'SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) has been around since 2004. I learned about it at PASS 2003, and probably had the beta version running as soon as I returned back to work from Seattle. Over the years, I have created many reports at my previous job at the law firm and for some customers since then.
I have been concerned that Microsoft was going to abandon SSRS eventually. For a while, new features were supported in SharePoint only, and new products such as Power BI have been released. I was happy to learn that Microsoft rebooted SSRS with SQL Server 2016. There is a new web portal, support for modern browsers, and a fantastic new feature called Mobile Reports.
Mobile Reports are dashboards that will run on most modern mobile devices as well as within the web portal. They are supported on IOS 9 and later, Android 4.4 or better, and Windows 10. To run Mobile Reports on these devices, the mobile Power BI application must be installed.'...
'Periodically we are asked how to split an existing filegroup into multiple data files. The quick answer is that SQL Server does not have a built-in way for you to do that automatically, but you can do it yourself. The process is relatively simple and I have provided a script that demonstrates one technique. The script provided is not designed for production and is only provided for illustrative purposes.'...
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sql_pfe_blog/2017/03/03/split-a-file-group-into-multiple-data-files/
'DBCC INPUTBUFFER has been one of the most popular commands to display the last statement sent from a client to an instance of Microsoft SQL Server. We all have been using it for quite a while. However, this DBCC command showed very little information and DBA always wanted to see more details. In SQL Server 2016 we have a new Dynamic Management Function (DMV) sys.dm_exec_input_buffer which provides many additional details as well.
Earlier, everytime when I used to run DBCC INPUTBUFFER, I always felt that I should have some additional details along with this one like how many rows the queries are processed or how much resources they are consuming. In the new DMF, we have quite a lot of useful information along with session IDs and query running.'...
https://blog.sqlauthority.com/2017/09/04/sql-server-alternative-dbcc-inputbuffer-sys-dm_exec_input_buffer/
'Let’s work through some code to do an encrypted backup. This feature is available to you if you are using SQL Server 2014 onwards but I decided to use SQL Server 2017.
To encrypt during backup, you must specify an encryption algorithm, and an “encryptor” to secure the encryption key. I have decided to use the following options:
First step is to create a certificate.'...
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/blogs/all-about-sql/2017/10/09/sql-server-2017-encrypted-backups-and-compression/?utm_source=SSC&utm_medium=pubemail
'I feel the need, the need for speed”. That is a quote from the character Maverick, played by Tom Cruise, in one of my favorite movies, Top Gun. It makes me think of one of the top reasons why someone chooses a database engine. It must be fast and perform to the needs of all types of workloads accessing data.
SQL Server 2017 sets the standard when it comes to speed and performance. Based on the incredible work of SQL Server 2016 (See the blog series It Just Runs Faster), SQL Server 2017 is fast: built-in, simple, and online. Maybe you caught my presentation at Microsoft Ignite where I demonstrated 1 million transactions per minute on my laptop using the popular tool HammerDB¹ by simply installing SQL Server out of the box with no configuration changes (with the HammerDB client and SQL Server on the same machine!)
Consider for a minute all the built-in capabilities that power the speed of SQL Server. From a SQLOS scheduling engine that minimizes OS context switches to read-ahead scanning to automatic scaling as you add NUMA and CPUs. And we parallelize everything! From queries to indexes to statistics to backups to recovery to background threads like LogWriter. We partition and parallelize our engine to scale from your laptop to the biggest servers in the world.'...
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/dataplatforminsider/2017/09/27/sql-server-2017-fast-faster-and-the-fastest-database-everywhere-you-need-it/
'Temporal data storage, which was defined in the ANSI SQL:2011 standard, describes an architecture in which relational databases maintain row-level versioned copies of data. When using temporal data, the database does automatically what many DBAs and application developers have had to do manually for years to track point-in-time versioning for individual tables. Starting in 2016, Microsoft added SQL Server temporal tables to their data platform, which moved time-based row versioning into the database engine as a native feature.
In this post, I’ll briefly introduce SQL Server temporal tables.'...
https://www.timmitchell.net/post/2017/10/11/sql-server-temporal-tables/
'We are excited to announce the release of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 17.3!
Download SSMS 17.3 and review the Release Notes to get started.
SSMS 17.3 provides support for almost all feature areas on SQL Server 2008 through the latest SQL Server 2017, which is now generally available.
