If you use SQL Prompt v3 and/or SQL Refactor like me (they are very useful), you will appreciate this hint on how to correctly enable SQL Server Management Studio add-in menus on a non-admin user account. You have to run this command within each non-admin  Read more

I just read this updated paper on MDX performance hints. The section Calculation Non Empty Behavior is very interesting because it clarified me some doubt I had using the Non Empty Behavior property for a measure. The lesson I learnt is that it is better  Read more

I recently noted a behavior of named sets (specifically, the resolution order) that can be not so intuitive. When you define a named set on the cube, it has the same behavior of a session-scoped named set (the one you create with CREATE SESSION SET statement  Read more

There is a new paper on project REAL available: this one cover the hardware class tuning for an Analysis Services database of hundreds of Gb. My first impression is good: it is useful to have a reference for benchmark analysis.  Read more

I just posted this bug on connect.microsoft.com – there is an issue when you use unary operator in a parent-child dimension combined with a many-to-many relationship. The problem is that the ‘+’ operator on non-leaf nodes seems to not consider the children  Read more

Two days ago I did the 70-445 exam in beta (TS: Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence – Implementation and Maintenance). I cannot talk about the exam content, but I think I can talk about the exam in general. As usual, an exam allows you to  Read more

My experience with the term “add-in” was that you have a piece of software put on top of a bigger software, just to enable some little functionality. Today at SQL Pass 2006 I’ve seen how this term has to be redefined. The Data Mining Add-ins for Office  Read more

I am here in Seattle attending SQL Pass 2006 . If you are around, feel free to stop me and say hi: I really like to meet blog readers and people who read my many-to-many paper . Let’s contact me if you want to set a meeting place.  Read more

I still hadn’t time to install the SP2 CTP but I just read this post and I think it’s a very interesting thing! The VARDECIMAL could be an amazing feature! I encountered several times huges fact tables that have many NUMERIC measures. If the VARDECIMAL  Read more

Here is available the SP2 CTP for SQL Server 2005. The what’s new document explain that there is an improvement in many-to-many dimension relationships calculations. I will try to evaluate the performance improvement, but unfortunately I’m in the middle  Read more