T-SQL Tuesday #007 – Roundup

First of all I apologize for this roundup taking more time than usual to appear. This last week was my last week of work at the hospital and trying to get everything turned over as well as prepping for my move to Jacksonville my time’s been short to say the least. Without further ado, here’s this month’s #TSQL2sDAY roundup:

Stacia Misner reports in on her love for all things Reporting Services.

Brad Schultz fills in the gaps for us with a brilliant (as always) Intellisense post.

Glenn Berry gives us some great insight on core database engine improvements. If you don’t think R2 brought anything to the core product stop and read this post.

Andy Lohn merges several answers together with IntelliSense, Resource Governor and the MERGE statement! Also Andy’s new on my radar and has a witty Twitter name so time to add another person to follow on Twitter/add to Reader!

Jason Brimhall packs a ton of great information in his post about compression.

Seth Phelabaum talks about the new T-SQL and query writing improvements. This is awesome as I wasn’t aware of some of these new additions! Developers, this is a MUST read! Once again, another great blog added to my reader!

Robert Davis, one of the newest folks to attain the prestigious SQL Server Master certification, brings to our attention something you wouldn’t really think about: sysprep support! SWEET! Great walkthrough example using a virtual machine on Windows Server 2008 R2. Definitely an administrator MUST read.

Wayne Berry takes us for a trip to the clouds with the SQL Azure team and SQL Server 2008 R2’s SQL Azure integration. If you’re even thinking about putting your database in the cloud check out this post and subscribe to the SQL Azure team’s blog.

Kendra Little has plays the dating game in this post where she narrows down three great features (PowerPivot, Data Compression and The Data Collector) and finally comes up with her winning date. Read this post to find out who wins!

Bill Fellows hasn’t been able to play with R2 yet but gives a great and detailed walkthrough of how and why to use User Defined Table Types as Table-Valued Parameters. VERY cool! Added to reader.

Steve Jones, of Voice of the DBA podcast fame, gives us some great insight on StreamInsight. Honestly this feature also excites me so this is a really nice intro to the feature.

Gethyn Ellis is a man after my own heart by talking about Policy-Based Management. Also always great to discover another great blog from across the pond.

Ted Krueger, who did a fantastic job last week with SQL University’s HA/DR week, waxes poetic about all of the new changes in SSIS Data Flow Engine. If you care at all about SSIS performance check this out!

John Racer, aka @speedracer, could’ve written a whole book on all the new BI features but instead focused on Reporting Services. Nice breakdown of new hotness in SSRS.

Mark Blakey talks about PowerPivot and comparing it to a certain scene in Austin Powers (no, not the hot tub scene with Alotta). Also make sure to give him a follow on Twitter as well.

Nicholas Cain, aka @anonythemouse, despite claiming to cheat by referencing one of his old SQLServerCentral posts covers a real nice example of how Data Compression helps you save space.

Pinal Dave does a fantastic job of covering MERGE operations as well as showing us precisely how it improves performance over traditional methods. Very cool! Developers, definitely check this out!

Stef Bauer walks us through the Resource Governor feature and how it works. Pretty cool feature to help cull down those resource-hungry queries from ad-hoc queries.

Rob Farley throws us for a loop as his favorite part about SQL 2008 R2 doesn’t even have to do with the features! Check it out.

Bob Pusateri is excited by what’s NOT there with his overview of filtered indexes in 2008 and how they helped him solve a specific issue on a homegrown solution.