Webcast: Do It Right: Best Practices for Analysis Services 2005 and 2008
Are you seeking practical, in-depth technical advice for building a BI solution using SSAS? Analysis Services changed tremendously with the advent of SQL Server 2005. It introduced a new way of building dimensions and cubes that required a new way of modeling the solution. This session examines the best practices for properly designing cubes for performance and usability. It discusses some high-level topics but also looks at advanced topics such as alternative approaches to many-to-many dimensions, SCOPE statements, aggregation design, scalability issues, processing techniques, server properties, and more. Craig Utley has been working with Microsoft’s BI products for 11 years and is a former Program Manager with the SQL Server Customer Advisory Team (SQLCAT), where he worked with some of the largest Analysis Services installations worldwide. In this session he brings his real-world experience with large, complex SSAS projects and presents best practices uncovered as companies deploy and use Analysis Services.
Presented by: Craig Utley
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> Live date: 12/8/2010 at 12:00 Pacific
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SQL Server Log Shipping (Part 2 of 2)
In this session, were going to go a little bit deep in log shipping, well talk about what log shipping really is, kind of explain from a high-level perspective of log shipping and then just discuss the internals in terms of how the system works, what steps are required to configure log shipping, what roles happen behind the scenes in terms of whats going on when log shipping is working, the jobs that are initiated from a SQL agent perspective, talk a little bit about the architecture.
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Open Source Database Change Management Framework
Regardless of your software development methodology, one of the most difficult things to do in database development is to make the correct database schema (table, stored procedure, trigger, view, index, users, permissions, data) changes when releasing a new application or version of an existing application.
In order for the application to work, the database modifications need to synchronize with the application code sitting on top of your database. For an initial release the deployment is not always as complicated. But, any successive release cannot be simply deployed because it can break dependencies or lose data. You can’t simply drop a table and recreate it with a new schema unless you are willing to live with data loss.
Today I came across a framework that allows you to integrate your database changes, including data, with the same version control library as your application code. RoundhousE is an open source database change and release management tool that is a framework written in .Net. The key is that your database modifications are scripted and checked into version control, just like the rest of your code.
I have been doing this process manually and with some optimization tools myself for years. RoundhousE takes it to the next level, integrating with build tools as well as version control. I found a blog posting by Pascal Mestdach that does a great job describing the problem they were trying to solve, and how RoundhousE provided a framework for their application environment. If you are not using, or intend to use an automated build process, there is still much to be gained from the framework.
Take a look at Pascal’s blog and the RoundhousE project. A google search with "RoundhousE Database" returns a number of resources.
Drop me a note and let me know how you are managing your database change process and production packaging.
Cheers,
Ben