AUSSUG Upcoming Sessions
In case you aren’t in the Australian SQL Server User Group, AUSSUG, there are a few upcoming sessions in Sydney which will be pretty useful – check out the official site to register. Sessions are free and always useful.
Lunchtime Wed 3rd March, 2010 – Ensuring Optimal Performance in SQL Server 2008 Based Applications with Viktor Isakov
Evening * Thu * 4th Mar 2010 – What’s new in Reporting Services 2008 R2 and PerformancePoint Services 2010 with Peter Myers, presenting what’s new in the upcoming release of Reporting Services 2008 R2 and PerformancePoint Services 2010
And TBA date in April 2010 – Knights of the SSIS Round Table – Kevin Wong, Glyn Llewelyn and myself will be presenting a series of mini demos followed by Q&A, so a chance to pick some expert brains
Hope to catch you at one of the sessions!
Windows 7 first impressions + BI Monkey news
My posting rate has taken a little dip of late so I thought i’d better explain myself 
A BI Monkey update
The BI Monkey has been a little short of access to computers for a while, as burglary took his laptop, being on holiday in Japan and Hong Kong distracted him and just to add some extra confusion into the mix, I switched consultancies towards someone a bit more Microsoft focused. However I am almost back in the saddle, having finally got SQL2008 up and running on 64-bit Windows 7. Once i’ve dealt with the vast amounts of admin that seem to accompany joining my new company, i’ll carry on with my quest to cover every component in depth. However I may end up delivering all my new samples on a 64-bit architecture – though i’m still looking at setting up a virtual PC to stick with 32-bit SQL2005 for creating my demo files.
None of this seems to have slowed down the growth of the site, though it is starting to calm down – bimonkey.com had it’s first 5,000 hit day earlier this month and will easily top 100,000 hits this month. This makes me very happy! Now, if only the Google ad revenue would come pouring in!
Windows 7 first impressions
My new work machine is loaded with Windows 7 Enterprise, and I have to say, i’m impressed. I wasn’t much of a Vista hater so perhaps I am an easier sell, but there are a few features that really stand out for me:
- Taskbar – the new smaller icons are nice and the way you can manage multiple windows from a single icon is very slick
- Libraries – Being able to collect several disparate folders under a single master folder makes managing files much easier
- Snap – a simple but easy way of pulling windows to cover half the screen for side by side review is handy
- Speech – I was a fan in Vista, and whilst not much has changed, it does seem better behaved – so will be dictating more in future
The introductory videos here are a great and easy introduction to these features, and I reccommend all new 7 users take a peek.
BI Monkey – Robbed :(
Yesterday I came home to discover that someone had been through my flat and made off with my household laptops and assorted shiny things. This is never a pleasant experience, and always hassle to sort out with Police, Locksmiths and so on.
While shiny things often have sentimental value, it ultimately is just stuff, and stuff can be insured and replaced. However the laptops contained that most valuable of modern commodities – data, lots of it, most very personal. What had I done to protect it? Nothing. My very, very bad. My backup routines were flaky and none of the data was encrypted, so whilst I have changed every password I can think of my data on the machine is still vulnerable. Consequently I am at severe risk of ID Theft and can only hope that the people who end up with our laptops just wipe them and don’t try and use the data on there for malicious purposes.
I was slack because I thought our machines were safe at home and we lived in a safe neighbourhood, but like any assumption it was flawed. So if you own a laptop / pc on which you store data you don’t want falling into other people’s hands, I strongly advise you to do the following now.
- Make sure your machine is password protected – even for screensavers. If you leave your machine idle when you aren’t at home, make sure it will lock itself if you forget to do it manually.
- Encrypt your personal data – which is a built in feature of Xp/Vista/7 - and so simple i’m really kicking myself for not doing this
- Backup your data – preferably on a discreetly located wireless NAS, which should come with software to make this a breeze. Maybe even use LiveMesh at a push.
- Track your laptop – there are various bits of free and paid for software that will report its location, take snaps with the webcam and report it to a web server so you have some chance of recovery.
