I finally got Visual Studio 2008 installed and running after the little download debacle yesterday.  I loaded it on a virtual machine so it should be super easy to break things and just start clean.  My next moves will be to start playing around with some of the new features, check out to see if the unit testing improved, and finally to make sure that ReSharper and all the other awesome tools that rock still rock with VS 08′!  I’m sure the ReSharper crew is working dilligently right now to assure that even more ass kicking is to be had with the ReSharper version for Visual Studio 2008.

I’m stoked, I’m sold, and I’m ready to do some 08′ dev!  I look forward to products being built with this new technology stack, and I definitely look forward to the power that is inherent in finally getting 3.0 and 3.5 framework pieces into place!

So cheers to happy coding!

I was complaining recently about getting MDX a week or so ago.  I wanted MDX generated from my Cube in BIDS.  Well I found a kick butt tool that helps one do that.  Not only does it help with getting the MDX, but it also provides printer friendly dimension usage, dimension “health checks”, and other functionality.  It is definitely one of the “helpful” tools out there that should be in the toolbox of any BI/Cube Developer.

So you BIDS users, go check out the BIDS Helper.

(BIDS == Business Intelligence Development Studio)

Yo Microsoft!  Get your act together, that was a rude, crude thing you did yesterday!  VS 2008 is release with .NET 3.5 my ass!  I went scurrying to my MSDN subscription to download that sucker and really get to reviewing the new material – HANDS ON!  Here I am navigating to the download area and the only thing available ARE THE FREAKING 90 DAY TRIALS!!!!!

Who freaking cares about the 90 day trials on MSDN?  Why the hell would anyone even download those!  I’m liable to get uber vulgar about this rather disrespectful action.  I know others have, so why does Microsoft wonder about their reputation when these things happen!  Come on, the product is coming early, don’t goof it up with faux releases!  ARGH.

Anyway, I guess I’ll keep plugging along with VS 2005 for a few more days.  On a positive note, dibs to the early release Microsoft!

UPDATE In addition to all the confusion this other download manager has caused, it seems that I wasn’t the only person having issues.

I’m on a couple new quests as of this week.  One is to find a decent way to performance test SSAS without buying or putting in place large servers similar to what would be used in a production environment.  The second is to figure out how to have JavaScript or some code provide the timeline or time slice of a flash video that could be on my server or some other server embedded in my web page.

With the JavaScript and Flash needs, I’m at ground zero still.  Most of what I’ve looked at just doesn’t seem to work.  Silverlight could totally replace the need, but the request is for Flash.  @#$(^& Flash!!!!  Argh.  Anyone with any ideas, or know any good places to find information of Flash Video functionality, please let me know and post a comment.

For the first quest, to find a way to performance test SSAS Cubes via a tool or some other feature.  Part of this quest is to find a way to get performance numbers that can be reviewed and then calculated easily.  The idea is to get the current numbers and scale them appropriately for the larger machines or environments the SSAS Cube would sit on.  Again if anyone out there has 2 cents to apply, please do!

Just a review of what I’ve found relating to performance tools:

The first thing I stumbled on was Mark Russo’s SSAS Performance Tools Blog Entry.  In his blog entry he mentions the second thing I came upon, the MDX Script Performance Tool on Codeplex.  This tool written by Chris Webb is discussed more on his blog entry MDX Script Performance Analyser.

Another tool Chris Webb mention via his blog is the load testing tool.

There are also the multitude of links for the Analysis Services 2005 Performance Tuning White Paper, something that might add to what I’m looking for, but not automated for sure.

So far with all these tools I haven’t found a complete “performance estimation tool” that would fulfill the functions that I’m looking for.  I suppose I’ll have to start building my own.

Dibs to ScottGu of course.  It is released!