Category Archives: Blogging

T-SQL Tuesday #017 – APPLY

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imageWow the months go past quickly these days. It is already time for yet another T-SQL Tuesday, and this round is hosted by Matt Velic (Blog | @mattvelic). His chosen topic for this month is APPLY. If you are not sure what T-SQL Tuesday is about then please read this article written by Adam Machanic (Twitter | Blog).

APPLY

I could go on to tell you that APPLY comes in two flavours; CROSS APPLY and OUTER APPLY and that their use is primarily with Table Valued Functions or derived tables. I could even give you a couple of uses of APPLY and show you some examples. But that’s boring….and it’s covered by BOL and a host of much better bloggers than myself. Page 1 search results on Google reveal:

 

There are some other uses of APPLY too, namely:

APPLY Common Sense

Sometimes it is way better to APPLY some common sense to everyday hurdles. Don’t try to re-invent the wheel, chances are that someone has gone through what you are experiencing and has already come up with a number of solutions. If you have a problem, by all means attempt to conquer it yourself first, but don’t dwell on it too long. It doesn’t do anyone any good. The business will loose out on your productivity, and you may start to think that “it’s just to hard” – which leads to stress. Reach out!! The SQL Server Community is vast and is here to help. There are so many avenues which you can explore to obtain the help you need, here are just a few:

 

APPLY Yourself

Be honest with yourself. Has there been something that you have been putting off for while? I don’t care what excuse comes to the forefront of your mind. Make a point NOW to tackle it. Schedule it in your diary and Get It Done!!

In my last post, 1st Quarter Review 2011, I mentioned that I’d been putting off doing the MCITP – Business Intelligence 2008 Exams. Well, not anymore. I have now scheduled them and will be taking a crack at the first one on Friday, May 13th 2011. Yes, that’s right, I’m choosing to take my exams on Friday the 13th. I’m weird like that. I’ve made my commitment, now it’s time to make yours.

Thanks again to Matt for hosting this month’s T-SQL Tuesday. I’m certainly looking forward to seeing what others have come up with and reading Matt’s digest.

TSQL Tuesday #014 – Resolutions

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It’s that time again. Time for another TSQL Tuesday and this round, brought to you by Jen McCowan (Blog | @MidnightDBA), is all about Resolutions. Since I’ve not mentioned T-SQL Tuesdays on this blog before here’s a quick rundown of what it’s all about, as described by its creator Adam Machanic (Blog | @AdamMachanic:

T-SQL Tuesday is the SQL Server blogosphere’s first recurring, revolving blog party. The idea is simple: Each month a blog will host the party, and about a week before the second Tuesday of the month a theme will be posted. Any blogger that wishes to participate is invited to write a post on the chosen topic. The event is called "T-SQL Tuesday", but any post that is related to both SQL Server and the theme is fair game. So feel free to post about SSIS, SSRS, Java integration, or whatever other technologies you’re working with in conjunction with SQL Server. Even if your post includes no T-SQL we still want to see it. 

Read more about T-SQL Tuesday…

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This T-SQL Tuesday (and its particular topic) couldn’t have come at a better time. I have only just posted about activity on the blog. In it I mention that my next post will list my goals for 2011. So I guess I get a 2-for-1 with this post!

So what am I resolving to do, or do better (or not do) in 2011? Well, my theme for this year is ‘more’ (it’s also my 2 year old son’s favourite word. Well, that and a very emphatic NO!):

Blog ‘more’

In early 2010 I set myself the goal of blogging at least once a week. I started fairly well and even got to scheduling posts as opposed to just hitting ‘publish’ once I was happy with what I had written. But life happened. I got to working crazy hours for about 6 months and then moved our family from London, UK to Melbourne, Australia. This effectively put a damper on writing for me and I finished the year with a measly 21 posts for 2010.

While the above resolution does not have an actual figure committed to it, I definitely need to do better than 21! And I am already making progress. I have posts scheduled through to mid-March, so I have a better feeling about this one already.

