snaps & snippets

[snap] Pending File Rename Operations?

noreply@blogger.com (Matija Lah) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 09:57:12 PDT

I will never understand why some software/hardware vendors fail (forget?) to clean up the Windows registry after they've... well, fondled with it for reasons known only to them, such as during software installation or updates. When installing SQL Server – the release or a service pack – on a machine where software from one of the aforementioned vendors has recently been installed or updated,

SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1

noreply@blogger.com (Matija Lah) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 01:07:06 PDT

SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1 has been released on April 7th 2009, bringing a few improvements to the setup process – on top of several important fixes. Be sure to review the release notes before attempting installation. The files can be downloaded from the following site: SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1. The list of bugs fixed in SP1: KB 968369. ML

SQL Server 2008 XPath Functions

noreply@blogger.com (Matija Lah) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 10:31:39 PDT

The 2008 version of SQL Server has not introduced as many changes to its XPath implementation as one might have expected; nonetheless, two additional XPath functions have been added. In fact, I'm very sure many of us have missed both of them ever since SQL Server 2005: lower-case() – returns the text of the target node in lower case; and upper-case() – returns the text of the

SQL Server 2008 Books Online Update (January 2009)

noreply@blogger.com (Matija Lah) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 03:37:25 PST

The January 2009 update of SQL Server 2008 Books Online has been released last Friday. The installation file is available for download: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Books Online (January 2009). An update of the sample databases is scheduled for spring, and by the looks of things that's still very far away. ;) Anyway, the samples are available at CodePlex: SQL Server 2008

2008 May Not Be the Last for Planet Earth

noreply@blogger.com (Matija Lah) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 12:50:27 PST

What do you think? Have a good one! ML

Sparse Columns and Filtered Indexes

noreply@blogger.com (Matija Lah) — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 09:15:59 PST

At the December meeting of SLODUG, the Slovenian Developers User Group, I've presented two new functionalities introduced with SQL Server 2008: Sparse Columns – a new (or, at least, an improved) way of storing data in nillable columns so that non-existent data takes up virtually no space in the database. Well, to be honest, storage usage *is* affected (as the maximum size of

Some Old News

noreply@blogger.com (Matija Lah) — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 09:12:26 PST

This may be old news, but I haven't said anything about this so far, so this may not be old news to everyone. ;) SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3 SQL Server 2005 SP3 has been released on December 15th 2008. The files (elevating the full version number to 9.00.4035) are available for download: Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3; Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition

SQL Server 2008 Books Online Update (August 2008)

noreply@blogger.com (Matija Lah) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:53:28 PDT

An update to SQL Server 2008 Books Online has just been published yesterday: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Books Online (August 2008). ML

SQL Server 2008 Express with Advanced Services

noreply@blogger.com (Matija Lah) — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 02:54:27 PDT

The advanced edition of SQL Server 2008 Express is now available for download. As was the case with version 2005 when this edition was first introduced, the Advanced Services include (in addition to the Database Engine, of course): SQL Server Management Studio Basic (formerly: Express); Full-text Search; and SQL Server Reporting Services (limited to local reporting). You

SQL Server 2008 RTM

noreply@blogger.com (Matija Lah) — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 05:23:57 PDT

I'm sure you know by now that SQL Server 2008 has RTMed about two days ago and is already available for download to MSDN/TechNet subscribers. There are additional free downloads that you might also be interested in: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Evaluation Edition; Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Upgrade Advisor; Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Feature Pack, August 2008; Microsoft SQL

SQL Server 2008 (RC0), FILESTREAM changes

noreply@blogger.com (Matija Lah) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 07:10:44 PDT

At this year's Microsoft NT Conference in Portorož fellow MVP Andrej Tozon and I have presented a workshop on designing solutions with Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008 using the Windows Presentation Foundation and a few new SQL Server 2008 features. Andrej has blogged about this last month and has made all the workshop files available on his site. You might also already know that SQL

SQL Server 2008 Scoped Search

noreply@blogger.com (Matija Lah) — Wed, 07 May 2008 07:13:58 PDT

This may be old news, but it's also the kind of "old news" that's actually becoming more and more relevant these days. ;) More than a month ago the Microsoft SQL Server documentation team have announced a new Live Search Macro: The SQL Server 2008 Books Online Scoped Search macro. Those of you who've found the 'old' one useful, must have been anticipating the 'new' one.

