The Upside

Ubuntu 11.10 offers a significant improvement to the Unity experience when compared to the previous release. The improved Dash is much more useful combined with the built-in filters and additional lenses that are available. I found that I usually just hit the “Windows” key to pull up the launcher and then started typing the application name and then hit enter. I figure this was easily 80% of my typical usage rather than navigating the various menus and such.

My experience with Gnome 3 shell has been even better than Unity. This is indeed my preferred shell on Ubuntu 11.10. A number of features made this a smoother was to work for myself. First, Gnome 3 honored my settings in the Nvidia driver settings of a primary display in a multi-monitor setup. This was a key for me as when at the office I wanted my large Samsung to be my primary as it is eye level for my standing position during the day. Unity failed to honor the primary display setting relegating my laptop screen down on my desk as the primary. This was inconvenient at best. Gnome 3 won the primary display settings battle.

Gnome 3 also does not make you define the number of virtual desktops. Instead the way that desktops are added as needed is spectacular in my opinion. This flexibility is ideal for someone like me who works on a many different types of projects on a given day.

As always, the memory footprint, responsiveness and use of system resources is far better than any Windows operating systems. This has allowed me to run my primary Ubuntu OS plus more virtual machines at the same time. This has certainly been refreshing to see and monitor.

The Downside

As much as I love Ubuntu, there are a few downsides of moving from Windows 7 to Ubuntu 11.10. Primarily these are the result of using this machine as my daily driver in an environment that is fully Windows operating systems and software.

The compatibility of LibreOffice with Microsoft Office formats is still somewhat lacking. LibreOffice works great for standard spreadsheets, document and presentations. Unfortunately, I receive a few highly formatted Microsoft Word documents each week that when opened in LibreOffice fail to render properly. In fact, other than a few blocks of text visible on page 1, the rest of the pages just show empty. This is just about a deal killer as I need to be able to read and review these documents. We even attempted to convert those to PDF documents, however they still rendered oddly.

Another difficulty is the lack of a GoTo Meeting / GoTo Webinar client for Linux. We use Goto Meeting for many of our calls that are more than 2 or 3 people. To my complete surprise, there is no client for Linux. In my attempt to keep Ubuntu as my operating system, I created a Windows 7 virtual machine in VirtualBox (with the extension pack) and figured I’d pass through the audio input/output and camera. The audio and video pass-through worked fairly well, but the camera support work only sporadically and was very poor to unusable. I finally had to power on an old Dell Laptop with Windows 7 on it and an external camera to do the GoTo Meeting appointments while I looked for a work around.

Finally, managing Windows servers from Ubuntu requires a lot of Terminal Services / vSphere console sessions. Again, it seemed weird but there is no Linux client for vSphere. I figured that I would just use the web client. This worked well up until the point I wanted to view and use the VM console. I could never get the console for the web client to work in Chrome, Chromium nor Firefox. This forced me to enable and use Terminal Services to connect and manage the servers. Not too bad but the native terminal client frankly, kinda such as it lacks many basic options. I’d been using Remmina Desktop to be able to save sessions and settings and leverage screen and console advanced options. Again, I was let down as the Remmina Desktop would lock up and run-away with RAM/CPU periodically if a session was left to timeout. I still have not found a good solution here.

The Bottom Line

Now we are the decision point and I must clear my conscience and confess. The downsides are but three of the most prominent issues I ran into. They are not the only issues. However, I see those issues as mostly being issues only because of working in a Windows shop. Even so, they have proved to be disruptive and have blocked some of my productivity and ability to interact with others efficiently. (You can only ask your remote colleagues “can you see me now?” so many times at the beginning of a call before *you* become what is holding the meeting back.)

So, I’ve had no choice but to format and move back to Windows 7 as my daily driver. Oh how this pains me! The first time I logged back into Windows 7, MS Outlook and Chrome on Windows, I felt defeated. Things were so sluggish and lacking in effective control compared to my extended run with Ubuntu. Alas, it is what had to be done.