Learn ‘more’

Since the middle of last year I have been meaning to take the MCITP exams (70-452 & 70-448). But since I failed to plan for them then, they are now a 2011 challenge. I’m resolving to get these ‘done and dusted’ in Q1, and I already have drawn up a schedule to get this done.

I also am resolving to learn more about the ‘soft skills’ so often overlooked by technical professionals, but so important to the successful outcome of a project. Communication (with clients, staff members & the SQL Community), personal effectiveness, strategic thinking, team building and problem solving are some of the areas I’ll be looking at building and fine tuning during the course of the year.

Project Management – a new area for me, but one that I am starting to get very interested in. I’ve seen first hand how NOT having the necessary PM skills can lead to a project being pulled. So I’m taking steps to ensure that it doesn’t happen to any project that I lead.

Attend ‘more’ SQL Server Events

2010 was a busy year. So my attendance at various events was sporadic to say the least. I did get to SQLBits V in 2009 (Post 1, Post 2, Recap 1, Recap 2), but missed out on attending either of the events in 2010. These are such great events and if you get the chance to go you shouldn’t hesitate – I believe that the next one is to be held in Brighton, on the South Coast of England.

imageSo this year I have diarised the Local User Group events and aim to attend each of them. On the conference side of things, I may have cheated a little, as just before the end of last year I confirmed my booking for the PASS Summit 2011!! I am properly stoked about this and will be doing as much as possible to ensure that my first Summit experience is a great one. Which leads me to my next resolution…


Interact ‘more’ with the SQL Community

Twitter, blogging, comments, forums, user groups, conferences, email, Skype, and of course, meeting more people. Since my days are pretty busy during ‘working hours’, I’m going to try setting aside some time before the day really begins to get back in touch with the SQL Server Pulse.

 

Sleep ‘less’

Something has to give. Always.

In order to achieve what I have set out here I need to give up on something that I hold dear. Precious sleep. I used to think know that I needed at least 9 hours sleep a night. Then I became a dad. Now I know that I will get by on 7 hours.  And when a new bundle of joy (in the form of a daughter) joins us in about 6 weeks, I’ll ‘know’ I can get by on less than 5.

 

I’m looking forward to a great year. A year of family expansion, personal growth and community involvement. What do you have lined up?

Blog Stats – 2010 in a nutshell

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Now that 2010 is done and dusted, I figured it was time to have a look at how the blog has done over the last year.

Before I even had a look at any of the numbers I knew that there was one area that would be way below the level that I had hoped for. This number refers to the number of blog posts that I put out during the year. I had started the year with a view to post at least once a week – 52 blog posts. Well that didn’t happen… only a paltry 21 made it online last year. This needs to change this year.

Here’s a look at what took place:

 

Overall Stats
Blog Posts 21
Comments 216
Total Site Visits 34,618

 

Traffic Sources
Source Visits
Search Engines 28,880
Site Referrals 2950
Direct 2786
Other 82

 

Top Content
Blog Post Pageviews
The DatePart() Function in SSRS 5,540
The InScope() Function and the key to formatting subtotals in SSRS Matrix Objects 5,421
Custom Visibility Toggling in SSRS (2005) 4,967
Custom Visibility Toggling in SSRS 2008 2,819
Managing Reporting Services Layouts using the Rectangle in SSRS 2,778
The Join() Function in SSRS 2,415
The DateAdd() function in SSRS 1,908
The Choose() function in SSRS 1,614
Creating Subtotals in a Matrix in SSRS (2005/2008) 1,663
Homepage 1,536

 

Top 5 Locations
Country Visits
United States 15,380
United Kingdom 4,013
India 3,383
Canada 1,438
Australia 1,414

 

I’m pretty happy with these numbers and they certainly give me a benchmark for this year. If you have any feedback on these numbers let me know, I’m always interested to hear your views.

In my next post I’ll outline my goals for the blog and what I hope to achieve for 2011.

