I’m very excited to share that my abstract was one of the 144 abstracts selected for PASS Summit 2014. This will be my first time speaking at PASS Summit and I just can’t take the grin off my face.
My presentation is called Techniques for Dynamic SSRS Reports and can be found in the BI track. In my presentation we’ll go over ways to add navigation to your reports, as well as how to make a single report satisfy different users needs.
I hope to see you all at Summit in Seattle this year!
This month has been wild and crazy for me. I’m still in Louisville, Kentucky after a very successful SQL Saturday yesterday (#286). While I’ve been in Louisville, SQL Server Pro magazine published my first article with them. I talk about all the problems that can be caused if you don’t have Foreign Key Constraints in your database. So grab some coffee and your favorite e-reader and enjoy my article: Foreign Key Constraints: Friend or Frenemy?
I can’t believe the year is almost half way through. I keep trying to slow the days down, but it just isn’t working. This year I’ve already accomplished so much, and I still have a long list before the year ends. Here is a recap and some events to look forward too!
I started the year off with a bang by starting a brand new Business Intelligence chapter in Irvine called Business Intelligence Group, A PASS Community (AKA BIG PASS Community). We consistently have 15 people every month and I’m really happy to announce that I have speakers lined up for the rest of the year! (Yippee!)
I also had the opportunity to participate in Pragmatic Work’s Training on the T’s. This is a free webinar series they have every Tuesday and Thursday. I was able to present my Scalable SSRS Reports Achieved Through the Powerful Tablix presentation. You can still go to their website and view it.
I also had the honor of presenting remotely to the LA SQL UG for their 10th anniversary!
This month was spent writing abstracts for the year…and still understanding my new user group. I was also being courted for what became my new job. You can read about it here.
March was extra special. I had the opportunity to present at the Silicon Valley SQL Saturday. It was extra special, because it marked my 1 year anniversary for speaking in the SQL community. I also had my largest class to date! 97 people! Here was my favorite tweet of the day too. (Thanks Glenn!)
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This month was full of meetings for our local Huntington Beach SQL Saturday that I helped host at the end of April. It was great having SQL Family come out to my neck of the woods beach.
I didn’t speak anywhere this month, but I did spend time every weekend writing. (Actually, I write every month.) I really enjoy participating in the T-SQL Tuesday Blog Parties, writing for myself, and participating in #SQLCoOp with my friends Julie, Chris, and Jeffrey.
And here we are in June, where I decided I would do EVERYTHING. I’m writing, speaking, leading, writing, and participating in #SQLHangout. Oh, and I’m getting my first dog. (More on her in a moment.)
My friend Boris Hristov (b|t|f), from Bulgaria, invited me to participate in an “episode” of SQL Hangout. We hung out in our two countries with 10 time zones between us and chatted about data types. You might not think this is an exciting topic, but it is a cornerstone to all databases. We came up with some great reasons why all database professionals should care about the data types of every field in their tables. So grab some popcorn or a glass of whiskey and hang out with us for half an hour.
You can find out about up and coming SQL Hangouts by following #SQLHangout on twitter, and you can find the full list of recorded SQL Hangouts here.
This month, I’ve also been blessed with a co-leader for my (now our) BI user group. His name is Rob Hatton, and I’m really happy he asked to lead the group with me.
I also had the opportunity this month to drive out to Riverside to speak with the Inland Empire User Group. This is the third time they’ve had me present, but the first time I’ve actually presented in person. Riverside is not a quick drive from where I live, but my boss, Steven was happy to be a carpool buddy for me. It ended up being a perfect presentation for him to hear, since it was on source controlling your SQL scripts with Red Gates’ SQL Source Control.
Well, not to far into the future. Tomorrow (Wednesday) I’m heading out to Kentucky for a week. One of the events on my vacation will be speaking at SQL Saturday #286, Louisville. I’m really looking forward to the event since I enjoyed it so much last year. My husband and I are also going whiskey tasting with friends, we’ll hopefully be visiting the Corvette factory, and we’ll be picking up this adorable Labradoodle puppy who we’ve named Lucy. She will be 10 weeks old, and I can’t wait to hold her.
Here is a list of other events that I’ll be speaking at this year. You can also go to my 2014 Speaking Engagements page for an updated list through out the rest of the year.
I’ve applied to a few other events, but the accepted speaker lists have not been sent out for those events yet.