In addition to enhancements and bug fixes, SSMS 17.3 comes with two new exciting features:
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Import Flat File Wizard
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XEvent Profiler'...
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/dataplatforminsider/2017/10/10/whats-new-in-sql-server-management-studio-17-3/?WT.mc_id=AID640961_EML_5274726
'We are excited to announce that SQL Server 2017 images on Linux and Windows are now available in the Azure Marketplace! Deploying SQL Server in Azure VMs combines the industry-leading performance and security, built-in artificial intelligence, and business intelligence of SQL Server, now available on both Linux and Windows, with the flexibility, security, and hybrid connectivity of Azure.
What’s new: SQL Server 2017
SQL Server 2017 is the first SQL Server release available on Linux, in addition to Windows, meaning that you have the choice of running SQL Server on virtual machines based on Windows, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Enterprise Linux Server, or Ubuntu. SQL Server 2017 also provides new capabilities, including graph data management and analysis, Adaptive Query Processing, and advanced intelligence built-in with Python and R analytics plus native scoring in t-SQL. Read the recent SQL Server 2017 announcement blog post to learn more.'...
https://azure.microsoft.com/de-de/blog/announcing-new-azure-vm-images-sql-server-2017-on-linux-and-windows/?WT.mc_id=AID640961_EML_5274726
'Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) enables IT professionals to build semantic models over large, integrated managed datasets for end-user consumption. SSAS runs on Windows and is part of the larger suite of SQL Server’s BI offerings. SSAS 2017 brings a host of new connectivity and modeling features for comprehensive, enterprise-scale analytic solutions delivering actionable insights.
SSAS 2017 introduces the 1400 compatibility level. Here are just some highlights of the new features:
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New infrastructure for data connectivity and ingestion into tabular models with support for TOM APIs and TMSL scripting. This enables support for a range of additional data sources, and data transformation and mashup capabilities.
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Support for BI tools such as Microsoft Excel enables drill-down to detailed data from an aggregated report. For example, when end-users view total sales for a region and month, they can view the associated order details.
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Object-level security to secure table and column names in addition to the data within them.
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Enhanced support for ragged hierarchies such as organizational charts and chart of accounts.
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Various other improvements for performance, monitoring, and consistency with the Power BI modeling experience.'...
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/dataplatforminsider/2017/10/02/analysis-services-innovations-in-sql-server-2017/?WT.mc_id=AID640961_EML_5274726
'As part of our SQL Server infrastructure consolidation project, it was decided to consolidate multiple companies SQL Server 2005 / SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services instances to a new dedicated SQL Server 2012 Report Services instance. These existing SQL Server Reporitng Services instances hosts many business critical SSRS reports, data sources and subscriptions. In order to complete this task, I’ve to make sure that, all reports and other artifacts are migrated successfully from the existing SQL Server 2005/ SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services instances to the new SQL Server 2012 Report Services instance.
Well, we all know that this is not a simple task that can be performed manually, because it involves, manually saving each report file locally on these Report servers manually, and then moving and uploading the report files into the new location of SQL Server 2012 Report Server? This also means that I have to again create data sources and subscriptions for these reports.
Fortunately, after doing some research, I found two tools that can be used for this Reporting Services migration task. The first tool is Reporting Services Migration Tool from Microsoft, that can be used for migrating reports and other artifacts from SQL Server 2008 R2 and later versions report servers to the new SQL Server 2012 Report Server. This tool uses PowerShell for migration scripts. Here is the link to Download the SQL Server Reporting Migration Tool. For more information about how to use this tool, see Reporting Services Migration Tool.
Although, Reporting Services Migration Tool is a great tool for migrating SQL Server 2008 R2 or later releases Reporting Services instances. However, it is not a suitable for this consolidation situation because I also have few SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services instances. This is where this second tool that is a freeware tool called ReportSync comes handy. You can use this tool to migrate the reports, data sources and subscriptions from SQL Server 2005 or later releases Reporting Services instances to any SQL Server 2005 or later releases Reporting Services instance. The use of this tool is quite simple, as it only requires you to specify the ReportServer URL of your SSRS server, with the user credentials to log on to the server.'...
https://basitaalishan.com/2013/04/02/sql-server-reporiting-services-migrating-ssrs-reports-data-sources-and-subscriptions-from-one-server-to-another/