Does this mean I’m done with Linux? No, not by any means. I know that I can find ways to work around the previously mentioned issues so I can be productive while not negatively impacting the effectiveness of others. So, I’ll be keeping Ubuntu (or other distros) in a virtual machine and testing as time permits. Now that I’ve had an extended taste of Ubuntu, I really see the appeal beyond just a great platform for us geeks, but as a real alternative to the Microsoft operating system monopoly.

Now….if only MacOS would turn open-source or be able to be installed easily on commodity Intel hardware.

As always, share your thoughts and experience. Got a solution for me, let me know by posting a comment below.

• Microsoft Access / No equivalent
• Remote Desktop / Remmina
• Banshee / Android Sync

Microsoft  Access

Day 3 provided a challenge. Today, I received a call from a staff person with a problem in our one remaining Access DB application front-end. This application contains linked tables, forms, queries and a bunch of VBA code. On a lark, I attempted to open the application in LibreOffice Base. Immediately it failed. I tried a number things, but alas, LibreOffice Base is not a drop in replacement for Microsoft Access.

As a result, I resorted to using remote desktop services / terminal services we run for remote access for some of our staff. From my remote desktop session, I am able to use Microsoft Access and could resolve the problem that has been reported to me by the user.

Remote Desktop / Terminal Services Client

Figure 1.

So how did I connect to remote desktop services from Ubuntu? The Ubuntu team made this easy on us. Opening the Unity Dash and type “remote”. You will see the “Remote Viewer” application. This allows you to connect to SSH and RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) sessions from Ubuntu. Opening the application, I set the protocol to RDP, entered the RDP server hostname and entered my username. Upon clicking connect, my session began.

I found that while Remote Viewer works well for what it is intended to do, that I might want some of the additional features of the native Microsoft Terminal Services Client. So I headed to the Ubuntu Software center and did a search for ‘rdp’. I found the Remmina Remote Desktop Client. It has a rating of five stars so I thought I’d give it a shot. After installing and launching this application I found that I could create multiple saved connects along with some of the following advanced features:

• Connect to console
• Client or custom resolution
• Dekstop scaling
• Color Depth
• Shared (passthrough) folder selection
• Quality options
• Clipboard Synchronization
• and more…

Music / Android Sync

Figure 2.

Now that productivity has been met so far, it is time to start getting a little bit more comfortable. For me, that means music. My range of music varies greatly and is quite eclectic. If I’m studying it may be Chopin or Beethoven. Instropection may mean David Crowder, Benton Brown, Aaron Shust. Coding means rocking out to some Skillet, Disciple, Red, Thousand Foot Krutch and others. So what does Ubuntu 11.10 have to offer for music players? Banshee.

Banshee is the default music player in this release of Ubuntu. Starting the application I saw an unremarkable interface that is fairly intuitive. The first thing I needed to do what to get my music files I had restored on Day 1 into Banshee. Now, I put all my music files/folders into the Music folder in my home directory. As such, all I had to do what choose Rescan Music Library from the Tools menu. If the music files are elsewhere I can use Media –> Import Media and select the location of the media to import.

Right away I noticed that after importing the media files, Banshee was automatically going and getting album art for the albums. The Tools menu continue to call to me. Noticing that there was a menu item there to “fix music metadata” another nicety was found. There were built-in tools to remove duplicate Albums, Artists and genres.

While listening to some of my new found music bliss, I did a bit of reading about Banshee and some of the plugins available. That led me to install the community extensions from the terminal command line:

sudo apt-get install banshee-community-extensions

This package includes extensions like downloading song lyrics, alarm clock, stream recorder, clutterflow and more. Finally hit CTRL+E and the equalizer pops up. Enabling this and trying some the presets seemed to be over-driven in the pre-amp setting on my laptop. I needed to create a custom preset and reduce the pre-amp to get a decent sound.

