In this blog we will describe an important optimization that you should apply to cubes that are processed often and have CREATE SET commands in the calculation script. We will describe the measurements you can make to determine if this may affect you and also provide solutions that can make your cube be much more responsive to users. When you .. more »

   SQL Server 2008 R2 is a big release, with new “editions” (MSDN contains the detailed feature by edition matrix), and includes also significant enhancement.. more »

Hi everybody! Just because we're very busy putting the finishing touches on the SQL Server 2008 documentation, doesn't mean that we stop releasing other things too! In fact, we just released the next Community Technology Preview (CTP) release of the SQL Server Driver for PHP. Documentation for this release is included in the package which you can .. more »

(EKM) requires the authentication information (user/password) to be stored in a credential mapped to the primary identity. This version of EKM cannot be used under an impersonated context; that is, you cannot access the EKM while running a module with the EXECUTE AS clause. However, some customers want to manage just one CREDENTIAL with the EKM .. more »

On multiprocessor computers index statements may use more processors to perform the scan, sort, and build operations associated with the index statement just like other queries do. The number of processors employed to run a single index statement is determined by the configuration option max degree of parallelism (set by sp_configure) ( default .. more »

Statistics profile output is an important tool when it comes to troubleshooting query plan issues. When enabled, it returns a textual representation of the query plan with a lot of detail about cost and cardinality estimates as well as actual counts. When working in SQL Server management Studio (SSMS), it is advised to enable grid mode to output .. more »

In addition to an extra space in the connection string, the other class of causes for this error message is an inability to resolve the Windows account trying to connect to SQL Server. This list is not intended to be exhaustive, but here are several known root causes for this error message. If the account being used is a local account on the client .. more »

If you've ever happened to find a SQL Server documentation topic that you were looking for and wanted to be able to come back to it later, you very likely have created a Favorite or Bookmark to it. But if you do that very frequently, your list of Favorites will end up growing very large and it may become difficult to find specific items. Did you .. more »

The 4-part video series on how user identity is established for different PowerPivot ops is now available on the TechNet Wiki.  http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/powerpivot-for-sharepoint-architecture.aspx  These videos provide 300-400 level content that isn’t covered elsewhere.  I hope you find these videos as infor.. more »

This post will talk about DEK, what it is and how it is securely stored and managed inside a database. Before enabling TDE a DEK must be created which is used to encrypt the contents of the database. It is a symmetric key and supported algorithms are AES with 128-bit, 192bit, or 256bit keys or 3 Key Triple DES. Once TDE is enabled on a database t.. more »

Due to popular demand, we are posting the download information for the small stand-alone installer package for Report Builder 3.0 separately as well: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d3173a87-7c0d-40cc-a408-3d1a43ae4e33 Report Builder 3.0 is also part of the SQL Server 2008 R2 Feature Pack. If you are you looking for … .. more »

The data of partitioned tables and indexes is divided into units that can be spread across more than one filegroup in a database. The data is partitioned horizontally, so that groups of rows are mapped into individual partitions. The table or index is treated as a single logical entity when queries or updates are performed on the data. All .. more »

Here is one such example connection string for local connectivity as it would be used in VB.Net: Public con As New System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection("Integrated Security=SSPI;Initial Catalog=TestDatabase;Data Source=(local);") – This means we want to connect using Windows authentication – This means the database we want to first connect to is name.. more »

By Bill Ramos, Program Manager, SQL Server Manageability Team In this post, we’ll complete the MDW Overview report from part 1 of this series and then start into the makings of the Server Activity report as shown below. The Server Activity report...(read more).. more »

Wanted to let the community know the SQL Server Product Group just released version 4.2 of the SQL Server Migration Assistant!  With this version, Microsoft has announced the release of the first version of SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) for MySQL!   Microsoft refreshed the existing SSMA family of products for Oracle, Sybase and Acc.. more »

OAuth WRAP is a claims based authentication protocol supported by the Access Control (ACS) which is part of But most importantly it is REST (and thus OData) friendly too. The idea is that you authenticate against an ACS server and acquire a Simple Web Token or SWT – which contains signed claims about identity / roles / rights etc – and then embe.. more »

Sync Framework 2.1 is available for Sync Framework 2.1 includes all the great functionality of our 2.0 release, enhanced by several exciting new features and improvements. The most exciting of these lets you synchronize data stored in SQL Server or SQL Server Compact with SQL Azure in the cloud. We’ve added top customer requests like pa.. more »

We're getting very close to the final release of SQL Server 2008, and I am pleased to inform you all that as of today the Release Candidate (RC0) version is now available for download. SQL Server 2008 RC0 is available in the following languages: Simplified Chinese Traditional Chinese English French German Italian Japanese Korean Spanish In .. more »

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 include many changes to the core operating system. This blog post is targeted at resolving the impact on SQL Server client drivers and SQL Server setup of one breaking change in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. The changes to behavior of the GetOverlappedResult API, which SQL Server client drivers use for .. more »

We are mourning the loss of Ken Henderson who passed away this Sunday evening. We don’t know any details at this time, but we will let the community know as we learn more. It was great being around Ken and feeling his passion and learning from him over...(read more).. more »