So now i’m down to outdated backups, lost data, and having to be wary about alot of my financial activities for a long, long time because of my carelessness. Allow me to be the lesson you learn from.
An Irked BI Monkey.
A bigger and better known BI Monkey
BI Monkey has once again doubled in size – it is gratifying to know so many people are finding help here, and makes the effort put into this blog feel very worthwhile (the riches from the google ads only stretch to a pizza so far, so it’s definitely not materially rewarding!)
In another bit of good news, one of my posts has been linked to from the Integration Services page of the SQL Server Developer Center. It’s nice to be appreciated by the big guys – i’ve added a link to the page in the Links section.
Thanks to all who come by and I hope to hear from you soon in the comments – I always like to know what you like (or don’t like) about BI Monkey, and also to face a challenging problem every now and then!
Cheers, James (aka the BI Monkey)
BI Monkey getting bigger!
I really started putting some effort in to this Blog at the start of this year, and after posting more focused content and learning the art of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) i’m happy to say the BI Monkey blog has been doubling the number of hits it’s been getting every month since January – this June just passed there were 23,280 hits from 1,162 unique visitors. Quite a few of my posts are getting page 1 views on Google for component specific posts as well, hurrah!
I’m a happy BI Monkey as a result – now I just hope I can get some more comments and content requests – if you are a lurking BI Monkey follower please say hi in the comments and get stuck in to my other posts as well. Looking forward to getting your input!
James, aka the BI Monkey
SSWUG Virtual Conference & New blog links
I have picked up from the SSIS Team blog the upcoming SQL Server World User Group (SSWUG) Virtual Conference from April 22-24. The Virtual Conference will all be scheduled in American time, so unless you happen to be active between 11pm and 7am .au time, you won’t be able to watch the presentations live. However the presentations are all viewable for up to 2 weeks after the events. Attendance costs 125 US$, or about 175 AU$. There are some compelling presentations from well known industry figures on both SQL Server, and of interest to the BI Monkey, SQL Server BI. Full details for each can be found here for BI and here for SQL Server.
I’ve also added links in the Relevant Blogs section for the SSIS Team Blog and for Jamie Thompson’s excellent SSIS Junkie, where I have found more solutions to SSIS problems that anywhere else on the net.
BI Monkey grows up
BI Monkey is now roughly 1 year into his blogging existance, and has celebrated by moving to a different webhost, the excellent Register1 – which allows a proper blog with comments and other such proper blogging goodies. All posts have been migrated over to the new host, and over the coming weeks will have their content reviewed and updated where appropriate.
Following on from that I will be adding some posts on learning resources that I used for getting through my MCTS(BI) and also begin a component by component guide to SSIS. This of course is dependent on my laptop ever staying out of the repair shop longer than a week at a time.
I hope my tiny readership continues to find the contents of this blog useful.
Passed MCTS BI
Phew, managed to pass my MCTS (2005 BI) this morning – this makes me the one of less than 3,000 in the world!
It’s been a long road, i’ve learnt alot – though I still struggle with Data Mining, and I think the exam puts far too much emphasis on what is a complex and little used feature. But glad it’s over… now to go for MCITP.
All quiet on the BI Monkey front
This blog has been quiet for a while as I have been buried in a government Data Manager / Oracle contract, and the amount of useful things i have learned there (beyond affirming my deep loathing of using those things in a BI context) could be written on twitter.
However I have on the side been studying for MCTS (BI) – that’s Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (Business Intelligence Developer) to you – trying to get myself in a fit state to pass exam 70-445. This is proving harder than I thought as whilst i’m pretty solid in SSIS, my SSAS and SSRS knowledge is sketchy, and the questions have a nasty habit of focusing on obscure technical details, such as command line parameters for dtutil, or how to set up the config files for an SSRS web server, that even experienced developers may not know. The whole experience has been good on the whole though, forcing me to understand the product suite much better, so I would recommend it to anyone who wants to focus on MS BI as a career.
One of the areas the exams look at extensively is Data Mining, which despite being very cool is not something you get a chance to play with very often. An output from this has been me having to create some sample data to play with so I can see how it works. Once I have a better understanding I will share it and see if anyone finds it handy.