The Belgian SQL Server User Group offers a significant 35% discount for its members (even more than early bird discount) for any PASS European Conference 2010 registration. Use discount code BEC15Y and enjoy your savings on your registration. For more information check our SQLUG website. PASS European Conference 2010 is Europe’s premier conference for SQL Server technical education and business networking. Meet top SQL Server experts from Europe and around the world. Learn about best practices, effective troubleshooting, how to prevent issues, save money, and build a better SQL Server environment for your company or clients.

• Opening Keynote by Wesley Backelant and Ritchie Houtmeyers
• Best Practices for SQL Server Consolidation by Tom Van Mulders
• Breaking the ETL world record with Integration Services by Henk van der Valk
• Designing Effective Aggregations in Analysyis Services 2008 by Chris Webb
• High availability for BI DWH by Patrick Tack
• How New.NET Development technologies could change the live of the SQL DBA guy/girl by Gill Cleeren & Kurt Claeys
• Implementing best practices with Policy Based Management by Nico Jacobs
• Introducing to PowerPivot or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Excel by Chris Webb
• Tracking Changes and Data movement in SQL Server 2008 by Dirk Gubbels
• Handling XML in SQL Server by Nico Jacobs

Have fun!

bing brought me to the following great article, where Mosha explains how you can use MDX to create a custom format:
http://sqlblog.com/blogs/mosha/archive/2008/09/26/displaying-duration-values-mdx-expressions-in-format-string.aspx

When you apply this for a calculated member you get something like this:

    CREATE MEMBER CURRENTCUBE.[Measures].[DurationInDays]
     AS [DurationInDays],
    FORMAT_STRING =  
        IIF([Measures].[Duration] < 1
         ,’”0 days” hh:mm:ss’
         ,’”‘ + cstr(int([Measures].[Duration])) + ‘ days” hh:mm:ss’)
    ,
    VISIBLE = 1;

But this brings us to another problem:
This custom format will only display the correct result if [Measures].[Duration] contains decimal seconds.
For more information about the conversion from seconds to decimal seconds, read the following article on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time
In short, you need to divide the number of seconds by 86.400. The resulting number presents the number of days on the left side of the decimal separator and the remaining decimal seconds on the right side.

So the final result will be something like this:

    CREATE MEMBER CURRENTCUBE.[Measures].[DurationInDecimalSeconds]
     AS
        [Measures].[DurationInSeconds] / 86400,
    VISIBLE = 0;  

    CREATE MEMBER CURRENTCUBE.[Measures].[DurationInDays]
     AS [Measures].[DurationInDecimalSeconds],
    FORMAT_STRING =  
        IIF([Measures].[DurationInDecimalSeconds] < 1
         ,’”0 days” hh:mm:ss’
         ,’”‘ + cstr(int([Measures].[DurationInDecimalSeconds])) + ‘ days” hh:mm:ss’)
    ,
    VISIBLE = 1;

If you want this custom format to be displayed in Excel, make sure the connection properties are set correctly to retrieve the number format from the server:

Go to Connection Properties, tab Usage, and check Number Format in the OLAP Server Formatting options.

There is one more thing I would like to tell you about these options: Normally all these options will always be checked by default, but I’ve noticed that when you start from an existing odc-file, this is not the case. So, when you’re used to deliver an odc-file to your users to start analyzing from Excel, you will have to replace this odc-file by an Excel template that connects to the cube, to make sure this option is always on.

There might be a better way to change this behavior for odc-files, but I couldn’t find any. If you know it, please let me know

Enjoy!

On Thursday, the 3rd of December 2009 SQLUG.BE (The Belgian SQL Server User Group) and Microsoft are teaming up to organize the second Belgian SQL Server Day. Focus of the day is off course SQL Server.

Last year, SQL Server Day 2008 was the biggest community driven SQL Server event in the Benelux, with more than 200 attendees.

The event will kick-off with an international speaker positioning the SQL Server data platform, today and tomorrow.

We have 6 break-out sessions with technical content on SQL Server. The speakers are recognized international SQL Server experts; including Dirk Gubbels, Chris Webb, Henk van der Valk, …

During the lunch break our gold partners will present their solutions and offerings in the lightning sessions.

We conclude the day with a closing keynote on Gemini, the new breakthrough Self-Service Business Intelligence (BI) capabilities being delivered in SQL Server 2008 R2.

Full details and registration are available on www.sqlserverday.be

After installing and configuring R2, I opened Internet Explorer and entered the URL of the Report Manager. In my case: http://localhost/reports_r2

I got a very empty Report Manager :

Okay, something is wrong. I tried to connect to http://localhost/reportserver_r2 :

No access? But I am admin of this PC… Wait a minute. By default, programs are never executed as an administrator in Windows 7 or Vista. That explains it!

Here is how you can solve this:

• Open Internet Explorer as an administrator: click right and select “Run as Administrator”.
• Click “Yes” to allow.

Now, if you don’t want to do this every time you want to use the report manager, follow these steps:

• Add “http://localhost” to the trusted sites.
• On the home page of the report manager click “Folder Settings”, “Security” and make your account “Content Manager”.
• Click “Site Settings”, “Security” and make your account “System Administrator”.
• Problem solved!

For more info: search for “How to: Configure a Report Server for Local Administration on Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008” in BooksOnline.