I’ll also be attending PASS Summit 2014 in Seattle in Nov this year. I hope to see all of you there.
Thursday, January 23rd I had the opportunity to present for Pragmatic Works as part of their “Training on the T’s” where they provide free one-hour training every week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I gave my presentation entitled, Scalable SSRS Reports Achieved Through the Powerful Tablix. Below are the questions (and answers) that the attendees asked during my presentation.
View Presentation
Slide deck and demos downloads
Q: In the first presentation, the 1st tablix, do territory group and country region has the same datasets, meaning does country region have territory?
A: A tablix or a set of nested tablix can only use 1 dataset. My dataset joined several tables, two of which were Sales.SalesTerritory and PersonCountryRegion. (I’m using the Adventureworks2008R2 database.)
Here is how they are related:
SELECT
cr.Name AS CountryRegion
,st.Name AS Territory
FROM
sales.SalesTerritory AS st
JOIN Person.CountryRegion AS cr ON st.CountryRegionCode = cr.CountryRegionCode
Q: When you add a Row Group with that new column that doesn’t let you merge with the other cells to the right… what you can do is split that column, and then you’ll be able to merge.
A: Yes. This is true, but you still can’t merge across the dotted lines that are introduced into the Matrix.
Q: I always supposed that group levels had to be to the left of the dashed line. But you showed that you can delete those columns/rows but keep the grouping. Does this have any effect on the data in the columns on the left or the right of the dashed line?
A: No, it does not. If the GUI asks If you want to delete only the row/column or the row/column and the group, make sure to indicate that you only want to delete the row/column. This will keep the group, which is what we were after.
Q: Did you have to create the row groups (lower left corner), or were they available dimensions?
A: I’m not sure about this question, please email me some more information so that I can answer the question better.
Q: Could you have added the expression on the image itself and not add the extra row?
A: Not for this technique. If I would have added the expression to the image to show/hide it, then it would have left “white space” where the image would normally go when the image was hidden. By repeating the row with a different layout, we can reclaim the ‘white space” for the comment field to use.
Q: For creating the Emp Phone list, is there a reason why you used a table and created the group as opposed to using a matrix? Thanks!
A: This is a great question. You can use either controls and end up with the same result. I had been demonstrating the matrix control in the other demos, so I wanted my viewers to see how you could start with a table. This becomes handy if they requirements of the layout change. It’s important that you know that you don’t have to start all over, but you can change one control into the other because all three controls (table, matrix, and list) are all based on the Tablix template.
Q: For you last demo where you had dynamic columns for phone numbers, what did you have to change in the detail row?
A: In the detail row, I had to change the detail row to a group. I did this by going into the Detail group properties and adding a group on BusinessEntityID. I then added Last Name, First Name, and BusinessEntitty ID as the fields to sort by. This step is needed because the employee names are repeated once for each address type and each phone number type.
Q: How did you make your color palette?
A: This is a great question. Here are the steps.
Now you can make the other changes to the report to create a template report and save it in the template folder for BIDS/SSDT.
Q: How to avoid the columns getting merged on exporting to an excel
A: This is one of those questions that is helpful to also explain to all your end users since they ask the same question. The answer is not the best answer, but it is better than what we had 10 years ago. If you save your report as a CSV file, Excel will still automatically open it and the columns will not be merged. The downside is you lose charts and any formatting. The upside is the columns are no longer merged and the end user can use more functionality of Excel. They do need to be reminded that they will have to save it as an Excel file after opening it in order to save any formatting features that they have added to the file.
Q: Is there a way to fix the tablix to a set number of rows, and an exact amount of vertical space for the tablix? It seems that the tablix ‘reserves’ some additional space below the tablix which interferes when placing report items below the tablix.
A: This can be a challenging problem and it requires a lot of testing if different results set sizes to get the layout to work out the way you want. I will be creating a blog post soon on how to mimic a “fixed row” layout. You can contact me to get the the blog post early if you want.
I haven’t noticed the tablix control “reserving” space. To best figure out what is causing this extra white space do the following. Show the lines on the outside of the tablix and the control that you want to “butt up” against the tablix control You may find that the extra space is on the inside of the control instead of the outside of the control. A couple of properties to look at as are padding and Borderwidth. By changing them, you will reduce white space.
