Virtualisation
As you may already know, I am big fan of the work of Brent Ozar, a talented SQL Server professional and online author of excellent quality SQL Server content. I particularly enjoy his podcast series and think the clear, direct style of his presentations are brilliant. You can learn a great deal in a relatively short space of time and as I commute daily into the city of London, I find Brent’s podcasts a great way to maximize this otherwise lost time.
This week I watched the first in a series of podcasts about the use of Virtualisation technology and SQL Server. Virtualisation is a really hot topic right now, what with the current economic climate forcing businesses to really drive down costs and look for ways to streamline their IT platforms. If you have not worked with virtualisation technology before this podcast series provides a solid overview.
You can download the first podcast in the series here: Virtualization Basics
Reporting Services Style Sheets
As a Business Intelligence professional, you are responsible for a very large volume of SQL Server Reporting Services reports. You will no doubt understand that modifying the aesthetics can be a real chore and is probably not the best use of your time. If you have ever needed to update the look & feel or cooperate branding for each and every one of your reports, then you will know exactly what I am talking about.
So if you want to save yourself a significant amount of time then I thoroughly recommend that you look into the use of Style Sheets to manage the presentation of your reports. This is a great way to centrally manage the look and feel of all of your reports and the best part is that it is easy to implement. That’s right, you can update or modify the style of all of your SQL Reporting Services Reports, by making a single code change.
Find out how here: Centralising Reporting Services Stylesheets