitted transactions within a log backup.

Deploy Cubes Using Powershell: The Script

Hello!

Recently someone got in touch with me about one of my earliest posts. I realised I had made a mistake on that post and had updated. But I also realised that the script itself is actually part of a PowerShell module. So wanting to make things as easy as possible, and being the helpful guy that I am, I have altered that example into a script which I am posting here.

It’s worth stressing that the errors that output to the console are fairly generic, and that there is a log file that will contain all the information if there are any errors.

Free UK Visual Studio/ALM Events in 2016

Throughout the second half of this year, Microsoft are hosting three free events on the popular topics of Application Lifestyle Management & DevOps with Visual Studio. These are full day events, and yes to answer the most important question snacks and lunch is free! It’s not entirely clear if the event is going to include Visual Studio Team Services, however there is the promise of showing off new features. So presumably another update for Visual Studio 2015 is coming soon, or new features are going to be added to VSTS.

Free Microsoft eBooks

Yep, no sooner had Microsoft decided to lay-off their editorial staff do they decide to giveaway for free a considerable amount of eBook content. Obviously there is probably not a link between the two events, as clearly Microsoft have been giving away free eBooks for years, but it would be remiss for me to ignore Microsoft’s decision whilst distributing free content. The first link is a very good read and I encourage you to peruse.

Cumulative Updates - SQL Server 2016 CU1

As part of their Incremental Service Modelling, Microsoft have released SQL Server 2016 Cumulative Update #1 for SQL Server 2016 RTM.

Cumulative Updates - SQL Server 2014 SP1 CU7

As part of their Incremental Service Modelling, Microsoft have released SQL Server 2014 Cumulative Update #7 for SQL Server 2014 SP1.

Cumulative Updates - SQL Server 2014 SP1 CU5

As part of their Incremental Service Modelling, Microsoft have released SQL Server 2014 Cumulative Update #5 for SQL Server 2014 SP1.

Cumulative Updates - SQL Server 2014 SP1 CU4

As part of their Incremental Service Modelling, Microsoft have released SQL Server 2014 Cumulative Update #4 for SQL Server 2014 SP1.

Cumulative Updates - SQL Server 2014 SP1 CU3

As part of their Incremental Service Modelling, Microsoft have released SQL Server 2014 Cumulative Update #3 for SQL Server 2014 SP1.

Cumulative Updates - SQL Server 2014 SP1 CU2

As part of their Incremental Service Modelling, Microsoft have released SQL Server 2014 Cumulative Update #2 for SQL Server 2014 SP1.

Cumulative Updates - SQL Server 2014 RTM CU7

As part of their Incremental Service Modelling, Microsoft have released SQL Server 2014 Cumulative Update #7.

Cumulative Updates - SQL Server 2014 RTM CU6

As part of their Incremental Service Modelling, Microsoft have released SQL Server 2014 Cumulative Update #6.

Cumulative Updates - SQL Server 2014 RTM CU4

As part of their Incremental Service Modelling, Microsoft have released SQL Server 2014 Cumulative Update #4.

Cumulative Updates - SQL Server 2014 RTM CU3

As part of their Incremental Service Modelling, Microsoft have released SQL Server 2014 Cumulative Update #3.

Free Books and Training Kits

To paraphrase a saying; learning is priceless, but education must be cheap. And if you’re like me then your training budget is usually whatever you find down the back of the couch!

SQL Supper Notes

Yesterday evening there was a very special SQL Supper hosted at the Microsoft offices in London Victoria. It was an open session with some of the Microsoft Data Platform group, Mark Souza, Nigel Ellis, Conor Cunningham, Hatay Tuna and Ewan Fairweather. So I made my way by foot from the offices here in Covent Garden to London Victoria. Although February in London is rather chilly, with a brisk walk you can make it in half an hour, plus you pass several landmarks such as the piazza at Covent Garden, Trafalgar Square (and it’s controversial 4th plinth sculpture, the Blue Hahn Cock) the Mall, Buckingham Palace and finally, Westminster Cathedral.

Microsoft Exams: 2 down 2 To Go

Wow, a new years resolution I’m following through with! This year I’ve already passed 2 Microsoft Exams. The first exam was “Querying Microsoft SQL Server 2012”, and some of the skills I learnt from studying for this exam has helped me write better scripts, 1 of which was posted yesterday. So I’m 1/3 of the way towards achieving the Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate (MCSA) SQL Server Solutions Associate certification.

The second exam I passed is the “Delivering Continuous Value with Visual Studio 2012 Application Lifecycle Management”, which (along with the testing and TFS exams) is necessary for achieving the Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer Certification.

SQL Server 2014 CTP2 Available to Download

At the PASS Summit keynote today Quentin Clark announced that SQL Server CTP2 (which is public and the last public review) and is available right now to download here. It is also available as a VM on Azure. According to a tweet from Glenn Berry, the version number in the demo is 12.0.1524.

Before what you download and install, here’s what you ought to know;

Upgrade Analysis Services Activity Viewer 2008 to SQL Server 2012

Update: I have uploaded the changes to my own Codeplex project. Now you can run the Activity Viewer on a box that only has SSAS 2012 installed. https://asactivityviewer2012.codeplex.com/ Hey folks, it’s been a massively busy week post-release, but I thought I’d share a tip on upgrading the Activity Viewer to 2012. First, a bit of background: Activity Viewer, or Analysis Services Activity Viewer 2008 to give it its full name, is a solution available to download on the Codeplex website.

