Recently in SQL Server Category

Just thinking aloud here. So, let’s say you have a team of report developers and you find that more than one report needs to access a common set of routines.

It was brought to my attention that there was some concern that the “amateur” LightSwitch developers would be incapable of writing stored procedures so the tool should not support accessing them—it doesn’t. Here is my response along with a couple of other questions for Microsoft…

Microsoft is gearing up to announce “LightSwitch”, it’s newest data application developer tool. Targeted to developers of “…all skill levels” it’s designed to permit access to local or remote data sources including SQL Server, Azure and SharePoint. I assume this means that amateur developers will have another tool to work with—assuming they can afford it and their IT organization will let them use it.

Frankly, I’ve known about this new offering for some time but until now, I was under NDA and could not reveal any of its details (or even the name). Now that it’s been released, I have a few choice words to add to the drumbeat…

This week I’m transitioning my existing Reporting Services catalog to SQL Server 2008 R2. I’m also building a separate VM where I can demonstrate the differences in “native” vs. SharePoint integration. This blog will serve as a notepad to log the issues I encounter along the way. Incidentally, I had to bump up the VM RAM to 3GB to get this install sequence to run without swapping. I also allocated 3 processors to the VM as it was also CPU bound with only one processor. I noticed that deploy performance was noticeably longer once SharePoint integration was enabled.

Given the number of people that struggled with the intermediate to advanced topics in my SQL Server and Reporting Services 9-hour series of sessions for Progressive, we've decided to offer the first in a series of introductory webinar courses to be offered each month (for the forseeable future). We're also providing guided labs for this course--as if it's taking place in a classroom. I'll be there to answer questions and if necessary setup a SharedView session with the student to debug their work in real time.

I’ve been tuning my monthly webinar again to include more information about SQL Server Reporting Services (R2) and Visual Studio 2010. This high-impact series of six 90-minute webinars held over three mornings is for anyone who wants to leverage Visual Studio, SQL Server and Reporting Services best practices—learning what works, what doesn't and why. These sessions are for developers, architects and managers who want to know how and (more importantly) when to leverage the power and benefits of SQL Server and Reporting Services. The fee also includes both of my Reporting Services and Visual Studio books.

Incidentally, Progressive does not care how many people sit in on the sessions so you can fill a meeting room or the local theater if you want to. These are also designed to be interactive—that is, I encourage the attendees to chat in questions anytime or ask over the phone at the end.

In the latest offering I stripped out the “Connecting” session and pushed in a brand-new session “Report Design Foundations” even though the online outline does not reflect this change. 

Want a front-row seat in my next Webinar? If so, I’m accepting applications for the live studio audience. All you need to do is send me an note saying why you would like to attend. I can comfortably sit about four people so get your application in early. Let me worry about the conference $999 fee, but if you bring doughnuts for everyone... I’ll pick the audience the Friday before the next talk (which is Monday April 26th at 09:00 Pacific time).

The next offering is May 19-21 09:00 Pacific time.

We’re also introducing a more “basic” workshop “Introduction to Reporting Services” in early June. Stay tuned for more details.

SQL Server Magazine in conjunction with Windows IT Pro just published my article on Report Builder 2.0 security issues. Actually, the content is extracted from a much larger article on Report Builder that’s scheduled to be published in the print magazine later this year. The gist? Well, basically it discusses the implication of giving paradevelopers on your staff the ability to party down on your report catalog. These folks will be able to extract cataloged reports, modify them and save them back for everyone to see—whether or not they still represent an accurate depiction of your corporate data…