SQL Server Blogs

Happy New Year SQL Server land. I begin this years blog with a reference to a white paper that I think will be useful to anyone installing and configuring data models. This white paper will provide you with very useful information on capacity planning tabular data models and can be found on ...

Back in April I started a blog series on SQL Server High Availability BI. These are currently hosted on Technet UK Part I http://blogs.technet.com/b/uktechnet/archive/2012/05/03/guest-post-seven-worlds-will-collide-high-availability-bi-is-not-such-a-distant-sun.aspx Part ...

  Hi Everyone Firstly I want to let you know that I finally found the LINQ book prize winners and the list of people at the bottom of this email are owed a LINQ book. This will be given out at next week’s UG meeting Live meeting with Carolyn Chau, Program Manager at Microsoft on Monday! It is very rare that we get the ...

Over the last 5 years I have observed Microsoft persevere with the notion of Self Service BI over a series of conferences as far back as SQLBits V in Newport. The release of SQL Server 2012, improvements in Excel and the integration with SharePoint 2010 is making this a reality. Business users are now empowered to create their own ...

Quick announcement Microsoft Learning today announced the certification tracks for the upcoming SQL Server 2012 exams. You begin by acheiving the MCSA - Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate (Not to be confused by the old Microsoft Certified System Administrator) If you are starting out this includes taking the following three exams:Exam ...

Hello ,  We (Martin Bell and Chris Testa-O’Neill)  started writing an email and didn’t realise how big it would get so we stuck it on a blog instead  So in summary this blog covers: Microsoft and the MVPs roll into Manchester  on the 22nd May  for SQLRelay 2012 Leeds and Manchester User Group Dates for ...

SQLBits X is proving to be the most popular SQLBits yet. The team is working very hard to bring the best speakers from around the world. For those who know me you will know my focus is on BI. However I wanted to point out a number of non BI sessions that I would recommend based on my experience of these speakers at the MVP Summit in Seattle or ...

June represents an exciting time for the SQL Server community with events all over the country in the next few months and there is plenty of knowledge to be gained from willing speakers enthusiastically sharing their knowledge. Furthermore, Paul Randall and Kimberley Trip will be conducting their highly recommended immersion events at London ...

I am at the beginning of touring user groups around the UK so on train journeys back from a user group meetings I have had time to write out my thoughts on some of the new features that are available in SQL Server C TP 1. The vision from Microsoft regarding this release looks the same as it was in SQL Server 2008 R2 Empowering IT – Making it ...

Before installing SQL Server Denali CTP1, there are a number of pre-installation checks that should be considered before installing Denali. At the moment the Denali CTP (Community Technical Preview) version that is available to the public is SQL Server Denali CTP 1 and can be downloaded from here: ...