Yes, I’ve been quiet lately. I have a ton of ideas lining up for blog posts, but I need to get back to a “normal” pace. After conference season (PASS and Connections), I have been super busy with various projects – like co-authoring Introducing SQL Server 2012 with Ross Mistry and teaching classes like BI [...]

Yesterday, I delivered a presentation at SQLRally on the new data visualization features in the latest version of Reporting Services. We did some experimentation with Indicators to validate the rules for Start and End, which sacrificed the later portion of my presentation on visual design best practices. On the one hand, that meant the session [...]

In SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services, you can now create maps for reports using the built-in map gallery of the United States or individual states, ESRI shapefiles, or a spatial query. In a previous post, I explained how to obtain an ESRI shapefile for another country and convert it into spatial data so that [...]

I had to troubleshoot a problem with a mysterious extra page appearing in a PDF this week. My first thought was that it was likely to caused by one of the most common problems that people encounter when developing reports that eventually get rendered as PDF is getting blank pages inserted into the PDF document. [...]

A nice feature that appeared first in SQL Server 2005 (not SQL Server 2008 – I mis-remembered!) is the ability to allow the user to click a column header to sort that column. It defaults to an ascending sort first, but you can click the column again to switch to a descending sort. You can learn [...]