I have noticed that it can be difficult to drag and drop another control right up against another control. In those cases I do some math. By adding the Top and Height properties of the tablix you get the location of the end of the control. Then add 1 or 2 more to that value to have the Top value for the next control.
Q: Is there a way to link one tablix to multiple Datasets?
A: Unfortunately no, but there are some workarounds. There are a couple of functions that were introduced in 2008 R2 that will allow you to reference a value in another dataset, but it won’t allow you to show multiple values. A second way is to use a subreport within the tablix. I try to minimize this, since it can add ALOT of overhead. The third way, would be to create a larger dataset with repeating data that can be grouped. This is what I did in my third demo in order to create multiple addresses and multiple phone numbers for each employee. Again, you have to weigh the benefit of the technique against how much data will be used in the report.
Q: This is a great presentation. How can I get a copy of the RDLs, and the datasets?
A: You can go to my resource page to download the presentation and the demos. Pragmatics has the recording so that you can watch the presentation again. I’ve also provided the links at the top of this post.
Q: Will a transcript or summary of this demo be available for review?
A: You can go to my resource page to download the presentation and the demos. Pragmatics has the recording so that you can watch the presentation again. I’ve also provided the links at the top of this post.
Q: Will you be sharing your ‘Knowledge Based Document’ with us?
A: Unfortunately I can’t, because I don’t have references in it for code I found on the internet or in books. I will however be spending time writing short posts with tips this year, so keep an eye on my blog and on mssqltips.com for posts.
Q: Thanks – this was a great presentation.
A: Thank you. I’m glad everyone enjoyed it and that everyone had so many questions. 🙂
2013 was an amazing year for me and winning this award was the cherry on top. I want to not only thank the people who voted for me, but for the people who nominated me.
Thank You!
I appreciate your belief in me and for accepting me into the SQL Family.
While we can’t all clap together, we can tweet our approval. Please help me recognize the four others who were nominated with me. It’s a big planet, and they have contributed in their countries and abroad to be noticed and nominated too.
Very Sincerely,
Mickey Stuewe
This month I will be sharing my popular presentation, Scalable SSRS Reports Achieved Through the Powerful Tablix on Pragmatic’s webinar series, “Free Training on the T’s”. I will be going over different ways to use the Tablix control in this one hour presentation and it will be aired live, on 1/23/2014, 11:00 AM EST / 8:00 am PST. Click here to sign up.
2013 was a wild ride. I had set up my goals in December of 2012 and surpassed some of them half way through the year. I hope that I continue reaching my goals in 2014. If I do, it will be another amazing year.
Here are the goals I had and how I measured up.
I knew I wanted to be mentored, I even wrote a post about it here. I had no idea how valuable it would turn out to be. After I wrote my post, one of my friends convinced me to ask Grant Fritchey (b|t) if he would mentor me. I really like his speaking style and the topics he speaks on. So, I held my breathe, sent him an email, and he said yes. I couldn’t believe it.
We Skyped all through 2013. Our meetings were very valuable for me. You see, like many people, my confidence isn’t that high, but Grant believes in me. He encouraged me to go after my goals. He critiqued my abstracts and even my first speaking event. This was definitely an achieved goal.
This goal I blew out of the water. My goal was to speak at 5 events. I picked this number because there are 5 SQL Saturdays in California where I live. I ended up speaking at 15 different events. I exceeded my goal by 300%! Here is the full list of 2013 events and here is a summary of the events:
I’ve already listed the SQL Saturday’s I plan to apply for. The conferences will be added as I’m accepted as well as the user group meetings. Here is the list of 2014 events so far.
BloggingMy blogging goals were only half met. The first part of my goal was to write on my personal blog (this one) at least once a month. Since I like to participate in the T-SQL Tuesday Blog Parties, I knew this was most likely achievable. The other half of my goal was to write once a month for mssqltips.com. I did not reach this goal at all because there just wasn’t enough time. I was only able to submit one tip this year.
For my person blog, I exceeded my expectations. Since this was my first full year having a blog, I compared the first half of the year with the second half of he year. In that time, I doubled my page views. I had 40 posts for the year, 18 of which were in December, 8 of which were for the T-SQl Blog Party, and 1 was an incredibly fun (and funny) story based on the pictures that Pat Wright (b|t) took at PASS Summit.
