Well, PTI is ramping up for the release of SQL Server 2012 which is coming out the first half of this year and in order to help get the community up to speed we are putting on TWO MONTHS worth of weekly webcasts based on all of the new goodies that are coming out with the SQL Server 2012 platform! I have been working with the bits now for the past nine or so months and this is going to be a very exciting release. The first one starts next week so sign up now!

 

Click Here  ->   http://pti.net/Firestarter/

 

Here’s the lineup….

 

2/2/2012 11:00 AM
Arrow Bullet Master Data Services in SQL Server 2012 (More Info)

2/9/2012 11:00 AM
Arrow Bullet Utilizing Knowledge with Data Quality Services in SQL Server 2012 (More Info)

2/16/2012 11:00 AM
Arrow Bullet Throwing T-SQL 2012 Enhancements Against the Wall (More Info)

2/23/2012 11:00 AM
Arrow Bullet Enhancements to Reporting Services in SQL Server 2012 (More Info)

3/1/2012 11:00 AM
Arrow Bullet AlwaysOn – Way to get your 9′s? (More Info)

3/8/2012 11:00 AM
Arrow Bullet SSIS 2012 – New and Improved (More Info)

3/15/2012 11:00 AM
Arrow Bullet PowerPivot & BISM in SQL Server 2012 OH MY! (More Info)

3/22/2012 11:00 AM
Arrow Bullet SSAS 2012 – What BISM Means to You! (More Info)

3/29/2012 11:00 AM
Arrow Bullet Extended Events – The Death Knell of SQL Trace (More Info)

 

Here’s the speakers

 


Arie Jones

Arie Jones ‘AJ’ is the Principal Technology Manager for Perpetual Technologies, Inc. in Indianapolis Indiana. Arie has over 10 years experience in SQL Server, Oracle, and .NET development. His main role consists of providing clients with high level BI, database, and application development solutions while mentoring PTI’s extensive staff of consultants on new technologies. Additionally, AJ is an avid community speaker, has written several books such as “Learn SQL in 24 Hours”, blogs extensively at http://www.programmersedge.com , and is the one of the PASS Regional Mentors for the Midwest .

Presenting: Master Data Services in SQL Server 2012, Utilizing Knowledge with Data Quality Services in SQL Server 2012, Testing event timing


Hope Foley

Hope has over 11 years experience in the IT world, she has worked across many industries including small business enterprises, start ups, and Fortune 500 companies, and has a vast knowledge of database design, administration and support, data warehousing and data mining, and custom database solutions. Hope joined PTI in 2007 as a SQL Server Database Administrator/Analyst, and last year took over as Principal Microsoft Consultant, where she now leads a team of expert Database Administrators and Developers. Hope is an active member within the SQL Server community, and is often asked to present at IT events both locally and on a national level. Hope blogs at http://hopefoley.wordpress.com/ and can be followed on Twitter @hope_foley

Presenting: Enhancements to Reporting Services in SQL Server 2012, PowerPivot & BISM in SQL Server 2012 OH MY!


Kyle Neier

Kyle has been working with computers professionally since 1995 in both a development and administrative capacity. For over 10 of those years, SQL Server has been the focus of both a professional and personal passion. Kyle has worked in online retail, manufacturing, EMR software, and pharmaceutical industries. Kyle joined PTI in 2011 as a Senior Microsoft Consultant where he continues to chase his passion of automating DBA processes and doing everything humanly possible to prevent the 0200 page. Kyle serves as the Vice-President of the Indianapolis chapter of PASS (www.indypass.org) and served on the committee to bring SQL Saturday #82 to Indianapolis. He shares his passion for SQL Server with others through speaking and mentoring at local and regional events.

Presenting: Throwing T-SQL 2012 Enhancements Against the Wall, SSIS 2012 – New and Improved, Extended Events – The Death Knell of SQL Trace


Warren Sifre

Warren Sifre has over 13 years of experience in the IT community and has worked in a variety of industries deploying many different products, most of which consisted of using MS SQL Server in one capacity or another. In 2003, he decided to make SQL Server his mastery and has since developed skills in most defined disciplines of MS SQL. After acquiring numerous Microsoft Certifications (MCDBA, MCITP, MCTS, MCP, MCSE, MCSA) and completing his final assignment of defining and implementing the necessary architecture to ensure a DR strategy and successful virtualization of over 70 SQL Server physical machines for a Cloud Services environment, he has joined PTI to ensure his continued mastery in the different disciplines of MS SQL maintains upward momentum.

Presenting: AlwaysOn – Way to get your 9’s?, SSAS 2012 – What BISM means to you!!!

 

 

 

If you think we have left any out then shoot me a line and let me know. I may entertain putting on a couple more if people show an interest in them ….

 

Cheers!
AJ

Ah yes, I know…a little corny but every so often at events I run into some interesting people and I actually try to look up almost everyone that I meet in order to see what they are about. So I have decided to start a little Young Developer / Young DBA to Watch track here and put together some quick shout outs to those young individuals that I meet that I think might just be motivated enough to do some great things in the future….

