Gentry Biekers' Technical Blog

Exciting PASS Topics

2006-11-19T17:48:00.000-08:00

Here I am, sitting on a plane, returning from Seattle from PASS. It's been a good conference, and there a bunch of things that I'm excited about. There are many technologies that I work with day to day, and I would like to start blogging a bit more about what I'm learning as I assimilate these new things. PASS is a great conference for motivation for me. I have an opportunity to learn about so many technologies dealing with Data and Analysis. So, without further ado, here are the topics I'm most excited about from PASS, and from my watching and playing with tools I've seen from the conference.

Word 2007
- One of the first things I should mention is that I'm actually composing this post at roughly 35,000 feet, on my way back to Madison. I'm really excited about the blogging capabilities in Word. So far, I've been highly impressed.
Outlook 2007
- RSS FEEDS! This looks to be really really nice… I'm hoping I will be able to get the same sort of functionality that I do with Google Reader currently. I hope that these RSS feeds will eventually sync to my smartphone and PocketPC phones.
- I love the new views, but I'll need to play for a while to fully understand what's there.
Excel 2007
- I can hardly say anything but WOW!!!! I'm utterly blown away by all of the features here. There are way too many to list in this post. For some reason, I haven't embraced excel as I probably should have in the past. I'm a data guy, and I should probably be a highly advanced Excel user, but I'm not. I think the new interface will bring me much further towards my goal of becoming one.
PowerPoint 2007
- Wowza. I spend a ton of time in PowerPoint (lucky, most are created by others) in the classes that I teach. I'm starting to believe that I could actually go out and build a compelling slideshow without having to steal from other good presentations.
Data Mining Addins for Office 2007
- We're finally bringing data mining to the masses. I remember having my jaw hang slack as I watched some of the demos that happened at PASS around this tool. I can't wait until the RTM bits start to filter their way out to the web

There is a ton more for me to sit and play with. I need to get a comprehensive list of what I'd like to do out there, partially as motivation to myself, but also as motivation to others to keep pestering me until I get this blog running the way that I want it to. It's really odd for me to be writing a blog entry at 35,000 feet, but I think Office 2007 makes this possible for me.

Best Regards,

/Gentry

I think Office 2007 might be the tool that gets me blogging again.

2006-11-17T20:45:00.000-08:00

I just finished installing the Office 2007 RTM bits. I've been very busy with other things, and haven't had a chance to mess with the betas much at all. One thing I can say… Everything that I see blows me away. I've been at PASS this week, and it's been a great conference. I still have to finish packing my things though. I can't wait to start playing with the Data Mining features for Excel. Well, this is mostly a test post to see how well this word blogging thing works, but expect more from me if you see this message… It means that Word made its first blog posting from my PC.

I just published a draft… Holy cow, this thing is working! I'm becoming very excited…

I think we may be ushering in a whole new world of possibility here.

2072 - SQL Server 2000 Administration Bookmarks List

2006-09-01T09:22:00.000-07:00

SQL Server Best Practices Analyzer

Updated Books Online

Microsoft SQL Server Home

Security Tools

Squirrel

for SQL Server - Security Audit tool for SQL Servers

SQLCrack

for SQL Server - Password Cracker for SQL Logins

WhitePapers - Great whitepapers

on SQL Security from NGS Software

Performance Monitoring Tools

Quest Spotlight on

SQL Server - This is a great management suite for all of your performance

tuning needs on SQL Server.

Backup / Restore Tools

Quest Lightspeed -

This is a fantastic tool for compressing your database backups

Red Gate Log Rescue - This tool allows you

to review your active transaction log and transaction log backups, and gives you

the ability to undo operations

Lumigent Log Reader - Similar tool to above

Query Tools

Red Gate SQL Prompt - This is basically intellisense

for SQL Server databases

Mail Tools

xp_smtp_sendmail - A free extended

stored procedure that can send email through any SMTP server

Analysis Services Resources (2074 Links)

2006-06-05T19:43:00.000-07:00

It's been a long and busy time since I've last written here, however a few students last week motivated me to write up a post containing my favorites for the Analysis Services class.

One of the things that I'm going to strive for is to make at least one useful post per month, and hopefully many more depending on my time commitments. We'll see how it goes.

Anyway, here are some of my favorite resources surrounding Analysis Services 2000, and some links to information about Analysis Services 2005:

Mosha Pasumansky is the Development lead for the Microsoft Analysis Services Engine. My original bookmarks list for this course is more than overshadowed by the plethora of resources available here: http://www.mosha.com/msolap/

The client tool that I have been most impressed with in a sense that it's free, and source code is readily available is the BI Portal (it used to be named BI Portal XP, and then they renamed it to Business Intelligence Portal Sample Application for Microsoft Office 2003. Anyway, you can download binaries from:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=3d11925e-1ed6-43b0-bb94-fe69170ccf82&DisplayLang=en

You can find the source code in this gotdotnet workspace, however it's locked, and you'll need to register for access:

http://www.gotdotnet.com/Workspaces/Workspace.aspx?id=40063240-4d29-42d6-a163-47dcdf2efcaa

Mosha's site really took the fire out of my original bookmarks list. I started going through my list, and realized that not only is everything that I had on there, but much more as well.

I hope these resources help all readers to get further with their analysis services knowledge.

Hope to post again very soon.

/Gentry

MDX Resources - Fundamentals

2004-07-01T06:17:00.000-07:00

Next week I’ll be teaching an advanced custom MDX course. To make sure all students meet the pre-requisites, I’ve put together a list of introductory MDX reading material. This list is a work in progress. If you know of other resources that should be added to this list, please leave me a comment, and I’ll make sure that your link is added. Here’s the initial list.