Here are the 3 posts that had the most hits this year:
It took six months of carefully identifying exactly what I wanted to do and going through interviews and talking to recruiters, but this past July I finally took a leap into a new job and I’m glad I did. I miss my former colleagues, but I’ve acquired some pretty cool new ones too.
Red Gate has my absolute favorite tools. They also have some amazing people working for them. This year had the privledge of being part of their Friends of Red Gate program. This program conects various proffesionals who are power users of their products with developers and project managers at Red Gate. We get to disucss new features and how to improve existing features. It’s a wonderful program and I think their product is better for having the program.
Those were my goals for 2013, but I had some surprises along the way that have shaped me this year and are worth mentioning.
SQL CruiseIn December of 2012 I won a trip (the registration) on Tim Ford’s (b|t) SQL Cruise from SQL Sentry. The cruise was for a week in the Caribbean. Three wonderful days at sea listening to amazing speakers like Kevin Kline (b|t) and Allen White(b|t). And three wonderful days in port. I thoroughly enjoyed my experience and recommend it to ALL of you.
Half way through the year, Marlon Ribunal (b|t) approached me and asked if I wanted to help finish the book he was writing on reporting services. I was very honored that he asked me and I said yes. Marlon and I had our book published this past October. It’s called SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services Blueprints.
I also had the honor of being included in an ebook by Red Gate called 45 Database Performance tips for Developers. I’m very honored to be included in this endeavor with Grant Fritchey (b|t), Jonathan Allen (aka Father Jack) (b|t), Phil Factor (b|t), K. Brian Kelly (b|t), Ike Ellis (b|t), and Louis Davidson (b|t).
I was so impressed with the first SQL Saturday that I ever attended, that I agreed to help out with two local SQL Saturdays (Huntington Beach and San Diego). Since I enjoyed the planning and running around with my head cut off, I’ve agreed to help out again this next year.
I also help the Women In Technology virtual chapter (WIT). I had the honor of moderating three panels this past year, one of which was at PASS Summit in front of 600+ people. You can view the event here.
One of my most proud moments occurred this month, but it really started in September. (You can read the back story here.) I created an event for Jason Strate (b|t) and Bradley Ball (b|t) so that they could speak in Orange County. I had no idea if one person would show up or 100. QuickStart Intelligence hosted the event and they helped find attendees by calling all of their former students. Between my contacts, QuickStart’s former students, and Jason and Bradley’s reputations I was able to get 48 people sign up and around 30 people attend the event. I also found a sponsor for the pizza so it didn’t cost me or any of the attendee’s a dime. I call that a win!
I thought that my 2013 SQL year was at a close once December hit, but I was wrong. Red Gate put out a call for nominations for their new Tribal Awards and I was nominated for Best New Community Voice. I wrote about it here. All that I can say about this one, is that I’m pleasantly surprised and that I’m secretly hoping that Koen from Belgium wins.
Thank YouI want to thank all of you for reading my posts this year, for the comments that you leave, and for coming back time and time again. Cheers to you!
So what does 2014 hold for me? You’ll have to wait for my next post. (Evil grin inserted here.)
A year ago I had no intentions of speaking this year. I didn’t think I was mentally ready for public speaking once again. Boy was I wrong. Not only was I ready, but I’ve become addicted to speaking at various SQL Events. I even found a SQL Saturday to speak at on my family vacation in Louisville, Kentucky. Between September and October I will be speaking at 5 venues and moderating two Women in Technology (WIT) panels. That will be a total of 8 sessions. Here is a bit about each of them.
SQL Saturday #249 takes place in San Diego, CA on Saturday, September 20th. This year, instead of a pre-con the day before , Red Gate will be hosting a half day called SQL in the City Seminar.
Dev Connections takes place in Las Vegas, NV between September 30th and October 4th at Mandalay Bay. I’m very excited about my two brand new presentations.
SQL in the City takes place in three different cities in October. I will be speaking at two of them. I’ll be in Pasadena, CA on October 9th and I’ll be in Charlotte, NC on October 14th the week of the PASS Summit.
PASS Summit takes place in Charlotte, NC between October 15th and 18th. This is the most amazing conference for the SQL community. While I’m not speaking at it this year, I am participating in other ways including being a buddy to a new attendee or two.
SQL Saturday #237 also takes place in Charlotte, NC on Saturday October 19th.
