External Article

SSRS 2008 R2 KPIs with bullet graphs

Key Performance Indicators are typically displayed in a scorecard with stop light indicators, which are either red, amber or green light icons. The limitation for these kind of indicators is that you can see the actual and target values in two different fields as well as see the status of the KPI in red, amber or green color. If the user wants to figure out the thresholds associated with the KPI, these values are generally not visible. Further, representing the threshold values in the scorecard itself defeats the purpose of the scorecard. The scorecard should display the KPI's status in the most summarized form and use a minimal amount of space on the dashboard. In this tip we would look at how to address this issue.

Technical Article

SQL Peer-to-Peer Dynamic Structured Data Processing Collaboration

Unstructured and XML semi-structured data is now used more than structured data. But fixed structured data still keeps businesses running day in and day out, which requires consistent predictable highly principled processing for correct results. For this reason, it would be very useful to have a general purpose SQL peer-to-peer collaboration capability that can utilize highly principled hierarchical data processing and its flexible and advanced structured processing to support dynamically structured data and its dynamic structured processing. This flexible dynamic structured processing can change the structure of the data as necessary for the required processing while preserving the relational and hierarchical data principles. This processing will perform freely across remote unrelated peer locations anytime and transparently process unpredictable and unknown structured data and data type changes automatically for immediate processing using automatic metadata maintenance.

SQLServerCentral Editorial

Archiving

It seems that archival isn't on the mind of most designers when they first build a database, which is OK, but DBAs ought to be building skills to implement this if the data size grows large.

SQLServerCentral Editorial

Patch Week

This week Steve Jones notes there were quite a few patches from Microsoft for a variety of products. No SQL Server specific security patches, but that doesn't mean that DBAs shouldn't be patching systems.

External Article

A Tale of Identifiers

Identifiers aren't locators, and they aren't pointers or links either. They are a logical concept in a relational database, and, unlike the more traditional methods of accessing data, don't derive from the way that data gets stored. Identifiers uniquely identify members of the set, and it should be possible to validate and verify them. Celko somehow involves watches and taxi cabs to illustrate the point.

SQLServerCentral Editorial

Multiple Failures

This Friday Steve Jones has a disaster recovery poll. When you have a true disaster, often there are multiple things that go wrong and cause a cascading failure. Is this common, let us know what your experience is this Friday.

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Forums

Restoring On Top II

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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SQL Art 2: St Patrick’s Day in SSMS (Shamrock + Pint + Pixel Text)

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Question of the Day

Restoring On Top II

I have a database, DNRTest, that has a number of tables and other objects in it. The other day, I was trying to mock up a test and ran this code on the same server: 

-- run yesterday
CREATE DATABASE DNRTest2
GO
USE DNRTest2
GO
CREATE TABLE NewTable (id INT)
GO
Today, I realize that I need a copy of DNRTest for another mockup, and I run this: 
-- run today
USE Master
BACKUP DATABASE DNRTest TO DISK = 'dnrtest.bak'
GO
RESTORE DATABASE DNRTest2 FROM DISK = 'dnrtest.bak' WITH REPLACE
What happens?

See possible answers