The Story of Synchronized Settings - The Visual Studio Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

The Story of Synchronized Settings - The Visual Studio Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs.

This blog from the Visual Studio team provides an insight into how and why synchronized settings came about.

Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate Preview Released

Barely a month has gone by since the announcement at Tech Ed North America 2013 yet Visual Studio 2013 Preview is available to download. TFS 2013 Preview is also available, however as I use the Team Foundation Services hosted by Microsoft, I’m just going to focus on VS 2013. .NET 4.5.1 preview is also available, which is installed when you install the VS 2013 preview. .NET 4.5.1 is also included in all installations of the Windows 8.1 preview. These products are classified as “go-live” by Microsoft, so they will support them in production.

SQL Server 2014 CTP1 Released

This week has been the week of the release: We’ve had the Visual Studio 2013 Preview and now the SQL Server 2014 CTP1. And that’s just the ones I’m focusing on! There’s the Windows 8.1 Preview as well as Windows Server 2012 R2. What with all the keynotes from Build and both TechEd’s this month, it is clear that Microsoft have certainly accelerated the release cycle and embraced a cloud-first development model. For me this is most noticeable in Team Foundation Services, the Azure based Source Control solution. Features were turned on regularly before they were released in the three updates we’ve had since the release of TFS 2012 back in August. This is a big change from the Microsoft’s previous strategy of developing for its products hosted on the premises first and then being pushed to them to the cloud afterwards.

At a later date I’ll dig more into features of SQL 2014, as this week my focus has been on Visual Studio 2013, which is out sometime this year, as well as doing my job in real life. The duties of blogging…

SQL Server 2014 Announced

Introduction

A week late and more than a few dollars short, this blog post is focusing on a few of the features announced for SQL Sever 2014. I’ve watched the Keynote and a few of the videos from the sessions at TechEd North America 2013, and read the whitepapers and datasheets. Information is still limited though, like which versions the features will be added to, so it’s certainly not a deep dive into the features. Nor is it an exhaustive list of the features; moreover, it’s a look at those ones that immediately piqued my interest in the Mission Critical Performance category of improvements.

Keeping Microsoft Products Up-to-Date

I posed a question to one of our new starters the other day: Would you rather have 6 months experience in SQL Server 2012 or 8 years experience in SQL Server 2005? I asked him this in response to his surprise that we seem to use the latest versions of all the Microsoft products: Windows 8, TFS 2012, Visual Studio 2012 (including the new BIDS version), SQL Server, Windows Server 2012… the list goes on. Certainly it benefits us employees as we get exposure to the latest software. But the policy to upgrade to the latest SKU’s of Microsoft products isn’t for the benefit of the employees,it’s just a bonus. And, though it may look like the company is on the bleeding edge of IT, that ’s also not really the case either. It may be up to date, but certainly not bleeding edge. Other than access to the latest features, there are two main reasons why it makes sense to upgrade the latest version:

Visual Studio 2012 – Update 2 RTM Released

Today has seen the release of Visual Studio 2012 – Update 2 RTM. There have been severaliterations of Update 2 in the form of CTP. IN fact I think if I recall the CTP 4 was RTM for TFS 2012 but not for Visual Studio 2012. Regardless, the RTM is ready to download. You can get it via this link below, or when you boot up VS 2012 a new download should be available. If you missed out on Update 1 then it is installed as part of Update 2…

Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 RTM Released

Today has seen the release of Visual Studio 2012 – Update 2 RTM. There have been severaliterations of Update 2 in the form of CTP. IN fact I think if I recall the CTP 4 was RTM for TFS 2012 but not for Visual Studio 2012. Regardless, the RTM is ready to download. You can get it via this link below, or when you boot up VS 2012 a new download should be available. If you missed out on Update 1 then it is installed as part of Update 2…

Object Explorer Details Window

Occasionally, there is a need for us to manually delete a large number of staging tables from some of our databases. This can also occur to our partitioned tables that sometimes leave the switched partition on the list of tables in the database. But through the Object Explorer window in SSMS, it’s not possible to select more than one table at anyone time. You could script it out using T-SQL, but if there is also the Object Explorer Details window in SSMS, which you can open by pressing F7 or going to View -> Object Explorer Details.

Using PowerShell to Deploy Cubes

When releasing a new version of our software there are typically cube changes that have to be deployed. We have only one SSAS Solution but we deploy it many times for reasons I won’t go into here. Suffice to say that cube deployment and processing is by far the biggest task of any release due to the number of databases we deploy and size of the cubes. We have been able to automate much of the deployment thanks to the use of Powershell and MSBuild.

SQL Bits XI Registration is Now Open

Hi all, registration to attend SQL Bits is now open. http://www.regonline.com/Register/Checkin.aspx?EventID=1163518 There’s a 600 capacity limit and they anticipate it to fill rather quickly. More details can be found here: http://sqlbits.com/ Hope to see you there!

Introduction to Hekaton Part One: MVCC

Hello folks, welcome to a post focusing on one of the future features of SQL Server. SQL Server 2012 is barely a year old, yet there is already talk on a feature that is to ship in the next major release of SQL Server. The current name of this feature is Hekaton, which is Greek for 100. I believe the reason for this name is because of the performance boost that one online gaming company experienced when working with Microsoft in implementing the technology preview of Hekaton.