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I recently had to investigated a client replication topology.  I needed to understand the publications, subscribers and the articles. The problems I was facing were as follows: The replication topology was only defined on the production infrastructure. There was no documentation about the replication topology. I had no way of ...

In October 2009 I created 2 codeplex projects which I would to tell you about: SQL Server Reporting Services MSBuild Tasks (ssrsmsbuildtasks) A few years ago I created some tasks for MSBuild to help deploy reports for my project, details can be found here,  since then my tasks have been re-used in a few other projects within my ...

I have been working with Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services, since its first release, within many of my projects.  One of the biggest tasks, that I find with writing a report is the testing the reports and making sure the data that is displayed is correct.  My method of developing and testing reports is as follows: Write the ...

This is a Public Service Announcement.  Attunity makers of all things connect-y for SSIS are putting on a webinar for their latest product Oracle CDC for SSIS. It’s an enabling solution that accelerates the development of real time data integration with Oracle systems. The event is to be held online on Monday, June 22, 2009 10:00 AM - ...

A couple of years ago I worked on an issue with my colleague Steve Wright about an issue with merge replication.  You can read Steve’s original post here.  However, in summary, the issue boiled down to a security check that merge replication was performing in a generated view called ...

So as suspected when I installed the new Security patch released by Microsoft for SQL 2005 sp2 that I mentioned this morning my build number has indeed shot up to 3233.  This places me somewhere between CU6 and CU7. Build 9.00.3228 was CU6 and 9.00.3239 is CU7. So just bear in mind that when you plop on your patch you are actually taking a ...

And so the great run comes to an end... For the full details of this incident please click here. N.B. This also affects Windows. However this is released under a different KB article. For the SQL 2005 sp2 KB article look at this link http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948108 For SQL 2000 GDR and MSDE 2000 KB article look at this one ...

Not a lot more to say about this other than... HURRY.  You only have till the 4th July to get those abstracts written and your sessions submitted. SQLBits is a really great community event and this one is going to be the biggest ever.  We are aiming for 450 delegates this time and expect those sessions to be as wide and varied as ...

This one is a bit surprising. Assume you have a cold SQL Server which you have just re-booted.  The buffer cache is empty and lots of I/O requests are going to be physical. Boo! Hiss!  Down with physical I/O. Well help is at hand (if you are using SQL Server Enterprise Edition). Ramp-up is the process of converting your I/O's from page ...

Are you using multiple files? Are you set up for proportional fill? Is it a warehouse?  Are you concerned about extent fragmentation? You should be.  Extent fragmentation upsets your lovely read-ahead and results in smaller I/O. Let me explain.  When SQL Server allocates - it does so on a one extent at a time.  If multiple ...