Latest SQL Server Show, SelectViews, Posted
Today’s show is a sample session from the virtual conference – TSQL101 – this session is an intro primer into using TSQL. Find out about the basics, see a sample session from the conference and, while you’re at it, pencil in that third week in June…
Also Available
[Watch] SQLonCall – all about conferences
[Watch] SelectViews – a new idea, tips, tricks and SQL Server goodies
Beyond a "Normal" Report
Have you ever beat your head against the wall trying to get yet another report built for users – or, if you’re using a report, trying to get just a little more information out of that report? Use the right tools to build the reports in the first place and you can empower your users to run their own what-if scenarios, drill down into data and a whole lot more. Check out Business Objects – they have some really solid tools you can use to provide a much more compelling reporting toolset for your applications. Get more information here.
SQL Server Community Gap
I really think we’re seeing an intriguing phenomenon with SQL Server – the gap between the "enterprise" type implementation and the others out there using Express and just smaller installations, or embedded installations – that gap is pretty significant I think. The knowledge needed isn’t so different on the fundamentals, but so much of what we see "out there" is focused on the higher-end things. (We’re going to do our best to actively address this) – for example, Nick wrote in with his thoughts on the "gap:"
"I am the tip of the iceberg that you are seeing. The MSDE has been around for a while, but with no free and user-friendly management tools and user limits, it remained very much a professional developer kind of thing. That has all changed with the release of SQL Server Management Studio Express and SSEE 2005. And then there are the Visual Studio Express apps that DEFAULT to wanting a SQL Server instance as a datastore. They make a very powerful, but still daunting quartet:. MS VB 2005 EE, MS VWD 2005 EE, SSEE 2005, and SMSS 2005–if the 2008 versions are more user-friendly and less intimidating you can expect an utter explosion of SQL Server newbies. We are presently migrating the backend of our MS Access app to SSEE 2005 to take advantage of the other three. We need to expose data to our users through the ‘net, and are perfectly happy with the Access app and its printing capability, so VWD is something we want to start using–but an Access backend just won’t cut it. So here we go.
In many ways, the freebie VS products are the biggest thing since VBA first came to MS Office. And it isn’t just MS that is pushing sql servers. In Canada, Simply Accounting dominates the SMB accounting space with 80% of the market. SA 2008 shifted from an MS Access backend to a MySQL backend–like it or not. That is going to create hundreds of thousands of new MySQL instances. And folks are going to start to ask questions–and dream up new uses for all these installed DB engines.
Likely, very little is going to change in the enterprise space, but the SMB space is getting ready for the biggest sea-change since Windows 95–it just doesn’t know it yet 🙂 The db field is never gonna look the same."
I think this is really true. I know I’ve written before about embedded SQL Server instances in applications – an the maddening way that some applications not only embed SQL Server, but then make it impossible to touch it, locking it out with hard-coded passwords and preventing access to the instance supporting the application. I think, I hope, software makers are being a bit more aware when they’re building these applications. I hope they’re making it possible to apply your own defined best practices, but at the same time, I hope they’re seriously considering it their responsibility to help people understand what in the world they SHOULD be doing with that embedded SQL Server.
More to come on this issue, I’m sure.
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