I'm Thomas Williams, and I blog about SQL Server, Reporting Services, .NET, and development in general. My old blog at DotNetJunkies was in desperate need of updating - thanks to Jay for setting me up here at my new home! Please subscribe to TheRuntime main feed or my personal feed to make sure you stay up-to-date with my posts. More about me I work in the health industry in Frankston, Victoria, Australia and live with my beautiful wife Olivia and 3 young kids. I am an MCP (going for MCAD.NET) and a MCTS in SQL Server 2005. My full-time job involves writing software to...

The Reporting Services Catalog table in the ReportServer database contains the RDL XML in the Content column, serialised to binary format. I had an issue recently where I needed to retrieve the RDL XML from the Content column from a backup of the ReportServer database using SQL Server 2005. Here's the code that did the job: SELECT [Name], CAST(CAST([Content] AS VARBINARY(MAX)) AS XML) AS reportXML FROM ReportServer_Backup.dbo.[Catalog] WITH (NOLOCK) WHERE --get only reports, not folders or other resources [Type] =...

I'm the proud owner of a Logitech "Harmony" remote that controls the TV, DVD, and sound system in my lounge room. I'm not surprised at a recent (Logitech-sponsored) European survey that I read about at Jasper van Kuijk's blog which points out:in 25% of homes, there is only 1 person who knows how to operate all the technology87% of homes have three or more remote controls49% of homes have five or more remote controls I can openly say that my Logitech remote was one of the best tech buys I've ever made. It's key feature is that it groups commands around...

The first thing I need to say about this book is: wow. T-SQL Querying is easy to read and yet really gets in depth with T-SQL. It reminds me of Itzik's presentations - complex concepts explained in a comfortable and informative style. The book covers query processing and optimisation, has some useful scripts for performance monitoring, logic puzzles, the new features of SQL Server 2005 like CTEs, ranking functions and APPLY, and plenty more. Some sections of the book could easily become my standard reference material on logical and physical query processing, while other sections are almost tutorial-like. One of the advantages...