· MSDN Materials

o Introduction to MDX

o Key Concepts in MDX

o Comparison of MDX and SQL

o The Basic MDX Query

o Members, Tuples, and Sets

o Axis and Slicer Dimensions

§ Specifying the Contents of an Axis Dimension

§ Specifying the Contents of a Slicer Dimension

· MDX Essentials Series (Database Journal)

o 1: MDX at First Glance: Introduction to MDX Essentials

o 2: Structure of the MDX Data Model

o 3: MDX Operators: The Basics

o 4: MDX Members: Introducing Members and Member

o 5: MDX Member Functions: The "Family" Functions

o 6: MDX Essentials: Member Functions: More "Family" Functions

o 7: MDX Essentials: MDX Member Functions: The Cousin () Function

o 8: MDX Essentials: MDX Member Functions: "Relative" Member Functions

o 9: MDX Essentials - MDX Time Series Functions, Part I: PeriodsToDate() and Kindred Functions

o 10: MDX Time Series Functions, Part II: The OpeningPeriod () and ClosingPeriod() Functions

o 11: MDX Time Series Functions, Part III: The LastPeriods() and ParallelPeriod() Functions

o 12: Basic Set Functions: The Order() Function

o 13: Basic Set Functions: The Union() Function

o 14: Basic Set Functions: The Intersect() Function

o 15: MDX Essentials: Basic Set Functions: The EXCEPT() Function

o 16: MDX Essentials: Basic Set Functions: The Filter() Function

o 17: MDX Essentials: Basic Numeric Functions: The Count() Function

o 18: MDX Essentials: Basic Set Functions: The CrossJoin() Function

o 19: MDX Essentials: Basic Set Functions: Subset Functions: The Head() Function

o 20: MDX Essentials: Basic Set Functions: Subset Functions: The Tail() Function

o 21: MDX in Analysis Services: Mastering Time: Period - to - Date Aggregations

· MDX in Analysis Services (Database Journal)

o Tutorial 1: MDX Concepts and Navigation

o Tutorial 2: Intermediate Concepts - Part 1

o Tutorial 3: Intermediate Concepts - Part 2

o Tutorial 4: Retrieve Data from Multiple Cubes

o Tutorial 5: Measuring Change over Time

o Tutorial 6: Using Sets in MDX Queries

o Tutorial 7: Calculated Members: Introduction

o Tutorial 8: Calculated Members: Further Considerations and Perspectives

o Tutorial 9: MDX in Analysis Services: Calculated Members: Leveraging Member Properties

o Tutorial 10: MDX in Analysis Services: Optimizing MDX: Control Location of Processing

o Tutorial 11: Optimizing MDX: More on Location, and the Importance of Arrangement

o Tutorial 12: MDX in Analysis Services: Optimizing MDX: Caching and Other Considerations

o Tutorial 13: MDX in Analysis Services: Named Sets in MDX: An Introduction

o Tutorial 14: MDX in Analysis Services: Introducing DISTINCT COUNT

o Tutorial 15: MDX in Analysis Services: Mastering Time: Change across Periods

· Book Recommendations:

o MDX Solutions: with Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services – George Spofford

o Fast Track to MDX – Mark Whitehorn, Mosha Pasumansky, Robert Zare

This list is far from complete, but should certainly get you started with the MDX language. I suggest that everyone attending class read the MSDN articles at the very least. After class is finished, I’ll release an advanced MDX resources list.

Distributed Favorites

2004-06-20T14:45:00.000-07:00

Lately, I've been pondering the idea of writing a global favorites system. Lately, I've been coming across so many resources in my day to day reading. Since I'm also a trainer some of the time, I really would love to share these with my students. I would also love to have people submit links. I think I would need two interfaces to this at a minimum.

1) IE Favorites (Anyone could have read access, but only I have write access) probably via a plugin.
2) Web Interface (for my personal site) with the capability of allowing people to submit links for approval)

I also would need the ability to keep everything in sync between IE and the Favorites database. Before I write this, I just want to make sure I'm not re-inventing the wheel. I've done very little searching so far, but haven't found anything that completely meets my needs yet.

I think the back end really should be an XML Web Service. At this point, these are just thoughts for further investigation though... Have you already seen such a system? Leave me a comment!

Introduction

2004-06-20T13:47:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my Blog! As the description reads, this is my technical blog. I've been telling myself I would start blogging ever since I discovered RSS. That was about 8 months ago. I'm very glad that I've finally gotten around to it.

My dad brought home a computer when I was 5. It was a Commodore 64. That was when my addiction started. When I was 15, I finally managed to break into the technology industry. I got my work permit, and ended up finding a job in technical support at Northern Indiana Internet Access. Tim Schlie hired me, and I will be forever greatful to him for that. He taught me quite a bit about UNIX and Linux System administration. The best thing about working at an ISP was having access to the T-1. Especially once they gave me keys. A little over a year later, I moved to Crown.Net. Dave Bellar and I were a 2 person ISP. Crown.Net was one of the funnest places that I worked. The phone that we swung around to each other and shared was one of the neatest perks of any tech support job. 2 people with 1 phone! I still miss my desk with my Sparc 20 workstation, my IBM Thinkpad with the butterfly keyboard, and of course my Sun 3/60... Slowpoke. She still lives somewhere in my fathers house being used as a table, I think. It's hard to get around to reviving her when I've got my UltraSparc these days... I also started to work with Windows NT quite a bit. I decided I would get some training for my MCSE. Life was quite a whirlwind after that.

... To Be Continued