“Geek” is the new cool

If you tell me I’m a geek or a nerd, I would most likely blush and take it as the greatest compliment ever.

Yes I am one …

Yes I am a geek.
Yes I am a nerd.

• Yes I laugh at the geek jokes (think XKDC …Bobby Tables, or Regex).
• Yes I get what “Kickin’ SSAS” means. (Caption at the back of the cool Pragmatic Works T-Shirt Swag).
• Yes I read SQL Server books at night before I go to sleep. (I just dug up Ken Hendersons’s Guru’s Guide book to look up those undocumented commands that Kalen Delaney mentioned in her session).
• Yes making queries run faster, or creating these fancy reports, or troubleshooting replication are what I call fun.
• I love the movies The Matrix, and Inception. ‘Nuff said.
• And yes, I thoroughly enjoy attending PASS (Professional Association of SQL Server) and geeking out with with other SQL Professionals.

I can bore you with all the other things that I think are cool. You may disagree with me, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
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Just a heads up. Today I’ve seen the most impressive BI demos – ever! *jaw drop*

Key Note

My takeaways:

Atlanta, Denali, Crescent

The next version of SQL Server (code names Project Atlanta, “Denali”, and “Crescent”) – mostly about teradatas, column stores, and reporting and diagnosing from the cloud – will change the landscape of SQL Server.

And man, PowerPivot is everywhere!

You can now download the Denali CTP1 version from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=6a04f16f-f6be-4f92-9c92-f7e5677d91f9

My iPad cannot compete with trusty laptops and MacBooks, and the wireless during the keynote was essentially nonexistent. So I have to refer you to – ta da – Brent Ozar’s posts – for the lowdown of events:
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PASS has officially started. For the second year in a row, I am attending Brian Knight’s (blog | twitter) Pre Conference. And as usual, Brian Knight – this time with Patrick LeBlanc (blog | twitter) – have delivered. Hats off to them, for making the pre-con very very informative, yet very entertaining.

Notables

Here are some of my notables from the session:
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Yeah I know, my counting system is off. This is my weird counting plan, you just have to bear with me:

Day -1 Summary (read Day minus 1)

PASS has not officially started, but my adventure already started.

Got my official PASS Summit 2010 backpack swag. Woo hoo! What can I say, swags make me happy.

By this time I’ve already devoured through the PASS Summit 2010 Program Guide, the schedule, and Im halfway through the free SQLServer Magazine!
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Your report is only as good as your requirements.

When I first worked with reports and reporting services, I was excited and giddy. Beside my plain old text and T-SQL, I now get to work with some shapes and colors! And look ma, no hands, err, it’s drag and drop!

But the fascination with colors, drilldowns, drillthroughs, what-have-yous fade away as quickly as that drag and drop. You realize fast that – although managers typically like the pie charts, the drill downs, the colored legends – if any number, or any minor thing for that matter, is not “right”, the whole report is not right, and all your work really goes down the drain.

Sometimes, it’s not because the report is “completely wrong”.
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Today has been quite an eventful day for me, feels like a mishmash of stuff happened today. Definitely worth a blog post.

Here are some of the things I learned and did today.

And man it amazes me how many smart smart helpful people are out there

Service Broker

I possibly might need to work on SQL Server Service Broker. I think this might be the right tool for a project, but I need to be certain so I need to give it a test drive.

Thanks to Aaron Bertrand (blog | twitter) for pointing me to these excellent excellent resources on SQL Server Broker.

http://mrdenny.com

http://http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/tag/service-broker/

http://rusanu.com

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I love Reporting Services. I really do. But sometimes, just sometimes, it does generate extra work for me especially when clients are not using IE.

First Fix – ReportManager

This one is still a “temporary fix”. This still does not allow to scale width to 100%

To do this, we need to override a few CSS classes.

1. Go to the Reporting Services CSS file. This typically resides in a folder similar to:
D:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL ServerMSSQL.3Reporting ServicesReportManagerStylesReportingServices.css
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