Ramblings of a Crafty DBA – Page 7 – Various Data Mining Techniques

Power Query – Part 1

March 1, 2014April 19, 2016 admin

In recent months, there has been a big push for self service business intelligence tools by Microsoft. The center of this universe is Microsoft Excel, a common application used by the typical data analyst. The following four products started off as add-ins for Excel. Now, some of them are a integral part of MS Office 2013. Power Query Power Pivot Power View Power Map It is not surprising that these four business intelligence products have an offering in Office 365. I really like office 365 as a platform to share…

North Haven – SQL Saturday #268

February 24, 2014April 20, 2016 admin

I am totally pumped up about having the opportunity to present at SQL Saturday #268 in North Haven. It will be a good time to meet old friends and make new ones. I hope you have time to attend cool event on March 1st, 2014! Topic: Effective use of temporary tables Abstract: Every developer eventually comes against business logic that can’t be handled with a single simple or complex query. TSQL provides the developer with several constructs that can store temporary result sets that are passed to the next query…

Executing Powershell From Cmd Line

February 1, 2014February 17, 2024 admin

In the last article, we verified that Windows PowerShell was installed on my laptop and determined the version of the scripting engine. This tallk will be center around how to execute scripts from the command line. For a simple test case, I created a C:\TEMP directory. Inside that directory is a script named “LIST-ROOT.PS1” that will change the directory to the root node on the C drive. After this action, the contents of the root directory is listed for review.

#
# List root directory
#
cd c:\
dir

# List root directory

cd c:\

dir

Lets try executing the script from a command line.…

Is my string a number?

January 29, 2014April 20, 2016 admin

I have been recently devoting a-lot of time answering questions on STACKOVERFLOW. Many times, you are just helping and/or teaching younger SQL Server developers and/or administrators the tricks of the trade. Sometimes you come across a GEM, a question that you can blog about so that when they are asked again, you have a well constructed answer. One classic questions asked by new database developers is whether or not the user input is a number? I thought it was an excellent opportunity to review what tools are available given a…

Staying Connected

January 13, 2014April 20, 2016 admin

There are many companies in the world that have offices in remote locations. Sometimes downloading software media from Microsoft or Oracle might take minutes if not hours. During this time, your terminal session with the remote computer might time out. How do you prevent this from happening? The windows server operating system allows two concurrent remote desktop (RDP) connections. However, there are out of the box settings that automatically determine idle session limit and when to disconnected a user. I am including a link to MSDN that describes remote desktop…

Transferring Logins Between Servers

January 12, 2014April 20, 2016 admin

There are two main categories of logins in SQL Server. There are WINDOWS logins in which password restrictions are controlled by the Active Directory (AD) policy. Then there are SQL logins in which the database administrator has more control. Lately, I have been crafting new database servers with the latest hardware to make sure my organization is ready for growth during the next five years. This includes installing the current version of SQL Server and migrating all the applications from the old server to the new server. In short, transferring…

Custom Maintenance Plans using Ola Hallengren Scripts

January 9, 2014April 20, 2016 admin

I am looking forward to my first live presentation for the PASS Database Administration Virtual Chapter next week. If you are interested in the topic, please register for the webinar on Wednesday, January 22, 2014 at Noon, Eastern Standard time. Registration is required and you will be automatically entered in a raffle for a $50 Amazon gift card. Topic: Designing Custom Maintenance Plans using the Ola Hallengren Scripts Abstract: Have you ever received a call from a client asking for help when their SQL Server database is corrupted? You suggest…

Installing Windows PowerShell

January 8, 2014February 17, 2024 admin

PowerShell comes installed as part of the operating system in Windows 7. I checked my system which is a base install of Windows 7 SP1. The ISE or integrated scripting envrionment is the place to code, debug and launch scripts. To open the development environment, type powershell_ise at the run or command prompt to launch the application. At this point, you have to decide if you can live with the current version or install the new version. There are two commands that can be used to find the version. The…

2014 Goal Statement

January 7, 2014April 20, 2016 admin

I just finished blog entry two hundred seventy in December 2013. It is quite an accomplishment since it takes one or two hours to research and design to compose an good article. I figured it was time to reset my goals for the upcoming year. Here is what I am planning for this year. 1 – Have answered a total of 400 questions at Stack Overflow. My total right now is 188 answers. That means I need to respond 212 times in the next year. 2 – Have completed a…

Stamford – SQL Server User Group

December 15, 2013April 20, 2016 admin

I am delighted about the opportunity to present to the Stamford SQL Server User Group on December 16, 2013. I have not had the pleasure in visiting UCONN’s campus in Stamford, CT. In fact, I have not been in that city since SQL Saturday New York last August. I am looking forward to seeing Tim Harkin and meeting members of his group. To finish the night, I will definitely be stopping at the Southport Brewing Company Restaurant before I go home. Here is the gritty details of the presentation that…