1. Get your spatial data ready. If you’re just starting to work with spatial data and don’t have a handy .shp file, you can visit some of these sites which provide publicly available shapefiles:
http://www.vdstech.com/map_data.htm
http://wwwn.cdc.gov/epiinfo/script/shapefiles.aspx
http://www.mapcruzin.com/download-free-arcgis-shapefiles.htm
http://www.census.gov/geo/www/cob/bdy_files.html

2. Download the SQL Server Spatial Tools from ArcGIS, which include the Shape2SQL tool.

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Thank you to all the troopers who attended my really-early-morning-cold-and-snowy session at SQLSaturday#65 in Vancouver, BC. It was such a great event; thanks to all volunteers, sponsors, speakers and organizers (kudos to Scott Stauffer (blog | twitter) .. Thanks to Todd McDermid (blog | twitter) too for helping me give out swags during my session, and thanks for the great powerpoint slide decks which I’ve used in 2 SQLSaturdays now!

As promised, here are the SQLSaturday#65 presentation materials for SQL Server 2008/2008 R2 Reporting Services from the Ground Up

Brent Ozar (blog | twitter) has a few pictures of the event

Sample Reports (pdfs)

Report with different visualization components (data bar, sparkline, indicator, gauge, chart)

Report with drilldown, barcode, gauge

Report using map (from ESRI shapefile for Canada) and Bing Maps layer

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SQLSaturdays are great free training events, that is really done by the community for the community. SQLSaturday showcases both local and non-local speakers, MVPs, passionate SQL Server professionals who selflessly devote time, and travel, to share to the community. What really makes the SQL Server community awesome is the people. If you dont know, SQLSaturdays speakers don’t get paid to present, they are volunteers. They do it out of *love* (it’s ok to be mushy right, it’s Valentine’s anyway).

I am very excited to be part of SQLSaturday#65 in Vancouver, BC. I will be presenting SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services from the Ground Up. I’ve been busy working on my demos, and being overly excited about it. There’s so much cool stuff to do in SQL Server 2008 Reporting!! (I also have some swags, courtesy of Black Ninja Software)

However, I’ve just read from Tim Costello’s site that currently the group organizing SQLSaturday#65 is projecting a budget deficit of about $1800. (And Tim is a community super hero; way to go Tim!)

So this is my plan:
– buy the lottery and if I win, I will pay for the whole deficit
– backup, and more realistic plan, become a community super hero.
– encourage you – yes, you, to become a community super hero too. It costs $25. It’s $25 that will go a long way in supporting the community, and showing that you care. Or if you want, you can also be a friend. Or a bronze sponsor. Or silver. You get the drift … Sponsorship plans are here.

And if you attend my session, you will see cool demos, and you might get some swags too; that’ll be worth your $25

Just another handy code snippet for generating dates for date dimensions in your data warehouse.

I am providing just the select statement here, but to generate (massive) date records, just create and set your start and end date variables, and enclose your insert and the code below in your WHILE loop.

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