Andy Warren of SQL Share is bent upon motivating learning to all the sql share subscribers. Here are some of the new features he has included in his recent emails. The first feature he launched was to show the learning goal in minutes per month. Now we can set an annual goal and monitor our learning. The other new feature is you can log in your own learning which is outside of sql share so that all learning can be monitored which is a really cool feature which helps the learner focussed on all t...
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Today's featured video on SQLshare / Jumpstart TV is Using Registered Servers in Managment Studio By Andy Warren . Until I saw this video I didnot know about the Registered servers view in sql server 2005 even though I have been using the Management studio for the past 3 years. Here are my learnings of today. Ctrl+Alt+G is the shortcut for getting in to the registered servers pane. Alternatively click on the -- View menu -- Registered servers From the registered servers pane you create a server ...
The other day I had about 20 excel workbooks to work with in a single day to complete some outstanding work in a tight timeframe. In each one of the excel workbook I was working on, there were about 20-25 worksheets. I use a joystick instead of normal mouse, and we didn't have any spare joysticks. My joystick thought that I have had enough of this and started giving in to my moves. I didn't want to increase my RSI by uisng a normal mouse. Instead I thought I will use some excel key board short c...
In this video , within 6 min. 29 secs Andy not only shows the usage of Lower, upper, left, right, ltrim and ltrim functions but also displays a few what if scenarios which we may otherwise not think about if we just go by the book. Here are my learnings: upper and lower functions does not return an error when used with null data. The second argument for left and right functions should be a positive value and cannot be a negative value. If a negative value is used the select statement errors out....
I noticed another interesting and innovative feature in the SQL share email today. The email features "Your Scorecard". A view of it below. This scorecard tells me that I have done 35 minutes of learning and my goal should be 120 minutes per month. I think this is a great feature to motivate you and monitor yourself of how much you are learning. If you can set yourself a goal of 120 minutes of learning per month that should be really good for your career development. So if you are not yet subscr...
Today I had the chance to view the 24HOP session recording " Delivering KPIs with Analysis Services by Peter Myers " Here are my learnings. What are KPIs? KPI -- Key Performance Indicators are quantifiable measures comparing business performance to goals KPIs are aligned with corporate strategy and objectives. KPIs are designed to drive desired behavours KPIs presents a measure of overall organisational health when combined into a collection for a business scorecard KPI data requirements A KPI s...
Here is the link of today SQL Share / Jumpstart TV video . Prior to viewing this video I had no knowledge of what checkpoints are.... here are my learnings out of this video. What are checkpoints? Checkpoints are setup to ensure that you can run the package from the failure point. These checkpoints are particularly useful when packages take a very long time to run. When the package fails -- the problem can be fixed and the package is restarted. When checkpoints are used when the package is resta...
We have a number of crystal reports that we use and in the near future we need to convert them into SSRS reports. I have done some research on the internet and here are my findings. The first one is a manual migration process suggested by Microsoft -- Link here I cannot imagine converting almost a 1000 reports to SSRS reports. I cannot imagine myself taking up this process. The second one which came up in my search was the rpt to rdl website run by Jeff-Net. They have two types of conversion ser...
The other day my colleague showed me the menu item "View -- Status Bar" in the notepad. I always used to see a grayed out option of the status bar in the past. But this time I could choose the option to actually show the status bar in the notepad. This status bar shows you the curent postion of the cursor in terms of line and character position. I was puzzled at this and did some research and found that if you enable the wordwrap feature the status bar option is grayed out. If you disbale the wo...
I have used case statements before several times but there were some new learnings from the SQL Share video of Andy Warren Here are my learnings of the case statement summarised: People often get confused whether to use if else statements or case statements in T-SQL. According to Andy, only case statements can be used in T-SQL statements. If else statements cannot be used in select statements because if else statements can be used in control flow. Following are some of the situations and syntax ...
The much awaited 24 hours of PASS session recordings are now available on the PASS website. This requires a PASS member login. If you have not done so already, a PASS member login with username and password (free and simple to set up) is required to access the 24 Hours of PASS session recordings.