SQL Server: XQuery/XPath, Predicate Functions

noreply@blogger.com (Matija Lah) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:13:13 PDT

Previously we have looked at the supported XQuery/XPath retrieval functions implemented in SQL Server 2005 with a few examples of use, and we have mentioned the fact that some functions are restricted to use in XPath predicates. Today we will see which XQuery/XPath functions are subject to this restriction. Any attempt at using these restricted functions to retrieve data from the XML would

SQL Server: XQuery/XPath, Retrieval Functions

noreply@blogger.com (Matija Lah) — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 12:02:49 PDT

Even after all this time (since the release of SQL Server 2005 which introduced the XML data type) I still notice users having trouble with XQuery/XPath functions when processing (or rather trying to process) XML data in SQL Server, that's why I've decided to dedicate a few more posts to the subject. The ulterior motive here is me learning and testing what (I think) I know. ;) I've introduced

SQL Server XQuery, Accessing Attributes

noreply@blogger.com (Matija Lah) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:14:14 PDT

While browsing this blog's usage logs recently, I've noticed quite a few referrals from various search engines of users trying to troubleshoot problems they may have encountered when accessing XML attributes in a SQL Server XQuery. Although the problem has been discussed in the past, and has even been documented in Books Online, some users out there still aren't familiar with a SQL Server 2005

What's wrong with COUNT(*)?

noreply@blogger.com (Matija Lah) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 03:36:12 PST

Counting – what's it all about? I'm sure you've heard about a trick that one should use when aggregating data using the COUNT system function in Microsoft SQL Server; specifically, how the performance of the function can be improved using a neat trick. But can we go beyond neat...? The tests have been done on a SQL Server 2005 (SP2) instance; you're all kindly invited to also run them on an

Not Just Any Old 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Matija Lah) — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 10:53:48 PST

In this uncertain world of ours one thing remains pretty certain. 2008 is definitely coming. The year, that is. ;) Have a good one! ML

Microsoft Office 2007 iFilters and SQL Server

noreply@blogger.com (Matija Lah) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 15:09:44 PST

Ever since the problem with the missing iFilters for Office 2007 documents first arose, the official response by the vendor was to install Office 2007 (or at least Word 2007) on the server. I believe we all agree that this simply isn't good practice. First of all, why would anyone need an end-user application such as Microsoft Word on a server? Obviously Word would never even have to be

SQL 2005 Books Online – September 2007 Update

noreply@blogger.com (Matija Lah) — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 12:58:15 PST

Once again it's time to update the local copy of SQL Server 2005 Books Online. It's the end of November and the September 2007 Update has just been made available for download. The files are available through Windows Update, but in case you've missed them (or want full control over the installation) you can also find them here: SQL Server 2005 Books Online (September 2007). The

SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services – Column Truncation "Inconvenience"

noreply@blogger.com (Matija Lah) — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 04:33:18 PDT

I've been using SQL Server Analysis Services for large data analysis (analyzing texts) recently, and I've encountered an intriguing problem, the investigation of which has led me to some unexpected discoveries (and a workaround). To reproduce the problem start SQL Server Business Intelligence Studio, then follow these 6 simple steps: Create a new SQL Server Analysis project; Add a

An Unusual Data Rescue

noreply@blogger.com (Matija Lah) — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 09:57:21 PDT

Take a look at the picture below. Somewhere in that lovely mess, on one shred of paper – or more? – there is an eleven digit number that I need. How lovely! Luckily for me, I've managed to find all the pieces. And it only took about 20 minutes. :) Which is still a long time compared to about three seconds that it originally took to cause the problem... Lessons learned:

Six Months

noreply@blogger.com (Matija Lah) — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 05:53:42 PDT

»Become a better developer in six months.« Define 'better'. :) I've been tagged by Denis 'The SQL Menace' Gobo to share my views on how I would go about becoming a better developer in the next six months. (Self-)education is the first thing that comes to mind, and the majority of the tag-attack "victims" agree that reading and learning (and writing about it) directly lead to being better at

SQL Server 2005 XML Methods, Part Four, The Existential Quandary

noreply@blogger.com (Matija Lah) — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 06:17:00 PDT

We've seen SQL Server 2005 XML data retrieval methods in previous posts. In particular we've seen how they perform compared to T-SQL retrieval methods, and – quite frankly – the results were somewhat disappointing. There is an XML retrieval method that we haven't discussed yet. There are two reasons why not: It's not really a retrieval method as much as it is a way of testing whether

SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer

noreply@blogger.com (Matija Lah) — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 03:57:12 PDT

SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer has been released on July 2nd, and is available at this site: SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer (July 2007). ML

2007 Microsoft MVP Award

noreply@blogger.com (Matija Lah) — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 16:13:57 PDT

I am extremely pleased to tell you, dear reader(s), that on July 1st I have been presented with the 2007 Microsoft MVP award in the »Windows Server System – SQL Server« category. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everybody at the MVP Program for considering my participation in the communities to be worthy of this award. I would certainly like to thank Dejan Sarka for introducing me