Finally it was time to connect my Motorol Droid X android phone to see how the music sync would work. Unfortunately Banshee did not see it as a portable music device that could be synchronized. Determined that an android device should work better with Linux than Windows, off to Google I ran. After several minutes I came across this article. Essentially I had to create a file in the root of my sdcard on the phone called .is_audio_player with the following contents:

audio_folders=sdcard/music/
folder_depth=2
output_formats=audio/mpeg,audio/mp3,audio/x-aac

Once this was done, I disconnect and then reconnected the phone via the usb cable. Immediately Banshee recognized the device and I was able to setup synchronization with the device.

Now that my music craving had been satisfied, it was time to rock out and get some work done. Tomorrow I’ll customize things a bit more to my new operating system.

• Convert Outlook archive .pst’s to Thunderbird.
• Libre Office Write and Calc
• Fix default application for Office 2007+ formats
• Windows network shares

Outlook .pst files to Thunderbird

Moving from Windows 7 and Microsoft Outlook to Ubuntu and Thunderbird does have a few challenges. One of those is that if you had local .pst files for local message and archive stores in Outlook, Thunderbird can’t understand them. Thankfully I had already tackled this a few weeks ago as I new it was something I would need to conquer if I was going to make the switch.

So as not to double post, I will refer you to the detailed article I already wrote regarding the procedure here.

Figure 1.

Once the conversion process completed there were a few quirky things that popped up. One issue was that when doing a search across all email I would get results from long ago. When I clicked the aged result the email would not come up. Funny, I thought. After a bit of playing I found a solution.

While in Thunderbird, I found that if I right-clicked on one of those archived yearly folder and went into the properties there were some interesting options. The one that helped me was to choose the “Repair Folder” option. This would take 15-20 seconds to complete on some of the folders but when done, I could view the old email messages in the search results without issue.

Libre Office Write and Calc

If you come from the Microsoft World, you are most likely coming from the use of the Microsoft Office suite of products as well, including MS Word, MS Excel, MS PowerPoint, MS Access and more. In the the 11.10 version of Ubuntu you will find the Libre Office suite already installed.

If you are not already aware, here is the breakdown of equivalence:

MS Word        ->    Libre Writer
MS Excel       ->    Libre Calc
MS PowerPoint  ->    Libre Impress
MS Paint?      ->    Libre Draw
MS Access      ->    Libre Base (not exactly, but kinda)

Again, thinking about my immediate productivity, I need to see about equivalents for MS Word and Excel. As such, it’s time to review compatibility of LibreOffice Writer and Calc.

We have a mixed use environment of Microsoft Office versions. We have MS Word files in both .doc and .docx formats. For Excel we have .xls and .xlsx formats. If I’ll be communicating and working with other office staff, all on Windows 7 and using Microsoft Office tools, I need to ensure they never know I’m using another tool.

So, I open the nautilus file manager and navigate to my Home folder. Down into Documents I dive looking through those wonderfully restored files from day 1. Aha! I spy a .xls spreadsheet that I know has multiple linked worksheets. Double click and it is opening in LibreOffice Calc. A quick review of numbers, linked cells and all and everything looks good.Changed some cells, saved and I was prompted on whether to keep in the current format or change to ODF. If I want MS Office users to be able to open it, I better keep the current format. Finally I sent the spreadsheet to a colleague, with the warning that more are coming, so they could test opening them in MS Excel and make sure all is right with the world.

Next I needed to do the same things with an .xlsx format. Double click and what’s this? Archive Manager? Yup, for some reason the Archive Manager was attempting to open my .xslx files. After a bit of poking around I realized that for some reason the Archive Manager was set as the default application for .xslx files.

Figure 2.

This was easy enough to fix. In Nautilus file manager I right clicked on a .xslx file and chose the properties menu item.

From there [see Figure 2.] you will notice that the Archive Manager application is currently set to the default for this file type. Click and highlight the LibreOffice Calc option and then click the Set as default button.

Doing this changes the default file association for .xslx files. From now on, double-clicking an .xslx file will result in the file opening automatically in LibreOffice Calc.

