SimonS' SQL Server Stuff

How to ask a question?

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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

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UK SQL Usergroup Live Meeting

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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

... To read the complete version of this post go here, http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/simons/UK SQL Usergroup Live Meeting

Limit a sql script to only run with SQLCMD turned on

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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

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Are you using service broker?

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

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EXCEL 7 hangs when using pivot tables and other external data sources

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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.

... To read the complete version of this post go here, http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/simons/EXCEL 7 hangs when using pivot tables and other external data sources

Whats the quickest way to get a hotfix?

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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

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live maps work with UK postcodes

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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.

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Whats happening with forums and newsgroups

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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.

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Collapsable code blocks in Management Studio

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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.

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SQL Server 2005 version numbers

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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 :) 

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ProClarity 6.3 available on MSDN downloads

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I've just logged into MSDN downloads and was very shocked to see ProClarity available for download.

Both server and desktop versions are available.

You can read more on Proclarity here

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How to alert on system errors

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Alerts in SQL server rely on the error being logged to the event log. Not all system messages are logged which means you can't alert on them. In SQL 2000 you could hack the sysmessages table, however in SQL2005 you can't.

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What is the cost of a query? Is it a beard?

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I used to work on a project where we discussed what exactly the cost of a query was. You know that figured shown in execution plans. I knew it was used to age plans in a cache but not sure what unit it actually was. One of the guys on the project (Mike I think) decided to call them "Beards". So we could then say that query x cost 54 beards. Its feels better than saying just 50.

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Welcome to some new MVPs and bloggers

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Its April and so its MVP award time.

The following are the new SQL MVPs I am aware of