Criteria is as Follows…

  • Younger than me … <28 years old(Cough,Cough)
  • Needs to do cool things based upon an arbitrary scale determined by a point in time of my choosing.
  • Needs to be .NET developer or SQL Server DBA ….cause seriously why would anyone use anything else?

Prizes:

  • Admiration of your fellow Developers/DBAs
  • Maybe one day I will make a cool logo or something

This last weekend while at SQL Saturday 87 in Louisville, I ran into a Patrick Riley ( @priley86 | blog )  after my SQL Azure talk. An interesting conversation ensued regarding sharding and the Enzo framework.

So upon looking over his Twitter feed, I ran across some very interesting blog posts by Patrick that I think deserve a read.

Fuzzy matching: a programmer’s view of the Damerau-Levenshtein algorithm

and also

SQL Azure Federations and Enzo Shard Demo

So this week I pick Patrick as the Young Developer to Watch. If you have time you should take a look at his fledgling blog and possibly give him a follow on Twitter…I already have..

 

Cheers!
AJ

Another SQL Saturday weekend has come and gone. This time it was SQL Saturday #87 in Louisville, KY . The event appeared to be pretty well packed,  Malathi Mahadevan ( @sqlmal | Malathi’s Blog )  and crew pulled off another awesome event! Hopefully most people around the area got to attend…if not then there is always next time. A couple of notes that I jotted down ..

First Timers

  We need to do a better job of maybe having a couple of the representatives of the local user groups give a short introduction and talk about their groups. Possibly also give a plug for other groups in the region. This is possibly the third event that I have had someone come up to me afterwards and said something similar to the following

Attendee:  “Awesome presentation! This is my first event and WOW totally cool free training!”

AJ: “So do you go to the monthly user group?”

Attendee: “Whut? There’s a user group? “

…you get the picture.

This time it was for someone whom travelled from Nashville (3+ HOURS) to attend….and Nashville just had their meeting like earlier in the week. At PASS, I was playing the role of Regional Mentor – Midwest and ran into a couple of people who were freaking attending PASS Summit but had not heard about the IndyPASS group until PASS.

We need to do a better job of bringing in new members into the community at the local level. This is what I argued as PASS’s biggest problem going forward when I was “trying out” for the BoD. It’s not like it’s some kind of secret….I go to a .NET user group meeting….I have 100-150+ people normally attending. I go to a PASS user group meeting and I have generally from 20 – 60. Now I know that there are more DBAs in most regions than that and it pains me that they are not there. The biggest grumble from people most of the time is related to training ….and here is some free training right in your backyard….EVERY MONTH!

Increasing membership at the local level helps to handle several key issues…

  • Speakers: Bigger attendance numbers would “inspire” more speakers to attempt to come and speak at groups.
  • PASS Membership: Bigger attendance = bigger PASS membership
  • Microsoft Influence: Bigger PASS Membership = Greater influence with Microsoft
  • PASS Summit: More PASS membership = more people hearing about the Summit

And it is not as if it’s that hard to think about how to get more people interested in the local groups. Here’s some from a stream of though right now…..

  • .NET User Groups: Get the .NET User Group leader to allow the PASS User Group leader to introduce themselves during the first 5 minutes of the meeting. Explain to the developers that if they learn the database side of things then it will make them better developers
  • Microsoft Mentors: Seriously, Microsoft wants the groups to extoll the virtues of the Microsoft platform then get someone to volunteer as a mentor for the group and have Microsoft recognize the “touch time” that they have with the group/groups that they mentor. A Microsoft mentor could assist with things like promotion ideas…speakers…etc.
  • Microsoft SQL Server Community Champion: Microsoft needs to set someone up at the head level to help coordinate this stuff with the SQL Server community out there. If it were me then I would nominate Jimmy May ( @aspiringgeek ) . Why because when he was in Indy I almost always saw him at meetings and he seems to have a good grasp on community.

Maybe you have some better/more ideas? Share them! Jot them down in the Comments section below and maybe we can post them all up and send them up the line.

PASS Community Evangelist

If you didn’t know already ….Karla Kay ( @karlakay22 | blog ) is our new PASS Community Evangelist and I for one believe that she is already doing an awesome job! I think that PASS having someone working with the community who actually understands the complexities of what is going on in the community is a step in the right direction.

So if you are a Chapter Leader or looking to possibly start up a new chapter then you need to hit Karla up and she’ll get you pointed in the right direction.

My Presentations

Okee Dokee! Now for my presentations… I always believe in giving my feedback back and figuring out what needs to be done better next time.

Scoring ( A – Best Ever!   -     E – Total Waste of My Time )

Here are the Slides!

Master Data Services in SQL Server 2012 

A:  7  

B:  2

Sample Remarks:  Demos helped explain the use effectively. Thanks for sharing today!

My thoughts: This went pretty good and I had good discussions with people. People seem to be psyched for MDS in 2012!