I found that the same problem existing with .docx files as well. The same fix, only this time selecting LibreOffice Writer as the default, solved the issue.

As I went through various .doc(x) and .xls(x) files, all of which are fairly straight forward, no massive macros or VBA code, everything looked good. My colleague, who was by now tired of receiving and testing files, found no issue either. Phew! That’s another one off the list.

Windows File Shares

Working in a Microsoft Windows shop, there are plenty of network file shares on Windows servers. I’ll need to be able to get to all those mapped drives and shares also. Again Ubuntu makes this pretty straight forward. Windows file shares are accessed via SMB protocol. Like most things, there is more than one way to get to those file shares. One is to use Nautilus and browse the network to find and access those resources. Another is to go directly to them is you know the path to the shares. In my case, I chose the latter.

Figure 3.

Opening Nautilus, I chose the “Go” menu item and selected “Location”. In the location bar I typed SMB:// and then the UNC path the network resource I wanted to access.

smb://servername/sharename

Doing so and hitting the enter key then prompted me for my Windows credentials. I entered my Active Directory user name, domain name and password. You can then select how long those credentials are used. At this point I selected the “Remember password until you logout” option. You can make you own assessment of what is right for you.

Figure 4.

Now that I have access the file share, I want to bookmark it so I can quickly get back to this location. Again in Nautilus, I chose the Bookmarks menu item and then Add Bookmark (Ctrl + D). This adds the current location to the bookmark menu. Now, to make it a friendly name, right clicked the bookmark and chose the rename option. Since some of these corresponded to mapped drives in the Windows world, I gave some of the bookmarks single letter names to match the previously drive map letters.

Rinse and repeat as my ladies would say.

Day 2 is getting along fine. No major failures or inability to be productive. So far so good. Tomorrow I’ll play with customizing the environment a bit to personal tastes and anything else that comes up.

Are you a SQL Server DBA, Developer, Report Writer?
Do you align with a desire to spread God’s Word?
Do you love working in an evolving/energetic environment?

Yes? Well here’s  a neat opportunity.  The Seed Company is a Christian non-profit focused on Bible Translation. Based in Arlington, Texas in the heart of the D/FW metroplex they are seeking a multi-talented individual to fill a big need.

“The Seed Company is a faith-based, 501(c)3 organization committed to the vision of creatively networking God’s people around the world to translate the Bible into every language for His glory”

Here’s the info on the position.

Brief Description: Preserve and extend TSC staff capabilities through database development, administration, and reporting.

Responsibilities:

General:

1. Has servant heart, and a desire to make others more effective in their work.
2. Good interpersonal skills.
3. Strong written and verbal communication skills.
4. Ability to understand user needs and to design database solutions appropriate to those needs.
5. Familiarity with computer networking and security issues.
6. Familiarity with server administration and backup/restore techniques.
7. Ability to document routine tasks.
8. Working knowledge of Microsoft Access, Windows Server and Microsoft Office products.
9. Working knowledge of web technologies.

Specific:

1. Ability to develop and maintain data dictionaries and data models/ schemas.
2. Ability to design and maintain reports and reporting environments.
3. Ability to design and implement user interfaces for data entry and reporting.
4. Ability to design and maintain integration (ETL, SSIS) with other database systems.
5. Knowledge of tools for database design, performance monitoring and user interface development.
6. Thorough understanding of SQL Server and reporting tools.

The position is full-time and will be out of the Arlington, Texas office. There are a number of neat initiatives going on including moving to an SSRS reporting environment (SSRS 2008), the potential to start into Data Warehousing, data integration and automation with a number of internal and external information systems.

Interested parties should contact:

Dave Mutchler
dave_mutchler@tsco.org
(817)-557-2121

Corporate Headquarters

The Seed Company
3030 Matlock Rd. Suite 104
Arlington TX 76015
USA
view map
Phone (817) 557-2121
Toll Free (877)593-7333

Contact Info: Email resumes with cover letter to: dave_mutchler@tsco.org

Business Type: Bible Translation

Comments: The Seed Company is an affiliate of Wycliffe Bible Translators and seeks to make employment decisions in accordance with applicable federal and state employment discrimination laws and regulations. As a religious organization, The Seed Company is entitled to make employment decisions on the basis of religious beliefs and practices of the applicant or employee. All positions require a personal commitment to Christ, evidenced by personal testimony and identification with a local church.