Blogging with Windows Live Writer

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Who, What, Why & When

When I first got into blogging (not that long ago), all my writing was done online. It meant that I had to be connected when I wanted to write, which was fine most of the time. But I found that more and more I needed/wanted to write when I didn’t have the luxury of being online. When I was on the train for example. So I started using [notepad/word/other] to draft my posts and then used ‘copy/paste’ to transfer them to the blog. This was frustrating as any formatting in the draft would be mangled on pasting it into the ‘new post’ on the blog. It meant that I would have to reformat everything, normally with horrible consequences. Many of my earlier blog posts were of varying styles. Ugly stuff.

Then I found out about Windows Live Writer. It does everything I need it to do, from saving drafts, inserting pictures, hyperlinks, tables, maps, video, code snippets. All while preserving formatting [Paragraph, Heading1, heading2, headingn], which is handled in the blog at the other end of the tubez.

So what is Windows Live Writer? In their own words:

“Windows Live Writer is a desktop application that makes it easier to compose compelling blog posts”

What are some of the features of WLW?

  • Integration with most [all?] blogging sites (WordPress/Blogger/TypePad/Live Spaces…)
  • WYSIWYG authoring
  • Save drafts locally
  • Publish to draft (on blog)
  • Scheduling – set the publish date & time.
  • A great UI.
  • Photo editing (basic) – crop, tilt, border styles, tints (no caption inclusion though???)
  • Photo albums (care of Windows Live Photo Albums)
  • Insert & publish video (YouTube)
  • Tagging – both server-side and 3rd party integration (technorati, del.icio.us, etc)
  • A whole load of plugins – I use Code Snippet & Polaroid Picture among others
  • Multi-Blog management
  • Many of the Microsoft keyboard shortcuts you are already used to –Ctrl [S|C|V|I|B|Z|Y|K|etc]

 

Getting Started

Firstly, go download the setup file. There is a gotcha here though. When you click the link you’ll be directed to the download page for WL Writer and should get a ‘Save as’ dialog box pop-up. This file is only 1.1MB and will not fulfil your installation requirements. Cancel that download and instead click the ‘Try Again’ button located on the right. This will download a much larger file (~135MB), which will enable you to successfully install WL Writer.

Installation is straight forward, just follow each of the instructions selecting the options you want and click ‘next’.

 

Setting up a connection to your blog

Once installed, locate & run WL Writer to set up your blog account(s). If you don’t yet have a blog, you can set up a Live Spaces blog from Writer, otherwise you will need to go to your preferred provider and create one.

WL Writer will attempt to get your blog’s template (so that you can preview your posts in all their formatted glory), and you will likely get a message pop-up asking if you would like WLW to detect the blog theme by posting a temporary post:

The fact that this does not work (most of the time – for me with WordPress) and that when it does (blogger), it makes writing a post quite awkward, so I have chosen to say ‘NO’ here. This means that I create my posts without previewing the theme that I use on the blog. I still use the Paragraph/header formatting that’s available which is carried through to the blog – which will apply the appropriate style sheet and ensure consistency to the look & feel.

Update – a recent update to WLW has meant that previewing your posts using the theme from your blog now works just fine. With no funny business.

 

Plugins

There are a number of great plugins available for integration with Windows Live Writer. The preinstalled features include the following:

The ones I use at the moment are (the last two on the list above):

- Code Snippet an AWESOME plugin that formats any code that you paste into it in the style associated with the code type that you choose. Here’s a sample in SQL:

- Polaroid Picture allows you to add pictures to your blog posts with captions, as in the picture above. Honestly though, the caption is the only real difference over the integration Picture… feature.

 

Categories, Tags & Scheduling

Adding Categories (or topics), Tags and a publishing date (& time) can be done easily using the category/tag/publish boxes located at the bottom part of the application:

You can also add Tags using your favourite provider (Technorati, del.icio.us, etc) using the Tags…. plugin.

 

That’s about it. Now all that remains is to write your posts and save locally or online as a draft or publish to your blog (immediately or at a specified date & time).

 

Happy typing!