Simons SQL Blog

If you've ever wanted to get a quick response from posting a question in the community you couldn't do better than follow this guys example

http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=499980&start=180&tstart=0

We will be trialing broadcasting the UK SQL Server User group meeting via live meeting.

We are limited to ~ 10 people.

If you want to join us the link is

https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/microsoft/join?id=R6M2QH&role=attend&pw=4%24qkn5%3EB5

The dial up number is 0118 909 2000 with a passcode of 3111252

The meeting will start at 18:00. As this is a trial we are not sure who will be presenting and when so bear with us.

I really like SQLCMDso much so that most of my deployment scripts use SQLCMD. Its got some great features such as

:on error exit. Forcing your script to exit when an error occurs.
or
:r <filename> to read the contents of a file

There is one downside and that is if you run a sqlcmd script in management studio with out turning on sqlcmd then all the sqlcmd stuff is ignored. Ok so you get an error, but good old management studio doesn't stop on errors. If you have a script that is seperated by GOs then the script will continue even if an error occurs. This can cause all sorts of problems if you haven't coded you script correctly.

So I started to think how to get round this and came up with this snippet

:setvar SqlCmdIsOn Yes
go
if ('$(SqlCmdIsOn)'<>'Yes')
  RAISERROR ('Cannot run without being in SQLCMD mode',20,1) with log
go
print'hello'

Simply put, the first statement will fail, which means the sqlcmd variable won't be set to Yes resulting in the if clause evaluating as true. This results in the error being raised. Because this is a level 20 error the connection will be closed causing management studio to not continue with the script.

I ask this because the SB newsgroup hasn't had a post for over 3 weeks. Which suggests not many people are using it?

I have found Excel hanging a lot when doing something with pivot tables or external data sources. This happended today and so I killed Excel on doing so the application error reporting kicked in, I reported the error and was taken to a KB article about the "Information Bridge Framework" and that it doesn't work with .Net 2.0 and Office 2007.

I guess the "Information Bridge" is used for exchanging data between applications, in which case most people using Excel and the data components will be using it.

Suprisingly its requires a hotfix that you need to get hold of from MS support. Whats the quickest way to get a hotfix?

I just blogged about an incompatibility between Office and the Infromation Bridge Framework which causes Excel to hang when using pivot tables. EXCEL 7 hangs when using pivot tables and other external data sources

I wanted to get hold of the hot fix and so tried the support numbers on MS.com but got no where. I then remembered the concierge service for MSDN subscribers.

I prompty started a chat with a concierge (David), explained I wanted the hotfix for the KB http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=926348. He promptly created a support incident and emailed the link to the hotfix.

Really quick and simple.Thanks David.

One thing that has bugged the hell out of mt with maps.live.com is that when you put a postcode in you didn't get an exact point on the map. When searching for something in London or a big town, it was absolutely useless.

With the new release it now works

http://virtualearth.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!2BBC66E99FDCDB98!8495.entry

There is a strong feeling about NNTP, personally that argument is mis directed as one for NNTP, when it is actually a requirement for a rich offline application. This is what is going to be possible with the new incarnation of the microsoft communities moving forward. Those that use the forums often prefer them because of the personal aspect, questions can be marked as answers, it works over http and the information displayable is greater than NNTP.

Often the NNTP brigade say that MS should put the forums on the newsgoups and that NNTP is preferred option. This is just wrong. The up take of the forums is huge and easily outstripping NNTP. Further more everyone in the world nows what a browser is, whilst only a small percentage will know what a newsgroup is let alone how one would access them.

If you use the forums or the newsgroups you may be interested in whats happening with the microsoft communities.

http://blogs.msdn.com/dseven/archive/2007/03/29/codename-athens-rc-almost-baked.aspx

In overview a backend that will support the forums and also an offline experience is being proposed. The solution will allow much more discoverability of answers as that is the main aim of the community. Anyone thats posted in either forums of newsgroups will know we answer the same question over and over again.

I can't wait to build on the services that are being developed.

Jignesh has submitted a great request for Management Studio. Anyone that has used Visual Studio will be aware of collapsable code blocks. This allows you to reduce the amount of code displayed by collapsing block or code to a single comment.

If you agree this is a good idea you can vote on it here "Collapsable code blocks in Management Studio "

Steve at SQL Server Central has compile a list of SQL Server Version numbers from RTM through to the current date.

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/sjones/2960.asp I do hope he keeps this up to date. This is something that is crying out for a wiki so that more than 1 person can maintain the list. (including maybe someone from MS :)