Does your mail delivery look like this?

In our case we are actually blocking port 25 and our external SMTP servers use a set of alternative ports along with SSL. In SSRS 2005 nor 2008, the Reporting Services configuration tool does not offer options for modify the SMTP port nor the use of SSL. As such, we quickly found the following two articles from Microsoft which show how to address these requirements.

Configuring a Report Server for E-Mail Delivery SSRS 2008

Configuring a Report Server for E-Mail Delivery

As of this writing, it looks like both 2005 and 2008 do not yet support authenticated external SMTP services requiring a username and password. There is a feature request here that we did find with a suggested workaround to implement your own delivery provider.

So here are the basics.

SSRS 2005

Simply find the RSreportserver.config file and edit the SMTP configuration section as needed.

[Please note that SSRS 2005 does not support encrypted emails.]

<RSEmailDPConfiguration>
     <SMTPServer>mySMTPServer.Adventure-Works.com</SMTPServer>
     <SMTPServerPort></SMTPServerPort>
     <SMTPAccountName></SMTPAccountName>
     <SMTPConnectionTimeout></SMTPConnectionTimeout>

     <SMTPServerPickupDirectory></SMTPServerPickupDirectory>
     <SMTPUseSSL></SMTPUseSSL>
     <SendUsing>2</SendUsing>
     <SMTPAuthenticate></SMTPAuthenticate>

     <From>my-rs-email-account@Adventure-Works.com</From>
     <EmbeddedRenderFormats>
          <RenderingExtension>MHTML</RenderingExtension>
     </EmbeddedRenderFormats>
     <PrivilegedUserRenderFormats></PrivilegedUserRenderFormats>

     <ExcludedRenderFormats>
          <RenderingExtension>HTMLOWC</RenderingExtension>
          <RenderingExtension>NULL</RenderingExtension>
     </ExcludedRenderFormats>
     <SendEmailToUserAlias>True</SendEmailToUserAlias>

     <DefaultHostName></DefaultHostName>
     <PermittedHosts>
          <HostName>Adventure-Works.com</HostName>
          <HostName>hotmail.com</HostName>

     </PermittedHosts>
</RSEmailDPConfiguration>

SSRS 2008

<RSEmailDPConfiguration>
     <SMTPServer>mySMTPServer.Adventure-Works.com</SMTPServer>
     <SMTPServerPort></SMTPServerPort>
     <SMTPAccountName></SMTPAccountName>
     <SMTPConnectionTimeout></SMTPConnectionTimeout>

     <SMTPServerPickupDirectory></SMTPServerPickupDirectory>
     <SMTPUseSSL></SMTPUseSSL>
     <SendUsing>2</SendUsing>
     <SMTPAuthenticate></SMTPAuthenticate>

     <From>my-rs-email-account@Adventure-Works.com</From>
     <EmbeddedRenderFormats>
          <RenderingExtension>MHTML</RenderingExtension>
     </EmbeddedRenderFormats>
     <PrivilegedUserRenderFormats></PrivilegedUserRenderFormats>

     <ExcludedRenderFormats>
          <RenderingExtension>HTMLOWC</RenderingExtension>
          <RenderingExtension>NULL</RenderingExtension>
     </ExcludedRenderFormats>
     <SendEmailToUserAlias>True</SendEmailToUserAlias>

     <DefaultHostName></DefaultHostName>
     <PermittedHosts>
          <HostName>Adventure-Works.com</HostName>
          <HostName>hotmail.com</HostName>

     </PermittedHosts>
</RSEmailDPConfiguration>

For our case, our particular attention was focused on the following elements:

• SMTPServer
• SMTPServerPort
• SMTPUseSSL

SMTPServer was set to point at the FQDN of our SMTP server. Example: mail.example.com

SMTPServerPort was set to our non-standard SMTP port. Example: 444

SMTPUseSSL needed to be enabled so we set the value to True.