 

Everything Your Jr. DBSA Won’t Tell You About SQL Azure 

A: 18

B: 6

D: 1

Sample Remarks: OMYG – HE’S FREAKING AWESOME! HE’S THE COOLEST EVER!

My thoughts: The one D may have been an Oracle guy ticked because their cloud strategy sucks…. Smile 

 

Well that is enough for now… I had a great time and hope to see everyone soon!

Cheers!

AJ

Here’s a fairly common question that can be solved fairly easily. Sometimes when you have a ListBox of Items you would like for those items to stretch the available width of the ListBox. Sounds pretty straightforward right? Given we have something similar to the below XAML :

<ListBox x:Name="SearchResults"

                     BorderBrush="{x:Null}"

                     ScrollViewer.VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Visible"

                     SelectedItem="{Binding SearchResultsSelectedItem}">

                <ListBox.ItemTemplate>

                    <DataTemplate>

                        <Grid>

                            <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>

                                <ColumnDefinition Width="30" />

                                <ColumnDefinition Width="*"/>

                                <ColumnDefinition Width="30" />

                            </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>

                            <Button Grid.Column="0" Margin="0"

                                        Content="Press Me"/>

                            <TextBlock Grid.Column="1" Text="Some Text"/>

                            <Button Grid.Column="2" Margin="0"

                                        Content="No Press Me"/>

                        </Grid>

                    </DataTemplate>

                </ListBox.ItemTemplate>

            </ListBox>

You would think that this would get the trick done right? After all I told the Grid in the DataTemplate that the second column needed to have a expansible width that would take up any of the left-over space from the button columns. Unfortunately this won’t work and the items will only be sized to the largest one in the set. So if you want it to stretch the entire width of the ListBox’s ItemPanel you need to use the following attribute in the ListBox itself:

 

HorizontalContentAlignment="Stretch" 

This will cause the contents to take up the entire width of the ListBox.

 

Cheers!

AJ

I am in the process of setting up a new server…pretty much a fairly decent sized box that will house a new Hyper-V setup.

officewithnewserver

The large red-glowey thing on the end is supposed to replace a half dozen smaller machines I have laying around and has the capacity to basically run about 9-10 machines on it. So step one of the setup in getting an internal domain up and running on Hyper-V is setting up the DC…no sweat…I have created templates and everything so I have a new box up and running with AD,DNS,DHCP…etc..etc in about 30 minutes….

Now in the Hyper-V settings I have the network wired to one of the physical network cards so that I can have internet access from within the “private network” on the box that the DC is controlling. Now internet is up and working as I have followed all the standard setup procedures… EXCEPT… when I try to do anything other than simply browse Bing the network connection drops! And I do mean drops….no internet…no DNS resolution…no ping outside of the virtual server. This also goes for Windows Update as well as just simply trying to validate the license. Everything brings the network to a halt….not the network on the base box…oh no …that is still up and churning away and easily confirmed with a continuous ping attempt in a command window….

Now you may say to yourself…that you have heard of something like that possibly here….

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2223005

Seems there is a little problem with the network adapter drivers somewhere that is causing this to happen. Except when you try to load the fix it will tell you “So Sorry! This patch does not apply to your computer”. Then I thought…oh I am running SP1 and these other things tell me this is fixed in SP1 already cause they just roll up all those patches right? Wrong! Seems like this is the little bug that cannot be kept down and has now reappeared Post-SP1. So now you have another fix to look for which you can find here….

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/974909

Okee dokee…why not apply another hotfix to the Host operating system. Now I go about the process of requesting the hotfix and downloading and installing on the host following the directions on the page. I reboot the Host and FAILURE! Yep, that’s right the FAIL-WHALE has come to visit ol’ AJ. Now what could have gone wrong… you may do like me and

1. Try to install on the Guest OS(hey couldn’t hurt but no won’t work)

2. Try to reconfigure the network cards

3. Try to remove and re-add the networking in Hyper-V

None of these worked and I was frustrated as all get out. Until I notice on the earlier KB article the following….

After you install this hotfix on the Hyper-V server, you must update the integration components in the VM that is running Windows Server 2003. To do this, follow these steps:

  1. Use Hyper-V Manager to connect to the VM.
  2. The Virtual Machine Connection tool starts.
  3. On the Action menu, click Insert Integration Services Setup Disk.

Surely, this couldn’t be it…cause A. It’s not 2003 & B. Surely Microsoft would not have left out an important step like this…

However, I gave it a try and guess what…the components update themselves and then once you reboot you will find that Windows Update has like a freakazillion updates for you to apply to your new DC.

Hopefully, this post will help some people out there avoid the utter frustration that I had to go through in order to get something simple like external network access up and running in a Hyper-V instance.

 

Cheers!
AJ

About this blog

Programmer's Edge is my blog designed around promoting knowledge sharing in the Microsoft Technology arena. Especially in the areas of SQL Server and .NET development.

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