We have a couple of access programs that we use for data conversions. These programs convert the csv files that are generated from our CRM to a fixed file format that is then uploaded to interface with other government institutions. With the introduction of OFfice 2007 there is this extra step that the users were required to do to enable macros manually every time they use these programs. I thought this manual should not be there for the users so I set out to look at all the options available to...
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I stumbled across this site today that contains very useful videos on Microsoft BI tools. There are 39 videos of which I have listed the top five from their site here The first video is a twelve minute introduction entitled "What is Business Intelligence?" This video covers what is meant by terms such as data warehousing and business intelligence and why companies undertake such projects. The second video is a 34 minute overview of how a single data warehouse can be used to deliver business valu...
Yesterday I was in a presentation and because we wanted to see most of the screen, there was a requirement to hide the top ribbon see the image below. I suggested to double click on the menu item to hide the ribbon. That is, double click either on Home, Insert, Pge Layout etc. Someone in the room suggested a keyboard shortcut Ctrl+F1 . That worked too. Also keep in mind that this works across all Office 2007 and 2010 applications including Excel, Powerpoint, Access, Outlook etc. I thought of sha...
I found the following interesting announcement on the SilverLight Team Blog about Project Crescent . Here is an extract from the announcement. Project Crescent allows business users to manage data and show information in a truly innovative and exciting way, allowing people to visualize, interact and report on data using highly interactive visualizations, animations and smart querying. One of Crescent’s most exciting features is its integration with PowerPoint. Through a feature called Storyboard...
I came across an interesting blog link yesterday by Joseph Sack which outlines the new path to get certified for Microsoft Certified Master. The current MCM program requires you to take three written exams and a six hour lab exam which would cost around 15,000 USD. The new MCM program requires you to take a knowledge exam and a lab exam which would cost $2500. In his blog, Joseph says -- " It’s our goal to reach the SQL Server experts worldwide who may be qualified to achieve MCM certification, ...
If you have missed the PASS Summit ay Two Keynote by Quentin Clark you can view the recodring below. PASS Summit DAy TWo KeyNote Recording Speaker: Quentin Clark, General Manager of Database Systems Group at Microsoft With opening remarks from Bill Graziano, VP Finance at PASS Quentin Clark will showcase the next version of SQL Server and will share how features in this upcoming product milestone continue to deliver on Microsoft’s Information Platform vision. Clark will also demonstrate how deve...
If you have missed the WIT Luncheon live streaming event, you can now click on the below link to view the recording. PASS Summit Day WIT Luncheon The panelists for the WIT luncheon were as below: Billie Jo Murray , General Manager, SQL Central Services, Microsoft Nora Denzel , Senior Vice President and General Manager - Employee Management Solutions, Intuit Michelle Ufford , Senior SQL Server DBA, GoDaddy.com Denise McInerney , Staff Database Administrator, Intuit Stacia Misner , Principal, Data...
If you have missed the Day One Keynote live streaming event, you can now click on the below link to view the recording. PASS Summit Day One keynote recording You can also get a copy of just released PASS 2010 Database Security report : "Data in the Dark: Organizational Disconnect Hampers Information Security" Thanks to the PASS organsiers for providing these to all of us who are not able to attend the SQL PASS Summit.
Yesterday I wanted to know which users have what permissions to a database. So I started querying the two tables related to it. select * from sys.database_permissions select * from sys.database_principals I came up with the following script to suit my needs. select USER_NAME ( perm . grantee_principal_id ) AS user_name , princ . principal_id , princ . type_desc AS principal_type_desc , perm . class_desc , OBJECT_NAME ( perm . major_id ) AS object_name , perm . permission_name , perm . state_desc...
Today I have accidentally given access to a user using the grant option by issuing the Grant sql command. GRANT VIEW ANY DATABASE TO username ; GO I have immediately realised that I didn't want to give access to that user and hence I had to revoke the permissions. REVOKE VIEW ANY DATABASE From username ; Thought I would document this here so that any one doing the same would benefit from this. Also there is a With Grant option that you can use while using Grant option. The main difference betwee...
IT systems Viability – We have been using a CRM application heavily customised to fulfil our needs as a Training Management System for the last 10 years. Now the applications vendor has changed the technology behind this application to be in line with the latest technology and released a brand new application. This means that we have to rethink the capability of our heavily customised system in future as it is not a case of simply upgrading to the new application. It is basically a rebuild of al...
My share of todays learning at sql share is the unusual stuff function. I have not heard of this function before and here are my learnings from the video by Andy Warren . Stuff function inserts a string into a string at a specified position. It feels a bit like REPLACE (and you can certainly use it that way), but it's really designed to do something different - push x characters into a string based on an index and length. Andy was surprised to realize it was the only string function he had never...
Following is a post from the PASS website. This also provides a link the free live streaming events. Tune in for our Live Keynote Addresses from Top Microsoft SQL Server Executives Top Microsoft SQL Server executives, Ted Kummert , Quentin Clark and David DeWitt , will take center stage in Seattle, Washington at PASS Summit 2010 to share the latest and greatest SQL Server news on Nov 9, 10 and 11 from 8:00am to 10:00am Pacific each day. And join us on Wednesday, November 10 from 12 noon-1:30pm P...
I have learned something very basic today from the sql share video today. It is about the Quotename TSQL function. This function I think is hardly used and hence some of the developers may not be aware of this. Hence I thought I will put my learning about this function here. Quotename function returns the string along with the delimiters added in the function. This function can be used if you are using the delimiters repeatedly. If you are using delimiters on an ad-hoc basis you can just use som...
Today one of my colleagues was working in excel. He had a dataset that in one sheet which was filtered. He wanted to copy those records that were filtered into a new worksheet. But when he copied and pasted the cells into another sheet the cells that were pasted contained all the rows. What he wanted to copy was only the filtered rows. This becomes a problem sometimes in Excel 2007 To overcome his paste problem I have suggested the following steps Go to the Editing group in the Home tab Click on...