User Permission for Creating Linked Servers

I created a stored proc that drops and creates linked servers. The following system stored procs are called in my this stored proc:
master.dbo.sp_dropserver
master.dbo.sp_addlinkedserver
master.dbo.sp_addlinkedsrvlogin

It works fine in my dev environment. But when I ran it on the prod db server, the following errors came up:
Msg 15247, Level 16, State 1, Procedure sp_dropserver, Line 20
User does not have permission to perform this action.
Msg 15247, Level 16, State 1, Procedure sp_MSaddserver_internal, Line 29
User does not have permission to perform this action.
Msg 15247, Level 16, State 1, Procedure sp_addlinkedsrvlogin, Line 25
User does not have permission to perform this action.

After looking around, I found out that the account that runs the stored proc needs the "ALTER ANY LINKED SERVER", "ALTER ANY LOGIN" permission and the "dbcreator" server role. These were not setup on the SQL authentication account that runs the stored proc. So I did the following permission granting in addition to manually set the "dbcreator" role.

USE master;
GRANT ALTER ANY LINKED SERVER TO WarehouseAdmin;
GO

USE master;
GRANT ALTER ANY LOGIN TO WarehouseAdmin;
GO

Now it runs fine.

Tips on Deploying and Scheduling SSIS 2008 Packages

1. Use Windows authentication.
2. Deploy as File System instead of MSDB.
3. The account that runs SQL Server Agent needs to have sufficient privileges if connection to remote database server is included in the package.
4. Expose as few item as possible in the configuration file.

To repeat rows with column headings for a table with row groups

To repeat rows with column headings for a table with row groups
________________________________________
1. In Design view, select the table. The Grouping pane displays the row groups.
2. On right side of the Grouping pane, click the down arrow, and then click Advanced. The Grouping pane displays static and dynamic tablix members for each group. You can only set properties on a static tablix member.
3. In the Row Groups pane, click the static tablix member for the row that you want to repeat. When you select a static tablix member, the corresponding cell on the design surface is selected, if there is one. The Properties pane displays the properties for the selected tablix member.
4. Set the KeepWithGroup property in the following way:
o For a static row that is above a group, click After.
o For a static row that is below a group, click Before.
5. Set the RepeatOnNewPage property to True.
6. Preview the report. If possible, the row repeats with the group on each vertical page that the row group spans.
The post is at:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc627566.aspx

TFS 2008 to TFS 2010 Report Migration Notes

1. SSAS 2008 doesn't support "-" anymore.
"
everal Team Foundation pre-upgrade reports, and specifically the Scenario Details and Unplanned Work reports, show one of the following errors when run on SQL Server 2008:

The set must have a single hierarchy to be used with the complement operator.

The above messages appear because the WHERE clause in the report query is using a minus or complement operator (-) to exclude a specific attribute from the query. For example, the Scenario Details report includes a WHERE clause with the following syntax:
"
More details at:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff452590.aspx#REMComplement

Challenge in Excluding Weekends in TFS Reports

I have a burn up report that runs fine in SSRS 2005. This report excludes weekends. The MDX code block that does that is:

{FILTER([Date].[Date].[Date].ALLMEMBERS,
[Date].[Year Week Date].CURRENTMEMBER.Properties( "Day of Week" )<> "0"
AND [Date].[Year Week Date].CURRENTMEMBER.Properties( "Day of Week" ) <> "6")
}

However when I was trying to make this report work on TFS 2010, which is running SSRS 2008, it didn't work. The MDX code block was:

{FILTER([Date].[Date].[Date].ALLMEMBERS,
[Date].[Year - Week - Date Hierarchy].CURRENTMEMBER.Properties( "Day of Week" )<> "0"
AND [Date].[Year - Week - Date Hierarchy].CURRENTMEMBER.Properties( "Day of Week" ) <> "6")
}

I got an error that says "Query (13, 9) The Day of Week dimension attribute was not found." After Googling around with no finding, I opened up the TFS 2010 SSAS database. Guess what, the Date demension doesn't have the "Day of Week" attribute. In TFS 2008 SSAS 2005 the Date dimension has the following attributes:
Date
Day of Month
Day of Week
Day of Year
Month
Month of Year
Week
Week of Year
Year

However, in TFS 2010 SSAS 2008 the Date dimension only has the following attributes:
Date
DateSK
Month
Week
Year

So we have to find out another to exclude the weekends. I used the WTD() function and came up with the following MDX code, which works:
{FILTER([Date].[Date].[Date].ALLMEMBERS,
count(WTD([Date].[Year - Week - Date Hierarchy].CURRENTMEMBER)) <> 1
AND count(WTD([Date].[Year - Week - Date Hierarchy].CURRENTMEMBER)) <> 7
)
}

Who Locked My Table?

I have a couple of big stored procs that process data to a data warehouse. Sometimes they lock up the destination table and makes the reports hang. So I need to find out who locked the table and kill the process. Our DBA is kind enough to provide a query to find that informatoin:

select CASE WHEN tl.resource_type = 'OBJECT' THEN object_name(tl.resource_associated_entity_id)
WHEN tl.resource_associated_entity_id = 0 THEN 'n/a'
ELSE object_name(p.object_id) END as 'entity_name'
, tl.*
from sys.dm_tran_locks as tl
LEFT JOIN sys.partitions as p
on p.partition_id = tl.resource_associated_entity_id
where resource_type <> 'DATABASE'

I love DBAs.

T-SQL Error Handling

http://www.sommarskog.se/error-handling-II.htmlc