Stéphane Haby has more than 20 years of experience in Microsoft solutions, specializing in the installation, migration, best practices, and performance analysis of Microsoft SQL Server, as well as Microsoft Business Intelligence solutions (SharePoint, Office) and .NET development for the banking sector. A former Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) and early adopter of Microsoft Team System in France, he has authored several technical articles. He holds Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate (MCSA) and Expert (MCSE) for SQL Server, MCTS, MCITP for SQL Server 2008, and ITIL V3 Foundation certifications. His industry experience covers chemicals and pharma, banking, and financial services.
While exploring SQL Server 2014, I was surprised by the powerful Power Query feature. In the recent past, converting an internet table to Excel was a nasty work leading to format problems, implicit conversions, etc. With Power Query, importing tables from the internet is very easy! What is Power Query? Power Query is a tool based on the concept of…
Some customers or colleagues recently asked me about the SQL Server concept xVelocity and in particular the SQL Server 2014 feature new xVelocity memory optimized columnstore index. So I decided to write a few words on the dbi services blog. What is xVelocity? Introduced in SQL Server 2012, xVelocity is composed of two features: xVelocity in-memory analytics engine xVelocity memory-optimized…
SQL Server 2014 bietet jetzt (oder bald :roll:) die Möglichkeit der Integration von AlwaysOn-Verfügbarkeitsgruppen mittels virtueller Maschinen, gehostet in der Windows-Azure-Infrastruktur (IaaS). Sie können sekundäre Datenbanken direkt in der Cloud vorhalten, wie das Beispiel zeigt: Der Einsatz von asynchroner sekundärer Replikation in der Cloud ist durch die Integration des Assistenten in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) erleichtert worden. Was sind…
Last week, I gave you some news about SQL Server 2014 (here). SQL Server 2014 Community Technology Preview 1 (CTP1) now is available for download on TechNet here (you need a TechNet subscription). Attention: Only the new feature “in-memory OLTP – codename Hekaton” has been added to this CPT. 😕 I hope that other features will soon come with the…
Good news for all SQL Server DBAs: DMVs and DMFs poster are now available for SQL Server 2012. You can download them here. You can choose between 2 formats: pdf and xps. What’s new? You will notice the new category AlwaysOn: You can see the ColumnStore Index in the Partitioning section: If you want to know more about the new…
At TechEd North America 2013, Microsoft introduced a lot of new versions: Windows Server 2012 R2, System Center 2012 R2, Windows 8.1, Visual Studio 2013 and, and, and… SQL Server 2014, of course!8-O You think I’m crazy or it’s a joke!;-) No, No, it’s for real. You can see the first page about SQL Server 2014 on Microsoft site here:…
There are three new geospatial features in Microsoft SQL Server 2012: CircularString, CurvePolygon, and CompoundCurve. For the fun and as an example, I will test CompoundCurve, a set of circular strings that may be combined with line strings, and store a “dbi” character set in a table.:-D What is CompoundCurve? It’s a set of circular strings, or circular strings combined…
I have read some blog postings concerning the new perfmon counters, but I have not seen really extensive overviews yet. In this post, I would like to present not only what is new, but also what has changed (or not) and how to find it. The first step is to select all objects in SQL2008R2 and SQL2012 from the view sys.dm_os_performance_counters.…
Changing the default TCP port 1433 for SQL Server is an important step for securing your SQL Server. I have written a script in PowerShell to modify the port number that helps me perform this task. This blog posting will show you how to do it. Please note that the code in this article is for SQL Server 2012 on Windows…
This month, Microsoft has released the first hotfix for SQL Server Service Pack 1. Analysis This Hotfix concerns the installation of SQL Server components and Analysis Services. If you have installed the RTM version with Analysis Service and successfully installed Service Pack 1, you may experience problems in the next installation process for other component: The installation freezes and does…
For this end of the year, I decided to present you the new permissions on SQL Server 2012. How to have a list of all permissions ? It’s very simple with this query: SELECT * FROM sys.fn_builtin_permissions(”) SQL 2008 R2 SQL 2012 With this comparison, you can see that there are 19 new permissions in SQL Server 2012. To have a great…
I have recently read that PowerPivot and Power View are natively present in Office 2013 and especially in Excel 2013. I found this fun and decided to install the preview of Office 2013!:-D First, what are PowerPivot and Power View? PowerPivot is an add-on to Excel which is used for adding and integrating large amounts of data in Excel workbooks.…