Game Changing Announcement for Microsoft BI

Boy doesn’t this sound like other previous Microsoft endeavors. Hmmmm…. The post/video indicates the following end results.

• Supporting the democratization of BI (aka BI for the masses) with the consolidation of PerformancePoint Server Monitoring and Analytics functions into Office SharePoint Server Enterprise. The new capabilities will be called PerformancePoint Services.
• As I read the announcement, PerformancePoint Planning has been put out of our misery. Service Pack 3 will represent the end of the line for investment in a stand-alone PPS Planning product.

Below is a list of some of the better video tutorials we’ve found on the web.

Tutorials (Reporting Services)

SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services (SSRS) includes the following report design tutorials to help you learn basic skills one step at a time.

Designing Ad Hoc Reports: Tutorials

You can use the following tutorials to learn about ad hoc reporting features in Reporting Services. The tutorials can help you learn necessary skills for creating reports based on models.

Designing Report Models: Tutorials

The tutorials can help you learn necessary skills for creating models that you can use in Report Builder or Report Model Query Designer.

Developer’s Guide: Tutorials (Reporting Services)

Developer’s Guide: Tutorials (Reporting Services)

Tutorial: How to Locate and Start Reporting Services Tools

This tutorial introduces the tools used to configure a report server, manage report server content and operations, and create and publish reports and report models. The purpose of this tutorial is to help new users understand how to find and open each tool.

SQL Server Express 2005 – Getting Started with Reporting Services

This is a good intro albeit for SSRS 2005.

YouTube – SQL Server Reporting Services Playlist.

Great little playlist of some of the better SSRS videos on YouTube.

Week of Warehousing Webinar Series – SQL Server Central

Join SQL Server authors and MVPs for a week of warehousing and get the latest on Microsoft Business Intelligence inside your environment. If you are in any stage of a data warehouse design, administration or planning you won’t want to miss out on this free “week of warehousing” webinar series,

Registration is open to the first 1,000 people in each session and seats are going fast.

5 Days 5 Data Warehouse Topic Summary

Designing a Data Warehouse

Monday Feb 23 9:30AM EST
Featuring: Erik Veerman
Improve the speed of your production can be as easy as giving your users a new place to report against. In this session, you’ll learn from SQL Server MVP, Erik Veerman how a data warehouse can benefit your organization and how to design one for SQL Server. You’ll also see at a high level how the data flows into the warehouse in a Microsoft data warehouse ecosystem.

Designing a Data Warehouse

Monday Feb 23 1:30PM EST
Featuring: Erik Veerman
Improve the speed of your production can be as easy as giving your users a new place to report against. In this session, you’ll learn from SQL Server MVP, Erik Veerman how a data warehouse can benefit your organization and how to design one for SQL Server. You’ll also see at a high level how the data flows into the warehouse in a Microsoft data warehouse ecosystem.

Loading a Data Warehouse with SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)

Tuesday Feb 24 9:30AM EST
Featuring: Brian Knight
Now that you have a data warehouse designed, how would you go about loading the warehouse from your relational database that has been in production for years. Join Microsoft MVP and author Brian Knight in this session on how to use SSIS to load and synchronize a data warehouse.

Loading a Data Warehouse with SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)

Tuesday Feb 24 1:30PM EST
Featuring: Brian Knight
Now that you have a data warehouse designed, how would you go about loading the warehouse from your relational database that has been in production for years. Join Microsoft MVP and author Brian Knight in this session on how to use SSIS to load and synchronize a data warehouse.

Introduction to Analysis Services (SSAS)

Wednesday Feb 25 9:30AM EST
Featuring: Siva Harinath
Tired of having to write hundreds of one-off reports? SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) can help clear your report backlog by giving your users the ability to perform ad-hoc reporting with pivot tables. Learn how to create a SSAS cube, how to process it and finally view quick reports to answers questions you didn’t even know you had about your business.

