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The Trouble With Data

Recent Posts

• Hey… they stole my blog title…..

  Posted: 13 May 2009 at 22:29 by Will Riley

  On the SQL Server 2008 R2 site… what did I find…?   Would you Adam ‘n Eve it? Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

• Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog : Announcing SharePoint Server 2010 Preliminary System Requirements

  Posted: 13 May 2009 at 22:22 by Will Riley

  Another key link for the 2010 Microsoft BI stack release wave Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog : Announcing SharePoint Server 2010 Preliminary System Requirements

• The Microsoft Office 2010 IT Blog

  Posted: 13 May 2009 at 22:18 by Will Riley

  Something to keep an eye on as we move towards what is pretty likely to be Office 2010 by all accounts… The Microsoft Office 2010 IT Blog

• SQL Server 2008 SP1 Released

  Posted: 08 Apr 2009 at 16:04 by Will Riley

  Now RTM, SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1 Download Here Summary Functionality: Slipstream – You are now able to integrate the base installation with service packs (or Hotfixes) and install in a single step. Service Pack Uninstall – You are now able to uninstall only the Service Pack (without removing the whole instance) Report Builder 2.0 Click Once [...]

• SQLBits IV

  Posted: 29 Mar 2009 at 16:04 by Will Riley

  Went up to Manchester for SQLBits yesterday. For those who don’t know, it’s the largest SQL Server conference in Europe with 28 sessions & same number of speakers (The likes of Simon Sabin, Jamie Thompson, Chris Webb, Allan Mitchell etc) – Not really a place for huge learning experiences, however great for networking and I [...]

• The Steve Rule

  Posted: 29 Mar 2009 at 15:26 by Will Riley

  On Friday I spent the day with Lawyers, Accountants and a few programmers/developers, discussing data migration and reporting requirements for a new claims handling system. It reminded me that the change of direction that I decided upon (from Accounting to Business Intelligence) a few years ago was essentially a good move. Actually, this shouldn’t be a [...]

• Report Builder 2.0 "Click Once Launch" for SSRS 2008 SP1

  Posted: 03 Mar 2009 at 15:17 by Will Riley

  As mentioned in the previous post, Report Builder 2.0 will be available in the forthcoming SP1 of SQL Server 2008 (currently in CTP - you can get it here) In the current version, it is the old  Report Builder 1.0 that is installed and launched when you click the link shown below. Once you have applied the [...]

• SQL Server 2008 SP1 CTP

  Posted: 28 Feb 2009 at 12:59 by Will Riley

  I noticed over at Andrew Fryer’s blog that the CTP of SQL Server 2008 is now available to Technet subscribers – one interesting snippet is that Report Builder 2 is now a click once install from Report Manager.

• Irish Flat Screen TV

  Posted: 26 Feb 2009 at 16:27 by Will Riley

  Front     Rear

• SQLBits IV Registration open…

  Posted: 12 Feb 2009 at 10:47 by Will Riley

• SSRS 2008 Performance

  Posted: 31 Jan 2009 at 16:29 by Will Riley

  Some good information over at SQLCAT Reporting Services 2008 was able to respond to 3–4 times the total number of users and their requests on the same hardware without HTTP 503 Service Is Unavailable errors compared with Reporting Services 2005, regardless of the type of renderer. In stark contrast, Reporting Services 2005 generated excessive HTTP 503 [...]

• Panorama misinformation campaign

  Posted: 26 Jan 2009 at 21:23 by Will Riley

  Suppose you can’t really blame them for trying to get some mileage out of the recent PPS announcement from Microsoft (see previous blog post), but I found the tone of the email I received today from Panorama more than a little misleading Microsoft announced last week that they will retire PerformancePoint as a standalone BI product. [...]

• Free PerformancePoint with Sharepoint….. !

  Posted: 23 Jan 2009 at 22:14 by Will Riley

  So it would seem according to Cindi Howson over at Intelligent Enterprise. PerformancePoint was released with much fanfare in 2007 as having integrated planning (the big innovation), scorecarding (an enhanced version), and dashboarding (acquired from ProClarity). It turns out many customers only wanted the latter two components, which are more BI related. So now Microsoft is [...]

• SSRS Report Browser Web Part Error

  Posted: 13 Jan 2009 at 10:18 by Will Riley

  This is a weird one. One of our users is a member of the correct AD groups to be browser of the folder that the report browser web part points to, as well as browser of the reports in that folder. On browsing to the Sharepoint 2003 web page however, the default report viewer content [...]

• SSRS: Unable to Load Client Print Control error

  Posted: 22 Oct 2008 at 20:56

  Cumulative security update for ActiveX Killbits for Windows XP (KB956391) that your PC is probably trying to get you to install right now will leave you unable to print reports from SQL Server Reporting Services. Instead, you will get the following error message Unable to load client print control N

• SSRS properties greyed out in SSMS on Windows Server 2008

  Posted: 21 Oct 2008 at 20:22

  Came across an issue that held us up for a bit when we installed SQL Server 2008 on Windows 2008 Server. When connecting to Reporting Services via SSMS, we found that the Report Server properties were "greyed out", meaning that even though we were logged in to the server as members of

• Sub Prime Primer

  Posted: 18 Oct 2008 at 00:08

  Made me smile…. well something’s got to at the moment…   Subprime Primer View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: subprime mortgages)

• SQL 2008 - Enable My Reports

  Posted: 17 Oct 2008 at 10:53

  Having installed SQL Server 2008, one thing threw me a little - how to enable the "My Reports" feature, which is disabled by default. In SQL 2005 you could do this via the Site Settings area, but in SQL 2008 this option had disappeared. Books online still incorrectly suggests that

• Free LINQ query tool

  Posted: 13 Oct 2008 at 23:10 by Will Riley

  Joseph Albahari has made available a neat little tool for running queries using LINQ. LINQ (which stands for Language Integrated Query) is something I have been meaning to get around to since I first saw it demoed early in the SQL 2008 release cycle. You can get the (free) tool, called LINQPad here

• Kilimanjaro - is this the knockout punch from Microsoft?

  Posted: 07 Oct 2008 at 23:37 by Will Riley

  SQL Server Kilimanjaro and Project Madison This week the BI Conference has kicked off with an amazing announcement!  There will be a BI focused release of SQL Server code named Kilimanjaro which is expected H1 2010 with CTPs available within the next 12 months.  Kilimanjaro is focused on &