Reporting Services Webcast Next Wednesday
Data-driven Subscription using SSIS…
SQL Server Reporting Services provides a powerful tool to render reports based on information in a database table. However, you are required to purchase an Enterprise license of SQL Server in order to use this feature.
Next Wednesday (Feb. 1), Russel Loski, who is a Microsoft Certified Trainer and an independent software developer, will create an SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) package that renders reports to the file system based on values stored in the database.
To register for the webcast, click here.
ELMAH
I was watching a presentation on NuGet, a Dot Net resource management tool plugin for Visual Studio 2010, and came across the ELMAH project. ELMAH stands for Error Logging Modules and Handlers and frankly just sounds cool.
So, I had to go check it out. I was wondering how it would compare to something like Log4net which is a popular logging library. I was pleasantly surprised. ELMAH works differently than Log4net and other counterparts. Unlike Log4Net, ELMAH does not require any direct interaction with your source code. In fact, as I understand it, ELMAH can be deployed on a web server with already executing code, and begin working right away without any change to your code.
The primary difference is that ELMAH only tracks unhandled exceptions (something we never do in our software). What I really like is that ELMAH comes out of the box with a facility to track unhandled exceptions, present them to you in a web page, and even provide Email when exceptions occur. In order to accomplish this, ELMAH is configuration driven to enable these features.
Collations Reader Feedback
Ian:
The default SQL Server collation differs depending upon the default collation of the underlying Windows installation: A US collation server will default to SQL_Latin_1_CI_AS, but a UK collation server will default to the ANSI Latin_1_CI_AS collation.
I’ve also found that the performance differences of case-sensitive collations are only marginally faster than case-insensitive. The fastest collation is the binary collation, but in all honesty, the speed enhancement won’t be noticeable (low double-digit percentage increase) and I’ve yet to meet a user that wants to see "Z" sorted before "a", so how useful is it really? In my experience, the pain developing upon case-sensitive collation databases simply isn’t worth the low additional performance gain and most use cases are for case-insensitive comparisons and sorts.
Share your logging or Collation experiences with our readers by sending your email to btaylor@sswug.org.
Cheers,
Ben
$$SWYNK$$
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