Introduction to Analysis Services (SSAS)

Wednesday Feb 25 1:30PM EST
Featuring: Siva Harinath
Tired of having to write hundreds of one-off reports? SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) can help clear your report backlog by giving your users the ability to perform ad-hoc reporting with pivot tables. Learn how to create a SSAS cube, how to process it and finally view quick reports to answers questions you didn’t even know you had about your business.

Reporting against a Data Warehouse with SSRS

Thursday Feb 26 9:30AM EST
Featuring: Paul Turley
In this session, you’ll learn how to report against your data warehouse and SSAS cubes by using Reporting Services 2008. Learn what’s new and easy ways to visualize data warehouse data in this comprehensive session for beginners.

Performance Tuning and Scaling a Data Warehouse

Thursday Feb 26 1:30PM EST
Featuring: JC Armand
Some of the largest databases in the world are data warehouses, scaling to dozens (or hundreds) of terrabytes in some cases. In this session, you’ll explore how to make your SQL Server 2008 database scale and easy ways to diagnose and troubleshoot problems. You’ll learn how to performance tune and scale the hardware to the OS in this vital session for most organizations.

Register Performance Tuning and Scaling a Data Warehouse

Friday Feb 27 9:30AM EST
Featuring: JC Armand
Some of the largest databases in the world are data warehouses, scaling to dozens (or hundreds) of terrabytes in some cases. In this session, you’ll explore how to make your SQL Server 2008 database scale and easy ways to diagnose and troubleshoot problems. You’ll learn how to performance tune and scale the hardware to the OS in this vital session for most organizations.

Reporting against a Data Warehouse with SSRS

Friday Feb 27 1:30PM EST
Featuring: Paul Turley
In this session, you’ll learn how to report against your data warehouse and SSAS cubes by using Reporting Services 2008. Learn what’s new and easy ways to visualize data warehouse data in this comprehensive session for beginners.

Week of Warehousing Webinar Series – SQL Server Central

General availability for the Windows 7 Beta to end – Windows 7 Team Blog – The Windows Blog

• Starting January 27th, the Windows 7 page will be updated with a warning that time is running out on downloading the Windows 7 Beta and that we will be limiting downloads shortly. People will be encouraged to register and start the download of the Windows 7 Beta sooner rather than later.
• February 10th, new downloads of the Windows 7 Beta will no longer be available. People who have already started their Windows 7 Beta download and have not yet finished will still be able to finish their download and are encouraged to do so.
• February 12th, people will no longer be able to complete their download of the Windows 7 Beta. Anyone who hasn’t finished downloading the Windows 7 Beta will be unable to do so.

Of course, MSDN subscribers, fear not. According to Brandon:

MSDN and TechNet Subscribers will continue to have access to the Windows 7 Beta bits throughout the Windows 7 Beta phase. The above dates do not apply to MSDN and TechNet Subscribers.

1I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone— 2for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. 3This is good, and pleases God our Savior, 4who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.
1 Timothy 2:1-4

Now that is out of the way, back to technology.

So, did you see the inauguration? I bet you didn’t see it like this. CNN used its iReporter format to collect images from all over Washington to create a virtual 3D picture of the ceremony.

While watching the inauguration online via the CNN/Facebook feed, I saw a technology being talked about that I had seen many months ago, Microsoft Live Labs Photosynth.

Photosynth is a Microsoft technology that creates 3D spaces from anyone’s 2D photos. Hundreds of thousands of synths are viewable on photosynth.com, including the best inauguration synths.

Photosynth is unique in that it looks for similarities between photos in order to recreate a scene. More details are available on the Photosynth site. So, take a look at “The Moment” for yourself.

If nothing else, it gave some buzz to talk about in the blogosphere.

• Gizmodo
• The Washington Note
• Mashable
• Los Angeles Times
• CNET