Steve Thompson

ConfigMgr 2012 Database Collation clarification

2012-01-12T19:19:29Z

As a point of clarification, database collation as stated in the current documentation http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg682077.aspx#BKMK_SupConfigSQLDBconfig):- Configuration More information Database collation Use the following guidance for the SQL Server database collation at each site: To support database replication in a hierarchy with mixed site server operating system languages, the instance of SQL Server in use at each site must use the following collation: SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS...(read more)

Editing CM12 reports in the ConfigMgr console with SQL Server 2008 R2

2011-12-20T23:36:24Z

Presently, if you have installed ConfigMgr 2012 with SQL Server 2008 R2, and attempt to edit a report from the console, you will get an error message that “Report Builder not available”. The problem here, ConfigMgr 2012 is designed to work out of the box with Report Builder 2.0 as explained here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg682105.aspx#BKMK_ReportBuilder Since you have installed SQL Server 2008 R2, which ships with Report Builder 3.0, you can indeed use Report Builder 3.0, just open...(read more)

MMS 2012 – Content Survey

2011-11-22T16:43:10Z

From a recent email, please take the time to respond and let this group know what you content you want to see for sessions. Anything SQL related like custom report creation or SSRS? Let them know! Attendee Content Survey The Attendee Content Survey is currently open and gathers input from potential attendees regarding what they would like to see at this year’s event. The results of this survey are used when selecting final sessions. Please encourage anyone who is planning or considering attending...(read more)

Generate a list of Configuration Manager reports from Reporting Server

2011-11-21T17:05:13Z

Have you ever needed to product a list of reports and report descriptions from Reporting Services? Use the following SQL to retrieve this information from the reporting server database. Just FYI, counting Report Folder names and reports, there are approximately 500 default results from ConfigMgr 2012. -- the report server name in the USE statement will need to match the instance name/report server name of your SSRS installation. USE ReportServer GO SELECT [Name] As [Report Name...(read more)

ConfigMgr 2012 Release Candidate is here

2011-10-27T22:40:30Z

The release candidate is now here for download . Note the official name is now; System Center 2012 Configuration Manager. You can read more about it here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/server-cloud/archive/2011/10/25/system-center-2012-configuration-manager-release-candidate-is-here.aspx...(read more)

What is old, then new again? ODBC

2011-10-11T22:18:05Z

Read the following blog entry, found this to be very fascinating. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlnativeclient/archive/2011/08/29/microsoft-is-aligning-with-odbc-for-native-relational-data-access.aspx For those of you unfamiliar with ODBC, this is the Open Data Base Connectivity drivers that allow the ability to connect from an “application” to a database. The significance here; OLE DB shipped after ODBC and was supposed to be the high performance drivers, unlike the slow, pesky, legacy ODBC drivers that...(read more)

2011 Microsoft MVP Award

2011-10-01T22:00:03Z

Received my 2011 MVP award today. It is both an honor and a privilege to be awarded MVP in ConfigMgr for another year. This is a great community and I am very pleased to be part of this group. Here is the letter: Dear Steve Thompson, Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2011 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in...(read more)

How to display Weekday in an SSRS report

2011-07-29T17:30:42Z

Recently, I needed to display the weekday in a column heading. It turns out is was a little more complicated than specifying a function to extract the day of week. You need to combine several functions. Because this report was designed to show the last seven days, I needed to make it flexible with no hard coded names. Note that based on the date that is evaluated, the WeekDay Function returns a numeric value to the WeekDayName Function, displaying the name of the day in the column header...(read more)

SQL Query - Show Server Up time in ConfigMgr

2011-07-21T21:34:40Z

Here is a fairly common request, show me the uptime for for servers. This is handy to determine whether or not a server or servers has rebooted since the last security update. Additionally it can be filtered to only show those servers that have not restarted in the last 45 days or more. Select os.Caption0 as 'Operating System', cs.Name0 as Name, DateDiff(hour,os.LastBootUpTime0,ws.LastHWScan...(read more)

Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 6.0 Released!

2011-07-21T18:25:37Z

Overview The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP) is an agentless, automated, multi-product planning and assessment tool for quicker and easier desktop and server migrations and upgrades. MAP provides detailed readiness assessment reports and executive proposals with extensive hardware and application information, and actionable recommendations to help organizations accelerate their IT infrastructure planning process, and gather more detail on assets that reside in their current environment...(read more)

SQL Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 Released

2011-07-13T20:38:34Z

Note: This release is not yet officially supported for ConfigMgr 2007, once the product team completes their compatibility testing they will announce support. Download Link The master bug fix list is here . Overview SQL Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1(SP1) is now available for download. SQL Server 2008 R2 service packs are cumulative updates and upgrade all service levels of SQL Server 2008 R2 to SP1. This service pack contains the cumulative updates of SQL Server 2008 R2 cumulative update packages...(read more)

SQL Server memory and performance tuning for ConfigMgr

2011-07-12T18:59:24Z

A few years ago I wrote a blog on tuning SQL Server memory to work with ConfigMgr and SQL Server. How do I tune SQL Server memory for optimal performance with SMS/SCCM? Since it was written specifically for SQL Server 2005 and Server 2005, it is time to update this article with current products and information. Most commonly, SQL Server installations are now being run on 64-bit versions of Windows Server. That means that AWE memory management is a thing of the past. With that in mind, the earlier...(read more)

Using Custom code in Report Builder

2011-07-11T22:26:58Z

As mentioned in an earlier post , it is possible to add custom code to Report Builder and BIDS (Business Intelligence Developer Studio). There are situations where we need to extend the functionality of Report Builder to handle scenarios that are not covered by built-in functions. One example, on a recent project we were asked to display a data field that contained the number of seconds as: hh:mm:ss This should be easy, however there is no built-in function to handle this request. A VBScript...(read more)

Cumulative Update package 7 for SQL Server 2008 R2

2011-07-08T15:44:22Z

In case you missed it, Cumulative Update package 7 for SQL Server 2008 R2 was released on June 16, 2011. We ran into a few SSRS 2008 R2 performance issues that this seems to address. Slow report loading, report rendering and slow report parameter cascading. As always test in development before deploying!...(read more)

SSRS 2005 to 2008 migration issue

2011-06-30T18:23:23Z

Just found an issue with an SSRS project migration from SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2008 R2. First the report, newly converted to SSRS 2008 failed to upload with the following error: The report contains an invalid data source with the name ‘xyz - abc. Data source names must be CLS-compliant identifiers. (rsInvalidDataSourceNameNotCLSCompliant) Get Online Help The report contains an invalid data source with the name ‘xyz - cde’. Data source names must be CLS-compliant identifiers. (rsInvalidDataSourceNameNotCLSCompliant...(read more)