It was actually in JBoss... 

In the apollo-ds.xml file you need to add the following in the <datasources> section.

<xa-datasource-property name="SendStringParametersAsUnicode">false</xa-datasource-property>

I'm guessing here that the Duration would be the "Fact" with all the other attibutes (other than a surrogate key) being keys to your dimensions.

Each of your dimensions should have...

Bravo!  I don't know how many times I've said the same thing.  Most recently I've been pulling my hair out over Hibernate which forces you to use "ANSI SQL" as...

No, Hibernate does not explicitly force your data model to reflect the object model, however the net result is nearly that, at least in my experience.  Admittedly this is a...

Thanks.

Indexes on computed columns are an option, but ultimately they are not quite as useful as function based indexes IMO.

BTW I was able to confirm that the new driver is indeed the JTDS driver.  Seems to be working fine and provide a small, but noticable improvement over the MS...

Thanks.  Originally we were using the Microsoft JDBC driver.  After this problem was resolved, several developers wanted to try a different driver, I'm not exactly sure which one(s) they tried. ...

Oops.  A bit of an oversight there.  Those two queries are not logically identical.  If you make them <= and >= they are the same.

However, the point I was trying...

Actually I was quite familiar with the article before, and I re-read it just to be sure.  Yes, table varibles have limitations, but in cases where you are not dealing...

"You may never use a table variable outside a function ever again..."

I don't see why you would say that.  Table variables are certainly no panecea, but they can be useful...

While you can set some basic constraints on a table variable you cannot delcare indexes per se, and from my experience the unique or PK constraints don't seem to help...

Good article, but I tend to disagree on the "roll your own" cursors.  I have seen several situations where using a cursor vastly outperformed the solution you seem to advocate. ...

From BOL:

start /wait <CD or DVD Drive>\setup.exe /qn INSTANCENAME=<InstanceName> REINSTALL=SQL_Engine REBUILDDATABASE=1 SAPWD=<NewStrongPassword>

That sounds like it should do the trick...  From within BOL you can use the following link to get...

OK, I finally went out to yaml.org and took a look at the specification.  Here is a direct quote from the introduction:

YAML™ (rhymes with "Camel") is a human-friendly, cross...

I got an email from someone pointing out that some of the arguments I made about XML are very much like those made against 3GL programming when it was new. ...