I’m looking forward to these sessions and to meeting new people as well as reconnecting with my old friends. I hope to find you in my sessions and that you have the time to introduce yourself. I really enjoy meeting new people and sharing the knowledge that I have.
SQL on my friends.
Bob Pusateri (B|T) is hosting this month’s T-SQL Tuesday blog party. (Thank you Bob!) The party was originally started by Adam Machanic (B|T) just over three years ago. The topic this month is “Presenting and Loving It”. This is an interesting question for me, because it touches most of my life.
For those that know me, I’m very artistic, in fact I have an art minor and even tried to be a full time artist for a couple of years. The first time I remember teaching others about a topic, was in 6th grade. I taught my class how to make paper flowers by cutting out individual petals. Answering the class’ questions was my favorite part of the presentation.
Jump to 1994, which is when I graduated from college. Jobs were not the easiest to find. Probably because Dice.com hadn’t been written yet. So my first job out of college was teaching Microsoft Office to professionals, and within six months I became an MCT. I taught Visual Basic for two years before the travel got to me. I had some great classes and some boring classes, but I don’t think it was as exciting as presenting at SQL Saturdays.
At the beginning I found that most of the students in the classes were not very engaging. It was like pulling teeth to get them to ask questions or even to voluntarily answer the review questions. So I devised a plan. I brought a bag of Hershey’s Miniatures and I tossed them to the students who asked questions. Let me tell you, by Friday they were all asking questions. As time went on, I tried other things. I brought in monopoly money and handed out a pink $5 for leading questions. They loved that too, but the best idea was my version of Jeopardy. I divided the class into two teams and they had to name each other. Then they answered the review questions and any questions I made up as a team. Now I had team spirit, cooperation, and fun in my class. The best was the class that named each other “The Banana Slugs” and “The Sage Hens”. (Why sage hens? Because if you scare them, they can die. True story.) That one week class had so much fun that one of them wrote me a letter thanking me. But speaking at SQL Saturday is still better.
In 2002 I was so fed up with the way I was treated as a programmer that I tried to leave the field. I had always wanted to teach math, so I went back to college that spring and taught high school algebra that summer. (What was I thinking?) Presenting at SQL Saturdays is WAY better than that.
Which brings me to 2013 and SQL Saturdays. At SQL Saturday I get to present on whatever I want, providing they pick my abstract of course. At SQL Saturday the only people in my class are people who want to hear what I have to say. When I was an MCT, some of my students were there because their boss made them. Nobody is forced to attend a SQL Saturday. At SQL Saturday’s I can be me because I’m representing myself, not the company I work for. This also means I can give my friends hugs, eat lunch with my friends, and not talk for five days straight.
The number one reason why I like presenting is the same reason as 30 years ago, I like to answer questions and teach people. (And I still like to bring chocolate to my sessions too…all though I might try bacon.)
This past September (2012) I attended my first SQL Saturday in San Diego. After the SQL Saturday event I went to the after party where I had the opportunity to network with some wonderful people. One of them being Benjamin Nevarez (b|t). He asked me if I had thought about speaking at a SQL Saturday. I told him that I wasn’t considering it for another year. He told me, “Why wait? Speak at the next SQL Saturday. There will be one in Orange County in the spring.”
I thought the idea was insane. I hadn’t done any technical speaking in years, like over 15 years….and I’ve never written my own content. OK, once I wrote my own content, but that was also over 15 years ago.
By November I had decided I would submit an abstract to TWO SQL Saturdays one in Orange County, and the other in San Diego in the fall. By December I had bought myself a laptop and had decided to speak at FIVE events in 2013. It’s the end of March, and guess what? I’ve already spoken twice, I will be speaking again on Thursday, and then I finally get to speak at the Orange County SQL Saturday. I added up all the possible engagements and I have a possible NINE events for the year (4 User Group Meetings, 4 SQL Saturday Events, and if I’m a lucky ducky the coup de grace… PASS Summit). I’ve also just agreed to organize and moderate a Women’s In Technology (WIT) panel for the Orange County SQL Saturday. I’ve very excited to have a panel of women talk about how to get our youth involved in STEM programs (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics).
I’ve enjoyed myself so much speaking at the events. Yes, I was nervous, but it is so gratifying to share knowledge, to help solve problems, and to watch the light bulb go on when they see how they can leverage their new found knowledge.
If you would like to hear me speak about SQL Server Reporting Services, you can find me at these events.
